At approximately 8:30 p.m. on November 27, 1962, a young woman left the First National Bank of Arizona, after attending night classes. A male suspect robbed the woman of $8 at knife-point, after forcing his way into her car. Four months later, the same suspect abducted an 18-year-old girl at knife-point and, after tying her hands and feet, drove to a secluded area of the desert and raped her.

On March 13, 1963, police arrested 23-year-old Ernesto Arthur Miranda as a suspect in the two crimes. Miranda had a prior arrest record for armed robbery and a juvenile record for, among other things, attempted rape, assault, and burglary. Both victims viewed corporeal lineups and identified Miranda as their attacker. The police questioned Miranda, and he confessed to both crimes. He signed a confession to the rape, which included a typed paragraph explaining that the statement was made voluntarily without threats or promises of immunity, and that he had full knowledge of his rights and understood that the statement could be used against him.

In 1966, the Supreme Court reversed Miranda's conviction and ordered that the confession in the rape case be suppressed. The Court ruled that "an individual held for interrogation must be clearly informed that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and have the lawyer with him during interrogation...[that he has] the right to remain silent and that anything stated can be used in evidence against him...that if he is indigent a lawyer will be appointed to represent him." The Court reasoned that all custodial police interrogations are inherently coercive and could never result in a voluntary statement in the absence of a knowing, intelligent, and voluntary waiver of the rights enumerated in the Miranda warnings.

The Miranda decision was a departure from the established law in the area of police interrogation. Prior to Miranda, a confession would be suppressed only if a court determined it resulted from some actual coercion, threat, or promise. Under Miranda, the Supreme Court established an irrebuttable presumption that a statement is involuntary if it is taken during custodial interrogation without a waiver of the so-called Miranda warnings.

By the way, Miranda was retried -- without the confession -- and convicted. Paroled in 1972, he was killed in a bar fight. Ironically, his attacker was questioned and released. That crime was never solved.

OK. So what has happened in the meantime?

According to University of Utah law professor Paul G. Cassell, in a new study from the National Center for Policy Analysis...

The fraction of suspects questioned who confessed dropped from 49 percent to 14 percent in New York. In Pittsburgh, the confession rate fell from 48 percent to 29 percent. The best nationwide estimate is that confession rates fell by about 16 percent.

With fewer confessions, the police found it more difficult to solve crimes, so there were fewer convictions. Following the decision, the rates of violent crimes solved fell dramatically, from 60 percent or more to about 45 percent, where they have remained. Given that a confession is needed to get a conviction in about one of every four cases, a rough estimate is that there are 3.8 percent fewer convictions every year because of Miranda.

This means that each year there are 28,000 fewer convictions for violent crimes, 79,000 fewer for property crimes and 500,000 fewer for other crimes.

Coercive questioning methods had begun to decline in the 1930s and 1940s, says Cassell, and even the Court agreed that genuinely coerced confessions were rare at the time of Miranda. He concludes we should seek reasonable alternatives to the strictures of Miranda, such as a requirement that police officers videotape custodial interrogations, or that questioning take place before a magistrate.

The Miranda Decision--one more example of the law of unintended consequences, and yet another instance of a landmark Supreme Court decision based on a bad case.