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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Nia Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
Nia Rodgers: I'm really good. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm fine. In part, I'm fine because this episode is part of our continuing series, we have settle on a title for this?
Nia Rodgers: I don't think we have, but I think stories behind the name is what we're going to end up calling it. Stories behind the name. These are names that you've heard in conjunction with something to do with the government or something to do with the legal system, and you're like, who's that person?
J. Aughenbaugh: Today, it's one of the most famous names in the American criminal justice system, and it touches.
Nia Rodgers: I put to you that if no one knows any other case, they know this name. There would be a fight between this and Brown V Board of Education. For infamy in terms of just regular people like me who don't study this room, because you know all of them. You know every case. That's Bob versus Tom from 1941. You know all of them. But regular, and I'm not trying to say you're not regular, but regular people like me.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners to Nia's point, a couple of years ago. No, actually, when we first started doing this podcast, I think it was Season 2, Nia off recording comes to me and goes. One of our listeners, her good friend Nia, went ahead and said, well, if you guys are going to discuss the Commerce Clause, then you're going to want to go ahead and discuss the mud flaps case. Without skipping a beat, I go ahead and rattle off the name of the case and Nia was just like, you're a weirdo. You said it good naturally. You were not pejorative.
Nia Rodgers: No. I meant it lovingly, but you're a weirdo.
J. Aughenbaugh: But I was just like, yeah, the mud flaps case. Navajo Freight Lines versus and Nia was just like, you're a weirdo. I understand your point. Listeners, this is the reason why we're doing this series.
Nia Rodgers: There's always a story behind.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, it's easy to forget that so many of these government processes, court cases, you'll hear a reference. Hey, we don't want to act like so and so. Well, so and so was from the 1940s and 50s.
Nia Rodgers: We're going to get to McCarthy at some point. I don't want to be McCarthy. You're like, who is this McCarthy guy? We're going to get to him at some point.
J. Aughenbaugh: But today, we're going to be looking at, Ernesto Miranda.
Nia Rodgers: Of the infamous, Miranda rights. Which Aughie is going to talk to you more about that, but I'm going to start us off by talking about Ernesto Miranda before he was of the Miranda rights, before he was of Miranda V Arizona, which is how we come to get the Miranda rights, is was born on March 9th of 1941 in Mesa, Arizona. His mom died when he was 6-years-old. His dad remarried, and he struggled not with his stepmother, but with his father. He struggled and they had a very complicated relationship. In about the eighth grade, he started committing crimes. They started off low level burglar ish and, that crime. Then he graduated to sexual assault, and he was sent to a reform school, the Arizona State Industrial School for Boys. If that title doesn't scare you, I don't know what would. The Industrial School for boys sounds very correctional to me.
J. Aughenbaugh: On one hand, it seems rather benign. It's an industrial school.
Nia Rodgers: Maybe they'll learn to fix cars, and do cool things like that.
J. Aughenbaugh: But for those of us who study government institutions, when you see an Arizona State Industrial School for Boys, you're like, it's a warehouse with a whole bunch of bunk beds. Concrete floors, concrete walls.
Nia Rodgers: It's a reform school where everybody gets beaten on a regular basis until the morale improves.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's got group showers. There's no privacy. It's designed to beat you down so that you will be less likely to engage in this criminal behavior going forward. Unfortunately, it usually has the opposite effect.
Nia Rodgers: It did in Miranda's case. He gets out of the school, and a kid you know a month later, he is sentenced to go back. Because he just cannot keep himself out of trouble. Then when he gets released the second time, he decides, you know what? This is for the birds. He's 15, and he hairs off to California. He just takes himself off to California. Within several months of being in California, he is arrested on suspicion of armed robbery. Like, he just can't stay out of trouble.
J. Aughenbaugh: Can I catch your break. He gets system, and he stays basically.
Nia Rodgers: He stays in the system. He's at 18, he begins drifting around. He ends up in Texas in jail in part for being homeless, but also for some other crimes, sexual assault, battery and burglary. Then he enlisted in the army. He's like, no, I'm going to turn it around. I'm going to turn it around. I'm going to go into the army. He's in the army approximately 10 minutes. When he goes AWOL, it's not 10 minutes, but it's very it's within the first year. He goes AWOL and he gets in trouble for not only being AWOL, but for sexually offending. He sexually assault someone while he's AWOL. It's not bad enough that he goes AWOL. Sorry, AWOL is absent without leave, A-W-O-L. That's with the military, absent without leave. Then he serves time for that and he gets dishonorably discharged after only 15 months in the military. We're now in our early 20s, I guess, he's 21 or 22 at this point. He gets arrested in Tennessee for driving a stolen car. Now, that is how he was arrested driving a stolen car. They were unclear whether he stole the car, but he came into possession of a stolen car and was driving it, and he drove it across state lines, which made it a federal crime.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's correct.
Nia Rodgers: Then he gets sentenced one year and one day in the federal prison system. He serves time partly in Ohio, then he serves time in California.
J. Aughenbaugh: He gets out. He's 24-years-old.
Nia Rodgers: He tries to go straight?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, he tried.
Nia Rodgers: He gets a day job. He's doing laborer work. He's out there trying to do whatever, and he moves in with a lovely named person, Twyla Hoffman and her two children. She could not afford a divorce from her husband, so they were common law living together. Twyla gave birth to a baby girl who they named Cleopatra. You cannot say, but he is not whimsical. Cleopatra Miranda. Which I think makes her have two first names, really, Cleopatra Miranda. This is where Ernesto's life takes a serious turn, like a really serious turn.
J. Aughenbaugh: Most of his at that point, young life has not been full of a lot of positives. But it now takes a really bad turn for the worse. What does he do?
Nia Rodgers: First of all, he takes his girlfriend's car. That's going to come up later. He takes his girlfriend's car, and he drives past the movie theater, and a movie theater employee, 18-year-old young lady is leaving work. She's going to walk home, and he kidnaps her. He takes her out to the desert where he sexually assaults her. He does the R Word, which we don't say on this podcast, and then he brings her back. He does not kill her. Because he's not interested in murdering her. He's not interested in that. He just wants what he wants. He brings her back, drops her off about 10 blocks from the theater, and drives away. The victim is able to identify a man of Hispanic background, 5, 10, curly black hair. She describes someone who looks a lot like Ernesto Miranda. But it's, in fact, her brother. From the description that she gave of the car, her brother drives around Mesa until he finds the car, and he calls the cops and says, hey, I found the car. They trace the car to Twyla Hoffman, and then they go to the house and they say, is that your car? She says, yes, and they say, who was driving it whatever night? She says, my boyfriend, Ernesto, and they arrest Ernesto Miranda. Who looks like the description that the detective gave.
J. Aughenbaugh: At that point, they have him in custody. First, the police lie to Ernesto and say that he's been identified in a lineup.
Nia Rodgers: They put him in a lineup with three other guys. There's four people in the lineup. He comes out and he says, how did I do? He asks them, how did I do? They say, well, it doesn't look good for you, Ernesto. She identified you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which is all complete falsehood. The police lie, which, by the way, the Supreme Court.
Nia Rodgers: They're allowed to do.
J. Aughenbaugh: Supreme Court has said a number of times, when the police have you in custody, they can lie to you.
Nia Rodgers: Then they take him to a room where the victim is. He says, isn't this the young woman you assaulted? He says, yes, and he writes a confession. They give him a backwards lineup. Which is him identifying the victim, and then he writes out a confession. Not surprisingly, he is found guilty by a jury. Because hello, he wrote out a confession.
J. Aughenbaugh: But after he was found guilty, his court appointed attorneys, went ahead and appealed his conviction. Nia, why did they appeal his conviction?
Nia Rodgers: I'm pretty sure that it's because they said that he did not understand that he had the right to remain silent and that he had the right to an attorney. That at the beginning, when he was not yet under arrest, he could have left. All three of those things are true. You can leave if you are being detained but not arrested.
J. Aughenbaugh: Correct.
Nia Rodgers: You can leave. You're like, am I free to go? That's a question you can ask. But they said that he was unaware of his rights. It goes to the Supreme Court. Now Aughie is going to talk about what the Supreme Court said.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement must warn a person of their constitutional rights before they are interrogated while they're in custody. If they are not warned of their rights, then any subsequent statements made by the person must be thrown out as evidence against them at trial. The Supreme Court made this determination based on the Fifth Amendment. The Fifth Amendment has a privilege against self incrimination. This is how the Supreme Court rooted what becomes known as the Miranda warning. That you have the privilege of not incriminating yourself.
Nia Rodgers: Which is silence. You have the right to not say anything. If you know what you say it's going to get you in trouble.
J. Aughenbaugh: The really controversial part of Chief Justice Earl Warren's majority opinion was where Warren went ahead and gave advice to the cops. If you don't want to violate the Fifth Amendment, then you should warn those people you have taken into custody and are interrogating. This becomes known as the Miranda Warning. In part, it was the Supreme Court wanting to if you will, give the police, advice and guidance on how they could comply, because what the Supreme Court was saying is, law enforcement across the United States, you have to stop these interrogations of criminal defendants who aren't aware of their rights, don't know how to navigate the criminal justice system without an attorney, etc.
Nia Rodgers: Think about he left school when he was in the tenth grade, basically. His education is relatively limited and I put to you that most people who left school when they were in the 10th grade probably don't know a huge amount about the legal system. The legal system has not been kind to Mr. Miranda, until now. Although he also is a troubled individual and has caused, I'm not saying he didn't deserve what the punishments that he received, but I also am saying that there's two sides to this coin. What I find interesting about that legal decision that you're talking about, and specifically the opinion is, if you want these cases to stick, you need to make sure people understand and then voluntarily do whatever it is. They either talk to you or they confess to something or you can't, it's like the cops cannot beat a confession out of you either. They can't physically harm you to get you to confess to something, because if they did, they could just pick anybody up for something, beat them until they said I did it, and then they could close the books on a case. But that's how we do criminal justice in the United States, at least not currently. How we do criminal justice in the United States.
J. Aughenbaugh: One of the great ironies about this decision Nia is initially the cops hated the Miranda warning. But eventually, law enforcement agencies figured out that the Supreme Court actually did them a huge sold, because once the cops give you your warning, then they say to you, if you want to talk to us, you have to waive your Miranda rights. Now it becomes part of a confidence game that the police play on you because they know most of us.
Nia Rodgers: Have an urge to talk.
J. Aughenbaugh: We want to explain away our bad behavior or what we might be accused of.
Nia Rodgers: Or absolve ourselves in some way. I was at the murder scene, but I didn't commit the murder. Aughie committed the murder. I was just standing in the doorway. We want to say those things. But now you've placed yourself at the murder scene.
J. Aughenbaugh: At that point, the cops are going to have more questions. Because you have waived your Miranda rights, they'll start asking you all questions. They'll go back and forth in terms of time and then back to, how did you know the person who was murdered or whatever the case may be. At that point, you just can't stop talking.
Nia Rodgers: You're now embroiled. You're embroiled in it. If you're lying, you're trying to lie to cover your lies. You're just building lies. The cops are like, really? Keep telling me lies, because every time you tell me a lie and I can prove you're lying, then I can cast doubt on everything else you said.
J. Aughenbaugh: As you said. Now you look more guilty. You're like, how did I end up being charged with this when all I did was try to explain how I was at the murder scene? Because you kept on talking.
Nia Rodgers: The effect of Miranda is that Miranda rights are like the world over now, because they're known the world over, because the United States exports almost all of our media. Law and Order in the 900 seasons that it has been on since its iteration have all made it around the world. Almost anybody who's ever seen an arrest on film has heard the Miranda rights. You have the right to remain silent. If you choose to give up this right, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have a right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, an attorney, will it be appointed for you? Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you? There's a whole thing, and we all know it, and that comes directly from Ernesto.
J. Aughenbaugh: What's happened to Ernesto after the Supreme Court's ruling in his case?
Nia Rodgers: His attorneys win great news. His confession is part of the court case. The prosecutors are like, no, you didn't. They go back. They re-prosecute him without the confession, but with a new witness, which we told you to mentally note earlier, Miss Twyla Hoffman, whose car was taken to do this in. By this time, they are no longer together, and she is ready to talk. She acts as a new witness, he is found guilty. He serves 11 years of a 18 year sentence.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, I think it was 18 years.
Nia Rodgers: I think it's 18 years. He serves 11 years. He gets out of jail in 1976 and within a year is killed in a bar fight. He was 34-years-old. He had a very short and tumultuous life.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sad unhappy life of Ernesto Miranda.
Nia Rodgers: All the way to the end.
J. Aughenbaugh: Who led to one of the biggest changes in the American criminal justice system.
Nia Rodgers: Stabbed to death in a bar fight. But what I think is good to remember about Miranda is that he was a person. Even though he was, I think we could say a nefarious person, I think we could get away with saying that pretty safely. He did have rights. Because he didn't understand the system, he has now made it much clearer for everybody else what their rights are. For that, we should say, you know what? Ernesto Miranda did one good thing in his life. He did two good things because he brought Cleopatra into the world. He made sure that people would be aware of what their rights are.
J. Aughenbaugh: For our listeners who are like, he was aware of his rights because he was always in the system. Just because you've been in the system does not necessarily mean you learn what the system is about. If you enter the system when you are, for instance, in eighth grade.
Nia Rodgers: You don't know anything about the system.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're just trying to survive. I like the point you just made Nia. On one hand, you could go ahead and say, he was a career criminal. He got what he deserved. But he was a human being. Because, on appeal, his attorneys were willing to go ahead and make an argument for somebody that, in many ways, society had cast aside. A whole bunch of other people were able to accrue benefits because of his experience. That doesn't make it any better, but at the same time, it changed how the police acted. Our expectations as individuals who interact with law enforcement changed. I think we cannot minimize another point that you made. This is one of those things that has been exported around the world. Pretty much almost every developed democracies law enforcement is now required by their legal systems to warn individuals that they are about ready to interrogate. You have certain rights, and these are your rights. If you think about it, Nia, it's the only time the government has to tell you what your rights are.
Nia Rodgers: The government does not have to tell you when you fill out your taxes that you have a certain amount that you can not declare. They don't have to tell you that. They could just take your money and say, well, you're an idiot. You should have taken this deduction and you didn't. That's on you, not on me. They don't have to tell you that. When you retire, they don't have to tell you that you fill out forms to get your Social Security. You have to know that, because they're not coming looking for you saying, let us give you money. That is never going to happen with the government. It is interesting that you're right. This is one of the few times where they're like, I have to tell you, these are the things that are true or not true about, and it's done a huge amount, I think, for making people feel empowered in situations where they might have felt not empowered before. I think it gives them a chance to say, wait a minute.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you actually follow the warning, it's one of the few times where you can actually tell somebody, I don't want to talk to you.
Nia Rodgers: Yeah, exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: They have to comply.
Nia Rodgers: Because they're filmed now. Almost all interrogations are filmed because we've learned a long time ago that he said in a court is bad news because the jury could go either way. They could believe the defendant John Ogaba who's an upstanding professor or they could believe the cop Nia Rogers, is an upstanding police officer, but they could, but now that those are filmed, they can actually watch what happened and hear what happened. As soon as they say, I don't want to answer any more questions, I want to speak to an attorney or I just don't want to answer any more questions, then the cops have to say, that's the end of it. But on the other side, the cops have gotten very clever at saying, now that I've given you your Miranda warnings, I think it would probably help you if you unburdened yourself if you told us.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's like that line from the movie Jerry McGuire, help me help you.
Nia Rodgers: Exactly. If you talk to me now before I go find other information that makes you look worse, you will be better off than if I go find information that makes you look worse, then I'm going to be peeved, and you will have missed your window of opportunity to tell me what happened. There's a whole psychological. What they should say is you have the right to a court appointed psychiatrist to help you through this. It's too bad we don't have that in the United States, because dude, that's a tough game. But anyway, Miranda, he's an interesting fellow.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's like when I tell my students real briefly about the due process clause, I'm like, all the government has to give you is a process. It doesn't guarantee you an outcome. I can tell you, even if you get the outcome you were hoping for, at the end of that process, you're not going to like the process yourself, the government because it'll take a toll on you.
Nia Rodgers: Winning is still a furic victory.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because afterwards, you're going to need some psychological counseling. Let's process what you went through.
Nia Rodgers: As a warning to our listeners who might want to borrow their friend's car to go do a nefarious thing. You either need to stay friends with that person forever or you need to figure out something else, because eventually, they're going to be all peeved at you and they're going to tell it. Anyway thank you all.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is for a completely different episode. We touched upon it in previous. Think about the number of times that now government jurisdictions take automobiles that were used, by friends or family members. The owner of the automobile finds out that their friend, their boyfriend, their girlfriend, their wife, their husband went ahead and used it for a crime. The law enforcement ends up taking your car that you went ahead.
Nia Rodgers: They impound it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. You have to go to court and say, I wasn't involved with this crime. You basically have to go ahead and say, I'm just disassociating myself from my friend, my loved one, etc. just to get your car back. This is just, horrific. It's Byzantine.
Nia Rodgers: No wonder she testified against him later.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Thanks, Nia.
Nia Rodgers: Thank you, Aughie.