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"[T]he rule of Edwards [v. Arizona, 451 U. S. 477 (1981)] is our rule, not a constitutional command . . . ." Arizona v. Roberson, 486 U. S. 675, 688 (1988) (Kennedy, J., dissenting). This is equally true of Edwards' parent decision, Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966).
When this Court chose to regulate custodial interrogations in Miranda, it was stepping into one of the clearest conflicts between the interests of the accused and of society. While some innocent suspects may be able to clear themselves during the interrogation, the overwhelming majority of suspects are likely to damage their interests by incriminating themselves. As Justice Jackson pointed out, "any lawyer worth his salt will tell the suspect in no uncertain terms to make no statement to police under any circumstances." Watts v. Indiana, 338 U. S. 49, 59 (1949) (Jackson, J., concurring in the result).
Yet society must be allowed to have its police interrogate suspects in custody. Banning custodial interrogation would effectively eliminate confessions from criminal trials. See id., at 58. "Since the ready ability to obtain uncoerced confessions is not an evil but an unmitigated good, society would be the loser" from too many restrictions on police interrogation. McNeil v. Wisconsin, 501 U. S. 171, 181 (1991). Voluntary confessions "are inherently desirable." United States v. Washington, 431 U. S. 181, 187 (1977). Indeed, obtaining proof beyond a reasonable doubt " 'often could not be achieved by the prosecution without the assistance of the accused's own statement.' " Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U. S. 568, 576 (1961) (opinion of Frankfurter, J.). " 'Questioning suspects is indispensable in law enforcement.' " Id., at 578. The public interest requires that police be allowed to conduct custodial interrogations. Id., at 578-579. Custodial interrogation has long been understood to be "undoubtedly an essential tool in effective law enforcement." Haynes v. Washington, 373 U. S. 503, 515 (1963).
Regulating police interrogations necessarily involves a balancing of interests. Every protection given to the custodial suspect is also an obstacle to solving crime. See Culombe, supra, 367 U. S., at 580. The amount of protection afforded the accused reflects a judgment on the relative worth of the interests of society and the accused: "Is it [defendant's] right to have the judgment on the facts? Or is it his right to have a judgment based on only such evidence as he cannot conceal from the authorities, who cannot compel him to testify in court and also cannot question him before?" Watts, supra, 338 U. S., at 59 (Jackson, J., concurring in the result).
The Miranda decision swung the pendulum sharply towards the suspect's interests. This Court's policy judgment, given force through Miranda's irrebuttable presumption and detailed code of procedure, created no constitutional right. See Michigan v. Payne, 412 U. S. 47, 54 (1973). Miranda is a rule of evidence. This decision does not have the same force as a constitutional precedent, but is instead an exercise of this Court's constitutional common law powers. See Part II, infra, at 13-21. Miranda's subconstitutional status allows Congress to substitute its view of the appropriate balance of interests for the Court's in this crucial area of public policy.
Although the 50-plus page opinion sprawled over a wide range of topics, in the end Miranda is simply an exclusionary rule. The Court summarizes its own holding as this: "the prosecution may not use statements, whether exculpatory or inculpatory, stemming from custodial interrogation of the defendant unless it demonstrates the use of procedural safeguards effective to secure the privilege against self-incrimination." Miranda, supra, 384 U. S., at 444.
Miranda's heart is found a few pages later.
"In these cases, we might not find the defendants' statements to have been involuntary in traditional terms. Our concern for adequate safeguards to protect precious Fifth Amendment rights is, of course, not lessened in the slightest. In each of the cases, the defendant was thrust into an unfamiliar atmosphere and run through menacing police interrogation procedures. The potentiality for compulsion is forcefully apparent. . . . The fact remains that in none of these cases did the officers undertake to afford appropriate safeguards at the outset of the interrogation to insure that the statements were truly the product of free choice." Id., at 457.
"A Miranda violation does not constitute coercion but rather affords a bright-line legal presumption of coercion, requiring suppression of all unwarned statements." Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U. S. 298, 304, 307, n. 1 (1985) (emphasis in original); see also New York v. Quarles, 467 U. S. 649, 670 (1984) (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment in part). Miranda's presumption reflects this Court's choice of the appropriate balance between the suspect's protections from interrogation and society's need to solve crimes. See, e.g., Moran v. Burbine, 475 U. S. 412, 433, n. 4 (1986) ("the [Miranda] decision . . . embodies a carefully crafted balance designed to fully protect both the defendant's and society's interests"). Quarles, 467 U. S., at 658. Although the opinion declared that voluntary confessions were a "proper element in law enforcement," Miranda, supra, 384 U. S., at 478, the Miranda Court chose to tilt the balance sharply in favor of the criminal defendant. See Caplan, Questioning Miranda, 38 Vand. L. Rev. 1417, 1469-1472 (1985). This balance carries out this Court's policy concerning police interrogation.
Miranda and subsequent decisions have noted the "inherently compelling pressures" of the interrogation room. See Miranda, supra, 384 U. S., at 467; McNeil, supra, 501 U. S., at 176; Moran, supra, 475 U. S., at 420. But this alone does not explain the Miranda presumption. While there may be some compulsion in any custodial interrogation, it must not be too compelling, since Miranda still allows waivers under these circumstances. See 384 U. S., at 535-536 (White, J., dissenting). If custodial interrogation were truly compelling as a matter of constitutional law, then the Miranda Court should have forbidden the practice.
As the Miranda Court implicitly recognized, there are many circumstances under which a suspect can give an unwarned, but still clearly voluntary custodial confession. In his dissent, Justice White produced a hypothetical that undercuts any presumption of compulsion in custodial interrogation.
"Although in the Court's view in-custody interrogation is inherently coercive, the Court says that the spontaneous product of the coercion of arrest and detention is still to be deemed voluntary. An accused, arrested on probable cause, may blurt out a confession which will be admissible despite the fact that he is alone and in custody, without any showing that he had any notion of his right to remain silent or of the consequences of his admission. Yet, under the Court's rule, if the police ask him a single question such as 'Do you have anything to say?' or 'Did you kill your wife?' his response, if there is one, has somehow been compelled, even if the accused has been clearly warned of his right to remain silent. Common sense informs us to the contrary." Miranda, supra, 384 U. S., at 533-534 (White, J., dissenting).
Justice White's common sense is supported by the facts. Judge Henry Friendly's public response to Miranda underscored the practical soundness of Justice White's hypothesis. "[T]he books are full of instances, of which the Court must have been well aware through petition for certiorari, where it is evident that in-custody interrogation did not represent the exercise of compulsion." H. Friendly, Benchmarks 272-273 (1967). Next, Judge Friendly lists four then-recent cases in which there was no question that the custodial interrogation produced a voluntary confession. See id., at 273, nn. 33-36 (citing United States v. Cone, 354 F. 2d 119 (CA2 1965); United States v. Indiviglio, 352 F. 2d 276 (CA2 1965); Evalt v. United States, 359 F. 2d 53 (CA9 1966); United States v. D'Allesandro, 361 F. 2d 694, 698 (CA2 1966)). In the years since Miranda, this Court has often found confessions to be voluntary even though they were taken contrary to the Miranda procedures. See, e.g., Elstad, supra, 470 U. S., at 312; Oregon v. Hass, 420 U. S. 714, 722 (1975); Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U. S. 433, 449 (1974); Harris v. New York, 401 U. S. 222, 224 (1971). The District Court implicitly found that in the present case. See supra, at 2. "One could go on endlessly; there are countless instances where a man apprehended with clear evidence of crime on his person or identified by witnesses will respond without the slightest pressure if obstacles are not artificially put in his way." Friendly, supra, at 273. There must be more to Miranda than any compulsion inherent in custodial interrogations.
The policy that ties Miranda's many strands together is dissatisfaction with administering the voluntariness standard. See Gardner, Section 1983 Actions under Miranda: A Critical View of the Right to Avoid Interrogation, 30 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 1277, 1281-1282 (1993). This explains Miranda's focus on custody. A station house can be very difficult for judicial scrutiny to penetrate. The Miranda rule finesses the problems with custody by overprotecting the Fifth Amendment privilege. Thus, "Miranda's core virtue was affording police and courts clear guidance on the manner in which to conduct a custodial investigation." Withrow v. Williams, 507 U. S. 680, 694 (1993) (emphasis added; internal quotations omitted). See also California v. Prysock, 453 U. S. 355, 359 (1981) (per curiam) (Miranda "obviates the need for a case-by-case inquiry into the actual voluntariness of the admissions"); Fare v. Michael C., 442 U. S. 707, 718 (1979). So long as Miranda's i's are dotted and t's crossed, courts have much less need to undertake the potentially messy task of penetrating the interrogation room and utilizing the voluntariness test. Cf. Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U. S. 420, 433, n. 20 (1984) (cases of colorable argument of compulsion when Miranda rule is followed are "rare").
The Miranda rule achieves this goal through a detailed code of interrogation procedure. See Miranda, supra, 384 U. S., at 504 (Harlan, J., dissenting); Friendly, supra, at 267-268 (Miranda as legislation); 3 J. Wigmore, Evidence §826a, p. 383 (Chadbourn rev. 1970) (Miranda as "new 'code' "). The code is sufficiently complex that it must be interpreted by this Court. Compare Michigan v. Mosley, 423 U. S. 96, 102 (1975) (avoiding a literal interpretation of Miranda that would lead to an absurd result), with Public Citizen v. Department of Justice, 491 U. S. 440, 454 (1989); Armstrong Paint & Varnish Works v. Nu-Enamel Corp., 305 U. S. 315, 332-333 (1938) (statutory canon of avoiding literal interpretation that would lead to absurd results). Miranda's code operates as a rule of evidence, an exclusionary rule. See Elstad, supra, 470 U. S., at 306 ("The Miranda exclusionary rule"). This rule of evidence is not a constitutional right, but, as this Court has often held, a prophylactic rule that overprotects the Fifth Amendment privilege to advance this Court's policies through its constitutional common law function.
Because Miranda is a rule of evidence that sweeps more broadly than the Fifth Amendment privilege, it creates no constitutional right. This is demonstrated by the many limits this Court has placed on Miranda. In Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U. S. 719, 721 (1966), this Court declined to apply Miranda retroactively. It labeled Miranda's procedures as "safeguards." Id., at 730. Retroactively applying Miranda "would require the retrial or release of numerous prisoners found guilty by trustworthy evidence in conformity with previously announced constitutional standards." Id., at 731 (emphasis added). If the act of taking a confession contrary to Miranda were truly unconstitutional, i.e., if those confessions were truly compelled, then the evidence would be suspect and the case for retroactivity would have been much stronger. See Michigan v. Payne, 412 U. S. 47, 54 (1973).
The next chink in Miranda's armor was found in Harris, supra, 401 U. S., at 226, which held that voluntary statements taken contrary to Miranda can be used to impeach the defendant's testimony. The deterrent of Miranda's exclusionary rule was satisfied by excluding the evidence from the State's case-in-chief. Id., at 225. By contrast, statements that are in fact unconstitutionally compelled cannot be admitted for impeachment. See Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385, 397-398 (1978). Compelled statements are not the same as merely un-Mirandized statements. See New Jersey v. Portash, 440 U. S. 450, 459 (1979). Application of Miranda permits balancing because it involves no actual constitutional violation, while use of actually compelled statements is constitutionally prohibited, permitting no balancing. See infra, at 25.
The cases which nail down the nonconstitutional status of Miranda are the "fruit of the poisonous tree" cases: Michigan v. Tucker, supra, and Oregon v. Elstad, supra. Tucker involved a statement taken with advisements and a waiver but without notice that a lawyer would be provided without charge if the suspect could not afford one. See 417 U. S., at 436. The statement itself was suppressed, but the testimony of a witness revealed by the statement was admitted. Id., at 436-437. The questioning was before Miranda, but the trial was afterward, and hence Miranda applied. Id., at 435.
Tucker's argument was that the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine developed in Fourth Amendment cases required exclusion of the "fruit." The Tucker Court rejected the argument based squarely on the nonconstitutional status of Miranda.
"This Court has also said, in Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471 (1963), that the 'fruits' of police conduct which actually infringed a defendant's Fourth Amendment rights must be suppressed. But we have already concluded that the police conduct at issue here did not abridge respondent's constitutional privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, but departed only from the prophylactic standards later laid down by this Court in Miranda to safeguard that privilege. Thus . . . there is no controlling precedent . . . to guide us." Id., at 445-446 (footnote omitted; emphasis added).
While the Tucker Court arguably might have distinguished Wong Sun on some other ground, it actually distinguished that case on the constitutional versus nonconstitutional status of rules violated. See also id., at 444. This is the ratio decidendi of the case.
Oregon v. Elstad, supra, reiterates this holding. That case involved a claim that a properly warned statement of the defendant himself was "tainted" by a prior, unwarned statement, again relying on Wong Sun. See Elstad, supra, 470 U. S., at 302-303. The Court noted that Elstad's Wong Sun argument "assumes the existence of a constitutional violation." Id., at 305. That assumption was incorrect. The Elstad Court reaffirmed Tucker's holding that Wong Sun was not controlling because "there was no actual infringement of the suspect's constitutional rights . . . ." Id., at 308.
In dissent, Justice Stevens made precisely the argument that the government and the defendant make in the present case, i.e., that the authority of the Court to impose the Miranda rule on the states necessarily implies that the rule is constitutionally required. Id., at 370-371. The Elstad Court rejected that argument. See id., at 306-307, n. 1 (majority opinion); cf. id., at 370, n. 15 (Stevens, J., dissenting). The Court reaffirmed that "a simple failure to administer Miranda warnings is not in itself a violation of the Fifth Amendment." Id., at 306, n. 1. Miranda is a nonconstitutional rule of evidence. See supra, at 6.
Against the square holdings of Tucker and Elstad, where the nonconstitutional status of Miranda was the ratio decidendi of the case, the government submits obiter dicta in cases where the status made no difference. See Brief for the United States 24-25. Illinois v. Perkins, 496 U. S. 292, 296 (1990) held that the inherent compulsion in Miranda did not extend to the undercover agent situation, and hence the rule did not extend there. Butler v. McKellar, 494 U. S. 407, 411 (1990) merely described the holding of an earlier case. Such a description is dictum. See Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U. S. 408, 412 (1997). Michigan v. Jackson, 475 U. S. 625, 629-630 (1986) involved the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Whether the Miranda rule was itself required by the Fifth Amendment was not before the Court. Moran v. Burbine, supra, 475 U. S., at 419, involved a lower court holding that failure to inform an arrestee that an attorney had called fatally tainted an otherwise valid waiver of the self-incrimination privilege. This Court reversed because such a rule "would contribute to the protection of the Fifth Amendment privilege only incidentally, if at all." Id., at 427. That holding and the reason for it did not depend on the status of Miranda as constitutional versus prophylactic. The tangential reference to "our interpretation of the Federal Constitution," ibid., cannot be understood to overrule the square holding of Elstad, decided only a year earlier and authored by the same Justice, or Tucker, a decision it quotes on this very point. See id., at 424-425 (quoting Quarles quoting Tucker). Finally, Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U. S. 477, 481 (1981) merely makes another passing reference to the holding of an earlier case, which is dictum. Edwards reconfirmed the holdings of earlier cases, see id., at 485, and the constitutional status of the rules was not in issue.
The government relies on a statement from Withrow v. Williams, supra, that "[p]rophylactic though it may be, in protecting a defendant's Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, Miranda safeguards a fundamental trial right," 507 U. S., at 691 (emphasis and internal quotation marks omitted). This did not establish Miranda as a constitutional right. On the contrary, the decision is expressly premised on the assumption "that Miranda's safeguards are not constitutional in character . . . ." Id., at 690.(2) The government is incorrect when it attempts to separate Miranda's status as a prophylactic rule from its nonconstitutional status. See Brief for the United States 24-25. "Like all prophylactic rules, the Miranda rule 'overprotects' the value at stake." Duckworth v. Eagan, 492 U. S. 195, 209 (1989) (O'Connor, J., concurring). Miranda is prophylactic because it "sweeps more broadly than the Fifth Amendment itself" "and may be triggered even in the absence of a Fifth Amendment violation." Elstad, supra, 470 U. S., at 306. Since its rule goes beyond what the Fifth Amendment requires, the Miranda prophylactic logically must be extraconstitutional.
The nonconstitutional status of Miranda is inescapable. The policy reasons that form its rationale, its extraconstitutional scope, and the many limits this Court has placed on the initial Miranda ruling all point to a decision that involves something other than a constitutional right. The Miranda Court chose to displace analysis of the actual voluntariness of the custodial confession with a prophylactic bright-line rule that purported to keep courts from having to penetrate the interrogation room in any great depth. Miranda therefore is best explained as an exercise of this Court's constitutional common law function, which can be revised by Congress.
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2. The unequivocal holding of Withrow, that diminished review on habeas does not follow from nonconstitutional status, ibid., demolishes the
argument that constitutional status may be inferred from cognizability on habeas. See Brief for the United States 24. The argument that the word
"laws" in 28 U. S. C. §2254(a) can only refer to statutes, not common law, is patently meritless in any event. The opposite proposition had been
established in one of the great cases of American jurisprudence a mere ten years before Congress enacted §2254. See Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304
U. S. 64, 72-73 (1938). Congress was surely aware of that construction.