Existing comment:
The Miranda Decision
Chief Justice Earl Warren's early draft opinion in Miranda v. Arizona shows his thought process regarding the decision that required police to warn an arrested suspect that the government could use any information provided as evidence and to advise the suspect of the right to remain silent and the right to counsel. Warren argued such a warning was required by the Fifth Amendment's right against self-incrimination. Tracing the history of the right against self-incrimination, Warren recalled the trial of John Lilburne, the seventeenth-century radical politician, who contended that freedom from compulsory self-incrimination was one of the fundamental rights of an English subject. |