This day in history

On this day in 1966 American Supreme Court hands down its decision in Miranda v Arizona that establishes the principle that all criminal suspects must be advised of their rights before interrogation. Now considered standard police procedure, the words "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you in court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you," have since been heard so many times in television and film dramas that they have become cliché.

The roots of the Miranda decision go back to 2 March 1963, when an 18-year-old woman from Phoenix, Arizona, told police that she had been abducted, driven to the desert and raped. Detectives questioning her story gave her a polygraph test, but the results were inconclusive. However, tracking the licence plate number of a car that resembled that of her attacker's brought police to Ernesto Miranda, who had a prior record as a peeping tom. Although the victim did not identify Miranda in a line-up, he was brought into police custody and interrogated. What happened next is disputed, but officers left the interrogation with a confession that Miranda later recanted, unaware that he did not have to say anything at all.

The confession was extremely brief and differed in certain respects from the victim's account of the crime. However, Miranda's appointed defence attorney (who was paid a grand total of $100) did not call any witnesses at the ensuing trial, and Miranda was convicted. While Miranda was in Arizona state prison, the American Civil Liberties Union took up his appeal, claiming that the confession was false and coerced.

The Supreme Court overturned his conviction, and Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered his historic opinion, ruling that due to the coercive nature of the interrogation, the confession obtained could not be admissible under the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and the Sixth Amendment right to an attorney, unless a suspect had been made aware of his rights and chose to waive them. As a result of the case against Miranda, each and every person must now be informed of his or her rights when arrested.

Miranda was retried and convicted in October 1966, and his confession was not used by the prosecution, who instead chose to call witnesses and other evidence. Remaining in prison until 1972, Ernesto Miranda was later stabbed to death in the men's room of a bar after a poker game in January 1976.