Do you agree or disagree with the Supreme Court’s majority ruling in Yarborough v.Alvarado? Write a short paragraph describing your answer and connect the case to the Miranda v. Arizona decision.
Answers
Explanation:
Supreme Court's majority ruling in Yarborough v Alvarado
Held: The state court considered the proper factors and reached a reasonable conclusion that Alvarado was not in custody for Miranda purposes during his police interview.
Whether you might agree with the court's majority ruling depends on if you feel that relying on subjective factors to define police custody muddies the waters of legal situations. You might disagree with the ruling if you feel that it is reasonable to assume that Alvarado had every right to believe that he was in police custody at the time of his interrogation and that relying on police to interpret these situations by objective factors could lead to abuse.
the Supreme Court's majority ruling is a correct one. For the sake of an argument, I will present why someone might disagree with it.
No two arrests are the same. There are numerous subjective factors that come into play which have a significant impact on criminal proceedings. While it may be clear to the police whether or not a suspect is in custody, there are numerous societal, cultural, and psychological factors that might make that unclear to the suspect.
In his dissent, Justice Breyer wrote that a suspect can effectively be in custody without it meeting all the objective stipulations that make it technically so. It is clear that Alvarado did not feel that he was at liberty to simply get up and terminate the interrogation. Therefore, even though the police might not have considered him to be in custody, Alvarado clearly did.
This case asked law enforcement to apply common sense interpretations of what it meant to be in custody, not apply some complex legal standard. By relying on the police to determine if a suspect is in their custody, that allows them to apply the suspect's Fifth Amendment rights at their discretion. In other words, it becomes too easy for the police to manipulate the situation to their advantage if they deem that the suspect is ignorant of their actual situation and the nuances of the law. In the particular case of Alvarado, it is reasonable to assume that he felt that he was under police custody, and the police had the responsibility to recognize that and inform him of his actual situation.