Ernesto Miranda

Ernesto Arturo Miranda ( b. March 9, 1941, Mesa, Arizona - d. January 31, 1976, Phoenix, Arizona) was a laborer whose conviction on rape charges based on his confession under police interrogation resulted in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case (Miranda v. Arizona) which ruled that a police officer upon arresting a person must read him his rights to counsel and to remain silent.

Confession Without Rights, Start of Miranda v. Arizona

Ernesto Arturo Miranda was born on March 9, 1941, Mesa, Arizona. Miranda started to get in trouble when he was in grade school in Mesa, shortly after his mother died and his father remarried. Miranda and his father didn?t get along very well, and he kept his distance from his brothers and step-mother as well. Miranda had his first criminal conviction when he was in 8th grade. The following year, he was arrested and convicted of burglary, and sentenced to a year in reform school.

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March 9 - 1941 - Mesa - Arizona

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In 1956, about a month after he was released from his reform school, Arizona State Industrial School for Boys, he got into trouble again and was returned there. By this time Miranda had dropped out of school. When he was released from the reform school, he went to Los Angeles, California. Within months of his arrival in LA, Miranda was arrested on suspicion of armed robbery (but not convicted) and for some minor sex offenses. After two and a half years in custody the 18 year old Miranda was deported back to Arizona.

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1956 - Los Angeles - California

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At that time he decided to join the army. During his army service he received many AWOL charges and charges for spying on other people's sexual activities. He also spent spent six months in the Fort Campbell, Kentucky stockade at hard labor. After 15 months in the service, during which time he was ordered to consult a psychiatrist but only went to one session, Miranda was dishonorably discharged.

Related Topics:
AWOL - Fort Campbell - Kentucky

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He drifted around the south for a few months, spending time in jail in Texas for living on the street without money or a place to live, and was arrested in Nashville driving a stolen car. Because he had taken the stolen vehicle across state lines, Miranda was sentenced to a year and a day in the federal prison system, serving time in Chillicothe, Ohio and later in Lompoc, California.

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Texas - Nashville - Chillicothe - Ohio - Lompoc - California

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The next couple of years Miranda kept out of jail, working at different jobs without a steady job, until he became a laborer on the night loading dock for the Phoenix produce company. At that time he started living with Twila Hoffman, a 29-year-old mother of a boy and a girl by another man, from whom she could not afford a divorce.

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According to the Phoenix police, Miranda repeatedly abducted, kidnapped, raped and robbed young women during this time. His searching grounds for victims were so limited though, that in March 1963, his truck was spotted and license plates recognized by the brother of an 18 year old rape victim (the victim had given the brother a description). With his description of the car and a partial license plate number, Phoenix police officers Carroll Cooley and Wilfred Young, arrested Miranda, took him to the station house and placed him in a lineup.

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Phoenix - March - 1963

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After the lineup, when Miranda asked how he did, the police implied that he was positively identified. The police got a confession out of Miranda after two hours of interrogation, without informing him of his rights. After unburdening himself to the officers, Miranda was taken to meet the rape victim for positive voice identification. Asked by officers, in her presence, whether this was the victim, Miranda said, "That's the girl." Not surprisingly, the victim stated that the sound of Miranda's voice matched that of the culprit.

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Miranda then wrote his confessions down. At the top of each sheet was the printed certification that the confessor makes "?this statement voluntarily and of my own free will, with no threats, coercion or promises of immunity and with full knowledge of my legal rights, understanding any statement I make may be used against me." Despite the statement on top of the sheets that Miranda was confessing "with full knowledge of my legal right," he was not informed of his right to have an attorney present or of his right to remain silent. 73-year-old Alvin Moore was assigned to represent him at his trial. The trial took place in mid-June 1963 before Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Yale McFate.

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Moore objected to entering the confession by Miranda as evidence during the trial but was overruled. Mostly because of the confession, Miranda was convicted of rape and kidnapping and sentenced to 20 to 30 years on both charges. Moore appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court but the charges were upheld.

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Filing as a pauper, Miranda submitted his plea for a writ of certiorari, or request for review of his case to the U.S. Supreme Court in June, 1965. After Alvin Moore was unable to take the case because of health reasons, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Robert J. Corcoran, asked John J. Flynn, a reputable criminal defense attorney, to do a pro bono basis case along with his partner, John P. Frank, and an associate Peter D. Baird of the law firm Lewis & Roca in Phoenix to represent Miranda. They wrote a 2,500 word petition for certiorari that argued that Miranda's Sixth Amendment rights had been violated and sent it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Related Topics:
U.S. Supreme Court - 1965 - American Civil Liberties Union - Sixth Amendment

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