It's been said that the United States Supreme Court could never overturn Miranda v. Arizona because it's become such a fixture in American pop culture. From countless TV shows and movies, most of us could recite the so-called Miranda warnings by heart: "You have the right to remain silent, anything you say may be used against you in a court of law," etc.
When I took a bar review course many years ago, the instructor related how his mother - who knew almost nothing about criminal law or procedure - called him after hearing that Ernesto Miranda had been killed, and her comment was something along of the lines of "Isn't that awful, after all that good man did for the rest of us?" Of course, the truth is that Mr. Miranda may not have been a model citizen, but the point to our constitutional rights (in Miranda's case, the Fifth Amendment) isn't based on the guilt or innocence of the suspect.
And we should try to remember that in the Michael Brown case.
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