Sweet justice?

No idea if this is correct, but if it is it’s a ripper.

While the Miranda warnings are considered a cornerstone of our civil liberties, the person after whom they were named was hardly someone most people would consider a hero. In 1963, Ernesto Miranda, an eighth-grade dropout with a criminal record, had been picked up by Phoenix police and accused of raping and kidnapping a mildly retarded 18-year-old woman. After two hours in a police interrogation room Miranda signed a written confession, but he apparently never was told that he had the right to remain silent, to have a lawyer, and to be protected against self-incrimination.

Despite his lawyer’s objections, the confession was presented as evidence at Miranda’s trial, and he was convicted and sentenced to 20 years. His appeal went all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was joined with three other similar cases. In a landmark ruling issued in 1966, the court established that the accused have the right to remain silent and that prosecutors may not use statements made by defendants while in police custody unless the police have advised them of their rights.

That ruling offered only temporary reprieve to Miranda. He was retried. The second time round the prosecutors couldn’t use the confession, but they did have additional evidence from a former girlfriend of Miranda’s who testified that he had told her about the kidnapping and rape. He was convicted again and served 11 years before being paroled in 1972. He was arrested and returned to prison several times after.

Miranda died in 1976 at age 34 after being stabbed during an argument in a bar. The police arrested a suspect who chose to remain silent after being read his rights. The suspect was released and no one was ever charged with the killing.
http://www.hmichaelsteinberg.com/yourmirandarights.htm

It is correct.

He’s obviously an appalling human being. But then again, there are cases where innocent people are pressured by police using Orwellian interrogation tactics or who are mentally impaired in some way actually confess to crimes they didn’t commit…

I am surprised you’ve never heard of this before…

Certainly there were Australian police who used to do that and worse, and some who still do, but in the period when the Miranda case ran and until the 1980’s, maybe a bit later in some states, we had a much better system which didn’t require lazy cops to belt suspects up and avoided suspects being harmed. They were just verballed. The process involved a cop typing up a question and answer statement of a supposed interview with the defendant and then tendering it to the court in evidence, after giving evidence that it was a true record of interview but the accused refused to sign it. Almost always worked, judges and juries being incapable of believing that police would actually do something naughty.

Mandatory audio taping of felony interviews got rid of that process, although it encouraged some cops to give the suspect a bit of a flogging before turning the tape on.

Miranda I’ve naturally heard of, but not how he died and the suspect asserting his right to silence.