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The Structure and Goals of Miranda Evaluations

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Conducting Miranda Evaluations

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Abstract

This chapter adopts a “nuts-and-bolts,” highly practical approach to Miranda evaluations. Providing forensic services with an easily understood structure is vitally important, because even seasoned criminal attorneys may scarcely have considered Miranda issues, despite decades of practice. In light of widespread “professional neglect” by lawyers, psychologists and other mental health professionals are often placed in an informal educative role to legal professionals in the criminal justice system. When crafting referral questions, defense attorneys frequently need to overcome their own fundamental misconceptions, such as “everyone knows their Miranda rights.” Beyond referrals, the chapter outlines both core and applied issues, from accepting a Miranda case to conducting an assessment. Goals of Miranda consultations may go far beyond suppressing self-incriminating statements, potentially with a key role to play in plea bargaining as well as at trial.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The study used Grisso’s Miranda Instruments (GMI; Grisso 1998); its Miranda warning consists of only 63 words and omits the 5th component (ongoing legal rights).

  2. 2.

    Determinations of compromised Miranda abilities are based on the “totality of the circumstances,” which can includes dozens of case-specific factors. Because mock-crime research on Miranda abilities cannot be this exhaustive, we have adopted the more nuanced term, “likely-inadequate” to describe our key findings.

  3. 3.

    For clarification, “duty counsel” in this study refers to lawyers available by toll-free numbers in Canada. It is troubling, however, this phone number was omitted in 19.0% of the cases.

  4. 4.

    Retrieved on June 14, 2018 from https://www.uv.es/~friasnav/EffectSizeBecker.pdf

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA

    Richard Rogers

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Eric Y. Drogin

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Rogers, R., Drogin, E.Y. (2019). The Structure and Goals of Miranda Evaluations. In: Conducting Miranda Evaluations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13511-9_2

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