Essay Sample about Ernesto Arturo Miranda

Ernesto Arturo Miranda was a man born on March 9, 1941, in Mesa, Arizona. In Miranda’s early life, he lost his mom when he was about six years old, which is believed to be the cause of Miranda’s misbehavior during his youth. Miranda and his father did not get along very well, so he tended to keep a very steady distance between himself and the rest of his family. When Miranda was in 8th grade, he committed his first crime of felony burglary in which he was sentenced to probation and dropped out of school shortly after that. About a year or so after the convicted burglary, he was sent to the reform school, Arizona State Industrial School for Boys. In the year 1956, he was once again caught up with the law and returned to the school, only about a month after being released. At age 17, when Miranda was finally released from his second time in ASISB, he picked up and moved to Los Angles, California where not even three months of his arrival in the new city, he was arrested on suspicion of armed robbery and sex offenses,

The Miranda vs. Arizona case is rooted from a woman named Lois Ann Jameson. She was kidnapped, robbed, and raped by Miranda and then dropped off about four blocks from where her home was. Lois survived the attack and was taken, by the police, to the hospital for treatment in order to recover from her attack. The description of Miranda that Lois gave to the police was not consistent enough to completely go off of exactly what she was saying, nor did she give enough information. When Lois’s brother was driving her to the bus station so she can get to work safely, he had seen the car that Lois mentioned her attacker driving and quickly reported it to the police. When Miranda was brought in for questioning, he was one of four people that were suspects of Lois’s attack. In the interrogation room, Miranda actually identified Lois as the victim by saying: “That’s the girl”. Miranda had actually mentioned that he had ‘known’ his victim before the attack because he would see her at the bus stop very often, almost, if not every day. The detectives’ accounts for what rights they did and didn’t tell Miranda while in the interrogation room are a little hazy but, by the end of the two hours that Miranda was in there, he came out with a written and signed confession of his crimes.

In this case, the fifth amendment is what was violated for Miranda. He was not informed of the fact that he could be given a lawyer if he could not afford one and he was not informed that he does not have to self incriminate himself. This is why he and his team appealed his sentencing of 20 - 30 years in prison. The court decided that they would go through a retrial During the retrial, they would not include the information of Miranda incriminating himself as any piece of evidence in the court case. With this being said, Miranda was still found guilty and sentenced to 20 - 30 years in prison. There is now a rule set in place that it is mandatory to read what is called ‘The Miranda Rights’ named after the rights that were not given to Miranda during his case.