Many people first hear about their Miranda rights on television or in movies, due to someone getting their rights read while under arrest.
But how many people actually know their real Miranda rights, or what these rights cover? How many people know how to handle those rights in a real confrontation with the police?
What are Miranda rights?
Miranda Warning discusses a person’s Miranda rights. Simply put, Miranda rights include a person’s right to remain silent to avoid self-incriminating, their right to a lawyer even if they cannot afford it, and the affirmation that the person in question fully understands these rights.
By choosing to speak with police anyway after getting read the Miranda Warning, a person thus forfeits those rights. Unfortunately, many people will do this because they have a false notion that only guilty people actually use their right to remain silent.
Why you should exercise your rights
In reality, police will use everything they can get against a suspect in order to arrest them. Anything a person says can also get used against them in a court of law, meaning every piece of self-incriminating information – accidental or otherwise – may get used against them.
This is how innocent people end up facing a very real possibility of conviction for a crime they did not commit, all because they said something suspicious and ended up self-implicating.
Whether someone is guilty or innocent, they could benefit from the protection of an attorney who knows the ins and outs of the law and what a person should or should not say.