NCJ Number
208934
Date Published
2002
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This paper offers a book review of Professor Welsh White’s book entitled, Miranda’s Waning Protections: Police Interrogation Practices after Dickerson.
Abstract
Professor White, a leading legal scholar on police interrogation, wrote a 230-page book on the legal doctrine of confessions, police interrogation practices, and the problem of finding constitutional balance between the state’s need to prosecute and the need to protect suspects’ rights. The goal of the book was to advance a policy argument for courts to change how they treat confessions. Professor White’s main thesis is that a proper balance has not been struck between protecting the interests of law enforcement and safeguarding the constitutional rights of suspects. White offers suggestions for changes in police interrogation practices based on due process which should please both conservative and liberal jurists. In order to reach these suggestions and conclusions, White takes his readers for a tour of interrogation practice and confessions law in the 20th century. The author of the book review offers an analysis of each chapter in White’s 4-part, 15 chapter book, which spans from an analysis of pre-Miranda history of the third degree to recent post-Miranda empirical studies on interrogation and police torture. White calls for a deeper inquiry of Miranda’s watered-down protections, which are attributed to the “crime control model” jurisprudence offered by the U.S. Supreme Court. It is suggested that prosecutors and judges who are involved in criminal cases at trial and appeal read this book.