Missing out on Miranda: Investigating Miranda comprehension and waiver decisions in adult inpatients.

Internationally, millions of arrests occur each year, but very little is known about how suspects are informed regarding their rights as the accused and whether these rights are accurately understood. Concerns regarding accurate comprehension are further heightened for suspects with severe mental disorders (SMDs). In the United States alone, it is estimated ≥300,000 mentally disordered suspects are arrested annually and Mirandized (i.e., given American warnings regarding the rights of the accused). Despite this widespread prevalence, only two published studies have specifically targeted impaired Miranda comprehension for persons with SMDs, and none has focused directly on Miranda reasoning and waiver decisions. The current study examined both Miranda comprehension and reasoning for 85 adult inpatients recruited from a private psychiatric hospital with three major findings. First, inpatients extremely poor Miranda recall, averaging only 21.3% of the total warning. Second, none appeared to exhibit adequate abilities for Miranda reasoning. Third, an initial waiver of rights always led to a confession within several minutes of questioning. These findings and methodological issues are discussed for the United States as well as other countries.

The MRCI with juvenile detainees: optimizing performance or emphasizing ecological validity?

The Miranda Rights Comprehension Instruments (MRCI) are intended to be administered to legally involved youths in a setting free from distractions and stressors with the explicit goal of assessing the examinee's best understanding. However, marked disparities have been observed between juveniles' MRCI performance and their unassisted recall of a representative Miranda warning. We hypothesized that youths' very strong MRCI performance might be partially due to prompts and clarifications used whenever incomplete or ambiguous answers are provided. In this archival study, we systematically re-scored three MRCI instruments from 231 legally involved youths to evaluate their original responses (i.e., non-queried scoring). This approach is viewed as more ecologically valid because actual Miranda warnings are typically provided in a routine manner without assistance following each Miranda component. For the large majority of legally involved juveniles, only small differences were noted between standard and non-queried scoring. However, some dramatic decrements were observed, especially on the Comprehension of Miranda Rights-II (CMR-II). More specifically, 15.7% of CMR-II percentiles dropped precipitously by 60% or more, when using the non-queried scores. The results are discussed within the context of optimized performances versus ecological validity as applied to Miranda evaluations.

One American Perspective on the Rights of Accused: An Initial Survey of Miranda Rights in a Broader Context.

In the wake of countless police dramas, commonly held misperceptions endure that the American public knows both Miranda warnings and concomitant rights. Past research has tested public knowledge of Miranda per se, without evaluating additional misconceptions. The current investigation utilizes the European Union's much more all-encompassing safeguards, as delineated in the EU's 2012 Directive and Letter of Rights. Besides knowledge of Miranda, the advisability of these enhanced rights and protections was also assessed. In order to obtain a cross-section of the community, 619 participants were recruited from actual jury pools. Interestingly, they believed that Miranda afforded arrestees many more protections than it actually does. In general, nearly all (>90%) agreed that the accused should be given accurate information (e.g., charges and alleged criminal acts) coupled with an absence of police deception. The potential implications of these findings are discussed as they relate to police practices and due process. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.