The Arizona v. Fulminante Case

First, Miranda v. Arizona all started on March 2, 1963, when an 18-year-old Phoenix woman told police that she had been kidnapped, taken to a part of desert land in Arizona, and was raped. She was given a polygraph test, but the results were inadequate. While tracking the license plate number, they came upon a vehicle, similar to that of the women’s attacker, linking them to a man named Ernesto Miranda, who was booked for being a peeping tom. When they put a police line-up for the women to pick out Ernesto, she couldn’t identify, but he was still questioned by police. Police began to interrogate Mr. Miranda and never read him his rights, before interrogation. The interrogation lasted two- hours, in which Miranda supposedly admitted to committing the crimes, and the police had an audio recording of the entire interview. Ernesto had never finished ninth grade and had a history of mental uncertainty.

Wrongful convictions are common in the court-system. In fact, wrongful convictions are not the rare events that you see or hear on televisions shows, but are very common. They stem from some sort of systematic defect that lead to wrongful convictions such as, eyewitness misidentification testimony, unvalidated or improper forensic science, false confessions and incriminating statements, DNA lab errors, false confessions, and informants (2014). Bringing awareness to all these systematic defects, which result in wrongful, is important because it will better adjust the system to avoid making the same mistakes with future cases. However, false confession is not a systematic defect. It does not occur because files were misplaced or a lab technician put one too many drops. False confessions occur because of some of psychological attempt to protect oneself and their family. Thus, the courts responsibility should be to reduce these false confessions.

Miranda v. Arizona was a case where Ernesto Miranda was accused of raping a women. At the time of his arrest he did not know his rights and that he had the right to remain silent and get a lawyer. He confessed orally and in a written form, but he never knew his

In the case of Lobato v. the State of Nevada, it is hard to see how someone could be convicted with evidence that does not make very much sense at all. My groups responsibility was to cover the prosecution side and five pieces of evidence of the case using the information from the news article by Joshua Longobardy titled, “Kirsten Blaise Lobato is accused in a gruesome slaying. Did she do it?”. Upon the detective arriving to the scene of the crime, they removed the debris that covered the body from complete view. This debris included a full sheet of cardboard with a bloody footprint on it and a clear plastic bag wrapped around the groin region. Once this was removed it was discovered that the penis had been sliced off from the base, as well as six of his teeth were found near his body. After several days they were able to identify the man as Duran Bailey, a 44-year-old black male. Another piece of evidence recovered at first with Baileys personal belongings was a piece of chewed gum. When the detectives called Lobato in for questioning, she gave them a statement of how she pulled a knife on a man who tried to attack her. This statement however was for a completely different altercation than what the police were questioning for. Other evidence that came into question were the tire impressions near the entrance of the enclosure, fingerprints lifted from the dumpster, and a foreign piece of hair on Baileys groin region. The argument being made from

In 1976, the United States Supreme Court, in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262 (1976), and Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U.S. 242 (1976) held that the discretion to impose the death sentence for specific crimes was to be bi-furcated into two separate trials. The first to determine guilt or innocence; the second to determine the aggravating and mitigating factors. The State of Oceana adopted the findings of the U.S. Supreme Court in People v. Wende, 600 P. 2d 1071 (Cal: Supreme Court 1979) In

Withholding information at trial is also an illegal practice that is seen in these two cases. In McMillian’s case, the state makes deals to shorten prisoners’ sentences if they testify against McMillian. In the Sullivan trial, the “police [collects] seminal fluid and blood, but the state [chooses] not to present it in court and then [destroys] it before it [can] be tested by the defense” (Stevenson 257). The similarities between the cases are what link them together.

The issues the court must decide are whether withholding Miranda Warnings to obtain a confession is considered admissible in court. In the case of Missouri v. Seibert, Ms. Seibert was questioned before her

Her attorney argued that she should never have been brought to trial because the material evidence resulted from an illegal, warrant less search. Because the search was unlawful, he maintained that the evidence was illegally obtained and must also be excluded. In its ruling, the Supreme Court of Ohio recognized that ?a reasonable argument? could be made that the conviction should be reversed ?because the ?methods? employed to obtain the evidence?were such as to offend a sense of justice.? But the court also stated that the materials were admissible evidence. The Court explained its ruling by differentiating between evidence that was peacefully seized from an inanimate object, such as a trunk, rather than forcibly seized from an individual. Based on this decision, Mapp's appeal was denied and her conviction was upheld.

``In criminal law, confession evidence is a prosecutor’s most potent weapon’’ (Kassin, 1997)—“the ‘queen of proofs’ in the law” (Brooks, 2000). Regardless of when in the legal process they occur, statements of confession often provide the most incriminating form of evidence and have been shown to significantly increase the rate of conviction. Legal scholars even argue that a defendant’s confession may be the sole piece of evidence considered during a trial and often guides jurors’ perception of the case (McCormick, 1972). The admission of a false confession can be the deciding point between a suspect’s freedom and their death sentence. To this end, research and analysis of the false confessions-filled Norfolk Four case reveals the

A landmark case in United States Law and the basis for the exercise of judicial review in the United States,

At issue in this case is whether Mr. Love was fully aware of his rights under the Fifth Amendment. The court must decide if he had the mental facilities to make an intelligent and informed decision in making a statement without an attorney present. If he did not “knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily” waive his Constitutional rights it could invalidate his confession. (State v. Echols, 382 S.W.3d 266, 287 (Tenn. 2012))

In Hurst v. Arizona, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the opinion of the majority. In this case, Timothy Hurst was charged with killing Cynthia Harrison. Delivering the decision of the majority, the bench in an 8-1 ruling, applied the rule established in Ring v. Arizona of 2002; the Sixth Amendment requires a jury or a judge to establish aggravating factors necessary to support a death sentence for a capital offense. A Florida jury had previously sentenced him to death and the judge had upheld the recommended sentence by the jury, which was also upheld by the Florida Supreme Court. The United States Supreme Court held that the State’s capital punishment scheme violated the Sixth Amendment as established in Ring v. Arizona rendering it unconstitutional.

A muddy shoe print was use to link an unnamed man who was on the run from the police to his vehicle which was carrying 3 ½ pounds of marijuana. Police detective Chad Larner attempted to pull over this man in a Mazda for speeding but he would not stop. The man was eventually able to lose Larner. He then parked the car, got out and tried to hide. The police later found the car and found the man two blocks away. He attempted to bribe a young woman to walk with him by saying that he would give her $40. The woman told the police that he told her that he was in a police chase in which he was not the driver and he was trying to hide from the police. When the police searched the car they found four bags of the 3 ½ pounds of marijuana. The police also

In 1963 Brady and Boblit (his companion) were prosecuted for murder and were tried separately. In his extrajudicial statement Boblit confessed to committing the murder and stated that he has acted alone. During Brady’s trial, however, the prosecution had withheld Boblit’s written statement of his confession to acting alone. Due to the lack of information Brady confessed that he had been involved in the murder but that Boblit was the one that actually committed the killing. Because of the nature of both Boblit’s and Brady’s confessions they were both found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to death. Brady’s counsel was given all the extrajudicial statements except the one containing Boblit’s confession of committing the act of murder alone. Brady then appealed claiming that having Boblit’s confession withheld from his counsel was a direct violation of his right to due process of law. Boblit’s counsel claimed that if Brady and his attorneys had been made aware of the confession they would have been able to present it to the jury and would most likely not received such a harsh

In criminal trials, a defendant’s confession often delivers evidence that is influential when it is the primary source of the prosecutor’s evidence. When a suspect is brought into police custody to obtain a confession or a statement, police officers are required to read the Miranda warning if they believe the confession will be used to convict the suspect. The constitutional basis for the Miranda warning and the conditions for a voluntary waiver of the Miranda rights were announced by the U.S. Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona.