Hacker News Reader

Comment by vintermann | Hacker News Reader

One thing I never understood, that "Miranda rights" are celebrated as some sort of civil rights victory in the US.

It's actually not great that everything you say will be used against you. Ideally, police should not be belligerent hateful scumbags eager to pin any crime they can at you. That they have to announce that they are, isn't really helping much. I wonder if it actually makes it worse - that they have come to see it as their right, their right to nail suckers who make the mistake of seeing them as fellow decent humans.

View on HN

The point of Miranda isn’t to make the police collect all evidence of crimes, that’s what they always did. They’re not (necessarily) hateful scumbags, collecting evidence of crimes is literally their job. The arresting, detention, etc, is secondary. What Miranda does is make it clear that:

* You have the right to remain silent

* That’s important because if you aren’t silent, they can use anything you say against you

The second point explains why the first is so important. And it’s important to tell people that being silent is their right and won’t be held against them, while what they say may be. Unfortunately it’s become so perfunctory that I think people don’t actually pay attention to the words and why they are the way they are.

Miranda is essentially the closest thing to "don't talk to cops" that we could get cops to actually agree with

Because the alternative is worse. Notably, Miranda v Arizona set off a huge effort by the right to undo it or at least limit it in major ways. The fact that this incredibly small thing was seen as a huge gift to "bad guys" is an indication of just how little a segment of the population cares for rights of the accused.

Try living somewhere where the law compels you to answer police questions and get back to us.

It's not the role of the police to be pinning crimes on people, that's the judicial system. The police just collect evidence, and, as I understand it, the Miranda warning just means that there's no "off the record" when talking to the police.

In other words, it doesn't mean "we're going to twist what you say as much as we can", it means "we'll tell the court whatever you tell us, even if that's self-incriminating".

Pretty much what you'd expect, really.

Yep. AIUI, Miranda's only change to the status quo was to make it mandatory for the cops to _tell_ you what the status quo is.

Prior to Miranda they didn't have to tell you shit, and were probably justifying it to themselves with some lame "Ignorance of the law is no excuse, so if you don't know that you have a right to an attorney, that there is no 'off the record' conversation with a cop, and that you don't have to tell us shit, then that's your own damn fault." justification.

The judicial system prosecutes the cases that the police bring to them, with the evidence collected by the police, with the witnesses, etc. all found, interviewed, and provided by, the police!

No. That’s the police and prosecutors.

The judicial system are the courts and judges who apply the law and adjudicate the cases brought before them, hence the judicial name.

Prosecutors and police are two branches of the same tree.

And if they feel like it, with testilying.

It's not quite that. The police don't HAVE to write everything down, or record everything, etc. And they're anti-aligned with you. So things you say in custody can and will be used against you, but not everything you say can be used in your defense.

Which is why you should never talk to cops without your attorney, especially if you're being arrested.

> It's not the role of the police to be pinning crimes on people

I don't think the cops got this memo, could you please tell them.

Police are allowed to lie in pursuit of their work. Miranda compels them to tell the truth, if only once, when arresting a suspect. That Miranda is celebrated is an indication of the sorry state of policing... but don't shoot the messenger.

Also? Look at Canada. Here, cops are also allowed to lie, we don't have Miranda rights, we don't have the strength of the 5th amendment, and while you're allowed to ask for an attorney, the police are in no rush to get you one and they'll continue questioning you without an attorney present. They're not supposed to question you without that attorney, but who's going to stop them?

That's a common thing for TV cops to say, but it isn't actually a part of your Miranda rights.

It's also a Wikipedia thing to say: "anything the suspect does say can and may be used against them in a court of law;"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_warning

Or were you referring to something else?

Look further down in that article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_warning#The_warnings

> anything you say can and will be used against you

which is a version that is much more common in fiction, and also what vintermann referenced.

That was surprising to me so I dug into the citations [1][2] that correspond to that line in Wikipedia.

Citation [1] actually uses the "can and may" verbiage.

Citation [2] refers to the "will" verbiage as "now familiar verbiage" in a footnote, but it doesn't seem to be arguing that that verbiage is prescribed or accurate -- just that it's now familiar. It also incorrectly quotes that verbiage as coming from the original court ruling, so clearly they lost track of where they actually got it from (since it's not there).

I did find a quora answer [3] which gave an origin story for the "can and will" verbiage, but at this point I'm not ready to trust anything written on the topic that doesn't have solid references.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/miranda_warning [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20230513064943/https://scholarly... [3] look for Mark Tarte's answer to https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-Miranda-warning-say-can-a...

The gap between "can and may" and "will" might seem a bit nit-picky, but vintermann's interpretation depends very heavily on that "will."

There's also nothing special about being arrested that makes it so that anything you say could be used against you in court. It's really a just reminder that your right to remain silent may have value to you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com