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Unanswered Questions. Though Miranda's specification of police procedure was unusually precise for a Supreme Court decision, Chief Justice Earl Warren's opinion raised many unanswered questions. Every suspect must now be warned as soon as he is "deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way." Does this include even a few minutes of street-corner interrogation? How can police obey Miranda's command to furnish lawyers for indigent suspects? Most communities, especially in the South, have neither money nor means to do so. Says Birmingham Chief Jamie Moore: "We don't even have a public-defender system." Yet if no lawyer is available for a suspect who wants one, the police cannot ask him a thing. Equally baffling is how to prove that a suspect who does talk, "knowingly," waived his rights to silence and to counsel. Unless the police take movies or make tape recordings, they and defendants may be right back where they started: the traditional "swearing contest" in which a court must weigh the policeman's word against that of the defendant. And what of "poisonous fruits," meaning an illegal confession's leads to other telltale evidence? Since the court has not yet said that such fruits of a confession are inadmissible, police will be tempted to use them.
Grim Optimism. The most dramatic example of Miranda's early effects is the way Chicago police have handled Richard Speck, accused killer of eight nurses, in what the coroner called "the crime of the century." The police were so fearful of prejudicing their case that they did not even question Speck during the first three weeks after his arrest. Ironically, they seem also to have ignored another historic Supreme Court decision—the recent reversal of Dr. Sam Sheppard's murder conviction on grounds of "virulent" pretrial publicity. While recoiling from Speck himself, the Chicago police have talked about him enough so that his lawyers may well plead "trial by newspaper."
In wider perspective, a surprising number of police are grimly optimistic about learning to live with Miranda. "What do you mean, 'Can we?' " asks Florida Sheriff George Leppig. "We have to; it's the law of the land." Another Florida police official argues that Miranda will sharpen sleuthing by "getting the guys who depend on confessions off their duffs" and out searching for better evidence. Facing up to harder work than ever, a veteran Manhattan detective says that Miranda "of necessity makes us resort to the sciences." While all this may produce better policemen, it also requires more policemen—and far higher pay than many communities have yet faced up to.