krebscycle

The purpose of the Miranda warnings is to discourage police from coercing confessions or self-incriminatory statements from people in police custody. Let’s note two important facts:

1. The warning is far from completely effective. For example, the Central Park 5 were coerced into confessing rape and assault and spent many years in jail until someone else confessed the crime and DNA evidence backed him up. Poor people and particularly poor black and Latino people are routinely coerced into jail, Miranda warning or not.
2. The warning is not supposed to prevent the police from asking public safety questions. In the case of the Boston Marathon attack, the police want to question Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to find accomplices, other possible explosives and so on – they don’t need to get self-incriminatory statements from a man arrested after a spectacular chase and gun battle.

Miranda warnings are a process that is supposed to help protect a right. Some people get confused between the right and the process. They are not the same thing at all.