Ernesto Miranda

On January 31, 1976, after his release for violating his parole, a fight erupted in a bar in downtown Phoenix in which Miranda was stabbed. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Good Samaritan Hospital. Several Miranda cards were found on his person. Miranda was buried in the City of Mesa Cemetery in Mesa, Arizona. The person suspected of handing the knife to the man who murdered Miranda invoked his Miranda rights and refused to talk to police. He was released and never charged with Miranda's murder. The killer fled and was never found.

Miranda was paroled in 1972. After his release, he started selling autographed Miranda warning cards for $1.50. Over the next few years, Miranda was arrested numerous times for minor driving offenses and eventually lost his license. He was arrested for the possession of a gun but the charges were dropped. However, because this violated his parole, he was sent back to Arizona State Prison for another year.

The Supreme Court invalidated Miranda's conviction, which was tainted by the use of the confession that had been obtained through improper interrogation. The state of Arizona retried him. At the second trial, his confession was not introduced into evidence, but he was convicted again, on March 1, 1967, based on testimony given by his estranged common law wife. He was sentenced to 20 to 30 years in prison.

In January 1966, Flynn and Frank submitted their argument stating that Miranda's Sixth Amendment right to counsel had been violated by the Phoenix Police Department. Two weeks later the State of Arizona responded by asserting that Miranda's rights had not been violated. The first day of the case was on the last day of February 1966. Because of the three companion cases and other information the case had a second day of oral arguments on March 1, 1966.

The opinion was released on June 13, 1966. Because of the decision, police departments throughout the U.S. started to issue Miranda warning cards to their officers to recite. They read:

Filing as a pauper, Miranda submitted his plea for a writ of certiorari, or request for review of his case to the U.S. Supreme Court in June 1965. After Alvin Moore was unable to continue representing Miranda because of health reasons, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Robert J. Corcoran asked John J. Flynn, a criminal defense attorney, to serve pro bono, along with his partner, John P. Frank, and associates Paul G. Ulrich and Robert A. Jensen of the law firm Lewis & Roca in Phoenix to represent Miranda. They wrote a 2500-word petition for certiorari arguing that Miranda's Fifth Amendment rights had been violated, and they submitted it to the United States Supreme Court.

In November 1965, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Miranda's case, Miranda v. Arizona, along with three other similar cases to clear all confusion created by the decision in Escobedo v. Illinois. That previous case had ruled that:

On March 13, 1963, Miranda's truck was spotted and license plates recognized by the brother of an 18-year-old kidnapping and rape victim, Lois Ann Jameson (the victim had given the brother a description). With his description of the car and a partial license plate number, Phoenix police officers Carroll Cooley and Wilfred Young confronted Miranda, who voluntarily accompanied them to the police station and participated in a lineup. At the time, Miranda was a person of interest, and not formally in custody.

Despite the printed statement on top of the sheets that Miranda used to write his confession on, "with full knowledge of my legal rights," he was not informed of his right to have an attorney present or of his right to remain silent when he was arrested or before his interrogation. 73-year-old Alvin Moore was assigned to represent him at his trial. The trial was conducted in mid-June 1963 before Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Yale McFate.

In 1956, about a month after his release from the Arizona State Industrial School for Boys (ASISB), he ran afoul of the law once more and was returned to ASISB. Upon his second release from reform school, he relocated to Los Angeles, California. Within months of his arrival in LA, Miranda was arrested (but not convicted) on suspicion of armed robbery and for some sex offenses. After two and a half years in custody, the 18-year-old Miranda was extradited back to Arizona.

Ernesto Arturo Miranda (March 9, 1941 – January 31, 1976) was an American criminal and laborer whose conviction on kidnapping, rape, and armed robbery charges based on his confession under police interrogation was set aside in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona, which ruled that criminal suspects must be informed of their right against self-incrimination and their right to consult with an attorney before being questioned by police. This warning is known as a Miranda warning.

Ernesto Arturo Miranda was born in Mesa, Arizona on March 9, 1941. Miranda began getting in trouble when he was in grade school. Shortly after his mother died his father remarried. Miranda and his father didn't get along very well; he kept his distance from his brothers and stepmother as well. Miranda's first criminal conviction was during his eighth-grade year. The following year, he was convicted of burglary and sentenced to a year in reform school.