MIRANDA WHO?

Increasingly, police abuse letter and spirit of warning law

After three decades of TV cop shows, the "Miranda warning" is almost as
familiar as the Pledge of Allegiance. "You have the right to remain silent,
anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You
have the right to a lawyer and to have a lawyer present during questioning.
. . . "

But despite U.S. Supreme Court insistence that police explicitly advise
suspects that they have a constitutional right not to incriminate
themselves, the Miranda warning is sometimes little more than words.

The California Supreme Court heard arguments last month in a case that
threatens to expose an open but nasty secret in some police departments:
officers who deliberately ignore their own Miranda warnings by continuing
to interrogate suspects after they have asked for a lawyer.

The case is an appeal from defendant Airrique Peevy's 1995 trial for
attempted robbery. A detective with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's
Department admitted that he continued the interrogation after Peevy had
been informed of his Miranda rights and had asked for a lawyer; eventually
the detective elicited incriminating statements that helped result in
Peevy's conviction.

The state high court must rule on the case within 90 days. Similarly
disturbing police behavior is at issue in a recent federal civil rights
suit stemming from two other cases. In one, Santa Monica police detectives
persuaded a man who had asked for a lawyer to nonetheless confess by
telling him that his words could not be used against him.

As isolated incidents, the actions of police in situations like this are
troubling enough. But the behavior becomes unconscionable as a deliberate
strategy. Sadly, in some police departments, that's what appears to have
happened. At seminars throughout California, detectives and prosecutors
have been taught that Miranda need not be an obstacle. Training materials
used by several departments, including the Los Angeles and Santa Monica
police departments, encourage officers to continue questioning a suspect
after he asks for a lawyer.

A string of past state and federal court decisions already have weakened
the U.S. Supreme Court's 1966 Miranda ruling by narrowing the definition of
custody, the situation in which an officer must issue the Miranda warning.
Moreover, police are required to only read the warning, not guarantee that
a suspect understands it even when the suspect is retarded, not fluent in
English or seriously hurt.

As Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote 32 years ago, the "interrogation
environment is created for no purpose other than to subjugate the
individual to the will of his examiner. . . . This is not physical
intimidation, but it is equally destructive of human dignity. The current
practice of incommunicado interrogation is at odds with one of our nation's
most cherished principles--that the individual may not be compelled to
incriminate himself."

The California Supreme Court should begin now to correct the damage that's
been done.

Copyright Los Angeles Times