What You Should Know About All Things Miranda

https://youtu.be/avv3o9dkYWQ

Video Transcribed:  Oklahoma Attorney Isaiah Brydie with Urban Legal, coming at you with another video. This video is going to be all about Miranda, Miranda warnings, your Miranda rights and custodial interrogations. So we’ve all heard about Miranda rights and all that stuff. You have the right to remain silent, anything… you say can be used against you in a court of law, all that jazz. We’ve all heard about that.

But what does all that information actually mean? Well, your Miranda rights are actually your Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights, basically boiled and distilled down to a couple sentences explaining those rights that you have under the US Constitution.So the question is, when do you actually get those rights? So you don’t just have those rights at the outset of a police encounter. If the police are simply questioning you, or you are just being detained, you actually do not have your Miranda rights and you actually cannot invoke them yet. Once you are arrested under a custodial arrest… that’s when you are able to invoke your Miranda rights.

So what is a custodial arrest? A custodial arrest is when you are arrested and the police start asking you questions. As a general matter, they have to explain to you, your Miranda rights and warnings.If the police do not explain your Miranda rights upon you being arrested and upon you being questioned, then they have violated your Miranda rights. And probably more likely than not, what you say to them can be excluded from evidence at a trial.

So when exactly would you not receive your Miranda rights? So the big thing here is, of course, when you’re just being detained, you’re not under arrest, and they’re just questioning you and you’re being detained. There may be some questions when you are detained that you have a right not to answer to. It really just depends on the facts in the situation of that instance.It’s usually best to err on the side of cooperating with the police because you don’t want to intensify or make the encounter more serious than what it has to be.

All right, so err on the side of cooperation. If you ever fight over your rights, and things like that, it’s not necessarily the time, when you’re pulled over or when you’re being stopped by the police, to have that fight. I would say, make sure you address the fact that, hey, what you’re doing may not be constitutional or anything like that.But you take up that fight in court. You don’t take up that fight with the actual police officer, even though it’s very important to hold them to account and it’s very important to make sure that they follow the Constitution. You’re going to win that fight, not with that person. You’re going to win that fight in the courts.

So another instance where you don’t have Miranda rights is when the police simply ask you to come down and answer some questions at the station. Now, it could be viewed as an interrogation from the outside looking in. But the fact that you consented to come down and answer those questions and you’re not technically in custody, goes to you not being in custody and not having your Miranda rights as an option that you can invoke.

So yeah, that’s the main thing of Miranda rights, and when they can be invoked and when they can’t be invoked. So going into, what are Miranda rights you have? So you have the right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment, so when the police are questioning you, you tell them, “I want to invoke my Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. I want to invoke my Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions.” You have that right.Now, that doesn’t mean that they have to stop talking to you. They can still talk, and they can still ask you questions and say whatever.

Usually what they’ll try to do is, they’ll try to ask you questions and stuff that can get a flamboyant response out of you. But they can still ask you questions, you just have the right not to answer those questions.You have a right to have an attorney, so you got to think of this as a shield to the questions that the detective or the police officer is asking you. You have the right to attorney. Once you invoke that right, you say, “I have a right to an attorney. I want to have an attorney present. It’s in order to answer any questions.” That’s a shield that pops up, and they cannot ask you any questions until your attorney arrives.

Think of it like that. It’s a shield, it stops all questioning any further, and they have to wait until your attorney arrives in order to ask you questions.Now the next thing is, is that you can end an interrogation once you have your Miranda rights and you are in custody. So what does ending an interrogation looks like? They’re asking you all these questions and you’re like, “Yeah, you know what? I don’t want to answer these questions. I want to stop this interrogation right now.” So the police officers have to stop the interrogations with the shield that comes up.

A lot like your right to an attorney in order to answer question, it’s a shield in that same sense. However, this shield comes down after a reasonable amount of time passes, then they can come back in and they can start asking you questions again. So you’re getting interrogated and you say, “I want to stop the interrogation.” All right, the shield has popped up, but a hour or so, 30 minutes, 45 minutes pass, that shield starts to come down and the police may be able to come in and start up the questioning again.

And you can always, of course, consent to their questioning and let them know everything that they want to know. As a general matter, whenever you are in custody and the police are asking you questions, you need to have an attorney present, you should have an attorney present. So yeah, that’s your Miranda rights in total. If you guys have any questions or comments, be sure to reach out at the email that you see, or the phone number.