This past weekend marked the 60th anniversary of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in a case that originated with the Phoenix Police Department.
Ernesto Miranda confessed to kidnapping and sexual assault, but Justices ruled that detectives should have told him certain information first.
The case from which Miranda rights came was assigned to the late Carroll Cooley.
He’d only been a Phoenix police detective for a short time in 1963, but tracked a suspect down in Mesa with only a partial license plate to go on.
“We were suspicious. His criminal record indicated that he had a problem with the police in a number of areas. But that’s not enough to arrest a guy for,” Cooley told KJZZ in 2016.
Cooley convinced his suspect to ride downtown and talk about a police matter, which Cooley preferred to not discuss in front of Miranda’s wife and children.
“He voluntarily came to the police department. He was not under arrest. He wasn’t handcuffed,” Cooley said.
At Phoenix police headquarters, which was in what’s now known as the Old Courthouse, victims identified Miranda, but not positively at first.
“So we went back in and talked to him after the lineup. At that point, he asked us, ‘How did I do?’ And I said, ‘You didn’t do so good, Ernie.' He says, ‘I guess I’d better tell you about it.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I think you should.’ So he told us about it and wrote the confession.”
That confession was thrown out in 1966 by the Supreme Court, which ruled that police have to inform people of their Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights when they’re in custody.
Cooley said Miranda wasn’t being held, and he was told on the ride downtown that he didn't have to talk.
“We were nothing but good guys. We had nothing on him. We had the car seen a week later. That doesn’t amount to probable cause,” Cooley said.
Miranda was reconvicted.
Cooley died in 2023, about a year before the U.S. Justice Department released a civil rights investigation of Phoenix police.
Among the findings in the report since clawed back by the Trump administration was that officers routinely violated Miranda rules.
“The justice system works when you have judges, attorneys, police and prosecutors all being ethical and doing the right thing,” said Benjamin Taylor, an attorney in Phoenix.
One of the first things Taylor checks is if his clients were told their Miranda rights.
“If the police don’t give the Miranda rights to person who is being questioned and being held in their custody, the case could be dismissed. Or evidence can be suppressed,” Taylor said.
In its report, the Justice Department said investigators looked at multiple incidents in which Phoenix police questioned children without telling them their rights.
“Ultimately, you have to give Miranda warnings and you have to let the child know that they have a right to even speak to their parent, too," Taylor said.
The Miranda decision changed policing in the U.S.
More locally, the Justice Department findings drew a wave of police reform ordered by the Phoenix City Council.
Most jobs have been completed — and some are ongoing. One still in the works is a youth interaction policy expected to go live this fall, Assistant Chief Jeff Benza recently told the council.
“The policy is to focus on the development of our youth and to teach our employees to deal with youth appropriately and speak with them appropriately,” he said.
Benza also said that starting later this year, police report data will be be monitored by a performance compliance team that will be looking for signs of unconstitutional policing.
At the same meeting, Chief Matt Giordano told the council he’s working on a three-year strategy for the department starting in 2027.
“This plan will integrate lessons learned from the U.S. Department of Justice investigation, ensuring that the department’s future direction is informed by a clear understanding of past issues and a commitment to meaningful and lasting improvement,” Giordano said.
Summarized in the plan will be years of reforms before the Justice Department came to town. Two years after its report and 60 years after Miranda, Phoenix police keep evolving.
