"One could just as easily say the opposite, and be correct."
That is somewhat of a non-sequitur.
Even if the statement is reversed, the basic premise holds true. That Rights and Truth cannot co-exist equally in the Criminal Justice. Thus, a balancing.
Your reply gives no further basis for further comment because it is impossible to tell what you mean by that.
"The point that I'm trying to make is that while your statement is ideally true, the reality is that a claim of coercion is far more difficult to make if a Miranda warning was given. The problem with that is that the two have nothing to do with each other. The Miranda warning speaks to voluntary behavior (*you* have the right to remain silent.) But a coerced statement, by its very nature, is involuntary. The fact of whether or not a Miranda warning was given should never be considered in the validity of a confession."
Here you are getting into very thorny territory. This is what the Warren court was trying to solve. And as can be seen by this discussion, and a journey through the ugly stare decisis of Miranda decisions, the problem was far from solved.
The problem you are going to have is this. The Constitution says:
"No person shall be ...compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself..."
From this language we have created this nebulous voluntariness standard. This standard defies a black and white definition. What did the founders mean by this? What do we in current society mean by this? Does it apply equally to each person, or does it change according to the person? Does the crime suspected matter? For instance, should a rapist and a shoplifter be treated the same? Do we want no confessions? What other forms of coercion must we consider? (See Connelly v. Colorado)
And it basically comes down to this. We want the police to do their jobs. Confessions are a helpful tool. I think the founders surely did not want confessions beat out of people, but I don't think that they considered good cop, bad cop on the same level as the rack. In fact, neither do I.
The curious thing is that Miranda really doesn't matter. Sure, it puts a presumption of involuntariness on the confessions of Un-Mirandized subjects, but the weak ones will still roll over, while the hardened criminals will know what to do. Thus we have merely created a prophylactic device that help those that we least want to help.
Therefore, it circles us back around to voluntariness, and dealing with the subject again. How do we deal with it? Don't completely have the answer to that one, sorry.
