will be appearing on booktv. you can watch them on our website, booktv.org. >> working with our cable partners the c-span cities tour takes booktv on the road as we explore the history and literary life of american cities. this weekend on booktv on c-span2 a look at some of the places we visited this year and some of the authors we spoke to as we traveled the country. >> you have the right to remain silent. you have the right to a lawyer. if you don't have a lawyer one will be provided for you. everything you tell me today can be used against you in a court of law. did you understand that? they are called the miranda rights or the miranda warnings because the name of the case they came down from the states supreme court in 1966 was miranda versus arizona.

they are as fundamental and essential to justice today as almost anything ever created. they are a product of the fifth amendment to the u.s. constitution. that's where they came from, that's why we have been and that's what they stand for today. miranda lived here in mesa, arizona. he was born in mesa, arizona. he was a young man in his mid-20s at the time. he was suspected by the phoenix police department of being involved in the abduction, the robbery, and the kidnapping of three different women on three different occasions. all of those occasions happen in downtown phoenix. the pickup, for lack of a better word, was in downtown phoenix. some of the crimes took place out in the desert.

at the time that was thought to be the desert, it's now 20 street and bethany home. it's no longer the desert. it's a major part of central phoenix today. but that's how it started with being a suspect in those crimes. the police went to his home in mesa, arizona, two police officers, and they asked him if he would come down to the police station in central phoenix. they would drag them down. they wanted to talk to them about some criminal activity. he wasn't sure what at the time. he agreed to do that. so they brought it down here and interviewed him, or interrogated him, depends on your perspecti perspective. here in the building we are in today. but the police had no direct evidence of any kind. they had no physical evidence. they had no eyewitness identification. they had no admissions. he was a suspect but they had

nothing upon which to base a formal arrest or to charge him. but they asked him for an interview and he voluntarily read that interview. he was not warned of the consequences of this interview, because the law did not require that in 1963. so during the course of talking to him, the police officer that was in charge of the case and was the primary interrogator or interviewer at the time, his name was carol cooney. he was then a police detective. he stayed with the police department and became a captain. he is alive and well today, still lives here in phoenix. and during the course of the interview, miranda denied any connection to any of these three cases that the phoenix police department was investigating. he said he was not involved,

didn't abduct anybody, didn't rape anybody, didn't rob anybody. that was as clear statement. so they asked him, detective cooley, asked him if he would agree to appear in a lineup. and they would bring an one of the victims or two of the victims, it wasn't quite clear, and if he is telling the truth then they will not be able to identify. they had the other evidence and the open with him about that. they had no other evidence. so they asked him if he would agree to be in the lineup, a photo, not a photo lineup, and actual lineup. that also took place in this building, and he agreed. they had a room for that. they brought into a victims wee able to come in on short notice. phoenix was a very small place

in those days. and so the two women came in and neither of them, neither of the two women could identify him with certainty. one of the two women said that she thought it might be the man with, wearing poster number one. they were all identified as one, two, three and four only in this line of room, but she wasn't sure. the other woman couldn't pick one of the four, but agreed it might be number one but there was no positive identification. and so on the basis of that, detective cooley went back into the interview room where miranda was waiting, and miranda asked detective cooley the question, did they pick me out? how did i do? some question to that effect. this interview was not tape-recorded or video recorded. this was 1963. and detective cooley said, i'm

sorry, or words to that effect, they nailed you. i think the best thing for you is to just tell me what happened. we will see what we can do to help you. and miranda did. he confessed to all of them. he described in some detail, although there's no recording of that, he described in some detail. and detective cooley said, which was good police procedure then and now, well, i'd like you to write this out in your own hand and i ask you to sign it after you've written it out and after i read it. so miranda wrote one page,, confession, in his own handwriting and gave it to detective cooley. and coolly ready is it all right, if this is the truth, if this is your statement, signed

down at the bottom. and there is a reference in that written statement that this statement can be used in court against you. that's what the four elements of the miranda warnings. so that part is there. he then signed it and it became exhibit one. the only exhibit in his trial. this is the sixth floor of the old maricopa county superior courthouse. it still formed as a superior court. on the first floor of this building, this is where miranda was tried. we are now on the sixth floor. this is the jail part turkey was kept here -. he was kept her in this jail until his trumpet after trial he was moved to a temper institution and then he went to the state penitentiary.

the physical presence is important because the interview happened here. he was jailed here. he was captured during the trial. there were two separate trials. there were three cases, three women involved. he admitted in conversation with detective cooley to all three cases. but in only one of the cases was asked to write out the statement. and that was in the rate of one of the three women. and it was clear to a jury of making an assumption here, that his confession is a true voluntary confession. he said it was. he didn't take the stand in either case, which is standard process in those kinds of cases. so he was quickly convicted by two different juries in two different cases, one day apart. then went into the system in

1963, and that led to the appellate process which began after the actual trials. his lawyer on the trial was a man named alvin more. alvin more of the time in 1963 was a 73-year-old lawyer here in phoenix. during that trial, during the rape case, alvin moore objected to the admissibility of the written confession, and its objection was because he didn't have a lawyer before he gave that statement. alvin moore statement to the trial judge, judge mcfate, was i object because there was no lawyer present at the time he gave that and no one told him that he didn't have to give it, or words to that effect in the trial record. so when the case with to the arizona supreme court, it went

up there in 1965, that was the record. there was an objection made by a lawyer on the defendants behalf that his confession should not have been admitted and shown to the jury because he didn't have a lawyer at the time he gave it. so when the case went to the arizona supreme court they came down with an opinion in 1965, again they rejected the argument by alvin moore that the confession should not be admitted because he didn't have a lawyer. the arizona supreme court said that's not required under american law. the supreme court has not said that i confession is inadmissible if you don't have a lawyer. what the court has said two years prior in a case called acevedo versus the united states, the court has said that if the suspect asks for a lawyer at any time before or during interrogation, then you have to

give them one right in. in this case miranda had not asked for a lawyer. so that is the issue that the supreme court took up in 1966. so in the briefing stage, prior to oral argument in the miranda case, all of the briefs focus on that question, who has to give these warnings, or are warnings required course if they are required who has to give them and who do they have to give into? just knowledgeable people or everybody? so that was the setting for this case. and the briefs and all four cases focused on the sixth amendment, which is the right to counsel. so when the oral argument is held in february of 1966 in the miranda case, there were two

lawyers principally involved in the case, john frank wrote the brief and john flynn argued the case. they were both in the same law firm, a phoenix firm, still here. and in his argument to the court, the supreme court in february 1966, john flynn was asked a question by justice stuart during the argument. justice stewart's question was something like this, these are not exact words but they are close, he said so, your position is that there's a point in time with this interrogation becomes almost confrontational, because the police officers digging for a confession and the suspect is avoiding that, which is the case in all of these cases, so what is your view when this confrontation occurs?

does the sixth amendment required at that point that a lawyer be appointed when there's a conversation going on? and mr. flynn's said, mr. justice, the issue here is whether the man or the defendant has a right to remain silent. the only person that can tell him that is a lawyer. and so the fifth amendment right against self-incrimination, the sixth amendment right to counsel connected here is that juncture, that intersection. somebody has to tell that suspect before he or she confesses and that's where the sixth amendment comes in. the court after that argument fashion an opinion that ultimately came down based on the fifth amendment and tangentially tied to the sixth amendment. so the primary issue of the

miranda opinion came down is america's right to remain silent. that's the first warning. you have a right to remain silent. the language came from chief justice earl warren. he wrote the opinion, the majority opinion. it was a split opinion, by fourr decision. the reaction to the decision was on the law enforcement community very negative -- five-four. and very reluctant and very suspecting. so the law enforcement community said it's not our job to get people we arrest information about their legal rights. that ought to come from the lawyer. it's not our job to get them lawyer. what you're going to do by this decision is the end result will be a lot of people will not be charged with crimes that they committed when they should be charged with crimes that they committed.

and the reason we can't charge is because they didn't admit it. so the admission of those crimes is a very important element of all law enforcement, understandably so. so the reaction was negative, largely. "time" magazine and "newsweek" and other magazines and other newspapers, there was an awful lot of coverage about this in 1966. .. we will examine cases that involve the miranda warning.

but quit telling us that it's a rules prophylactic rules case. it's a constitutional decision of the court to. what makes it interesting is that opinion was written by chief justice rehnquist. he was at the time of the miranda decision a lawyer in the case. history repeats itself in many ways. miranda was from here. it's then lawyer rehnquist and all of that gets transferred to the year 2000 and becomes a constitutional decision. something interesting happened in 2000 when the case went up. if you begin with that case and read the brief , the briefs in supreme court cases , they invite a class of people for lack of a better word.

they're called anarchists she arrived or amicus briefs, friends of the court. they're not party to the case but they're interested in the issue so they invite peopleto write briefs , they're called amicus briefs and a good many of those briefs were filed in the case by g of police associations, other law enforcement agencies are going for miranda. no longer believing miranda is a bad thing. no longer believing it harms law enforcement. believing what the reality has become and the reality is that if the police officer does his or her job, and gives those miranda warnings and does them in a proper way, recording, video recording, written documentation in some form that's reliable, then what happened in the trial court system is that many, i think

most, it may not be 100 percent but it's a high percentage. if the profession is miranda compliant , then the judge fairly routinely omits it from evidence because it is miranda compliant, it's become a good way for a good cop to get a good confession in evidence. use the miranda document. document it. say it in writing. get the suspect to sign it. do it recorded, tape recorded. audio recorded. anything so there's some evidentiary basis for it so that's become a reality today . and as a consequence, lawyers and judges, judges in the middle and lawyers on both sides, prosecutors and defense lawyers don't argue much anymore about the miranda doctrines.

what they argue about is were the miranda rights waived or not. that's the new question du jour, has been for a long time so that's what's happening is we now argue about the waiver, not weather. and we now argue about consequence in ways that i think are central to the due process of law. >> encore presentation of some of the stops along the c-span city tour continues as we take you to san jose california. >> so many people come to california because they see it as a union. and of course television hasn't helped cause ask anybody, particularly east of the rockies and they all think all people in california drive