SJ Quinney College of Law, University of Utah Utah Law Digital Commons Utah Law Faculty Scholarship Utah Law Scholarship 2017 Still Handcuffing the Cops? A Review of Fifty Years of Empirical Evidence of Miranda's Harmful Effects on Law Enforcement Paul Cassell University of Utah, SJ Quinney College of Law, [email protected] Richard Fowles University of Utah Follow this and additional works at: http://dc.law.utah.edu/scholarship Part of the Criminal Law Commons, Criminal Procedure Commons, and the Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons Recommended Citation 97 Bost. U.L. Rev. 685 (2017) This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Utah Law Scholarship at Utah Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Utah Law Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Utah Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. OPENING KEYNOTE ADDRESS STILL HANDCUFFING THE COPS? A REVIEW OF FIFTY YEARS OF EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE OF MIRANDA’S HARMFUL EFFECTS ON LAW ENFORCEMENT ∗ ∗∗ PAUL G. CASSELL & RICHARD FOWLES INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 687 I. GAUGING MIRANDA’S EFFECT ON LAW ENFORCEMENT ..................... 689 A. The Before-and-After Miranda Confession Rate “Impact” Studies ........................................................................................ 691 B. The “Second Generation” Miranda Studies ............................... 695 1. Questioning of Adults .......................................................... 696 2. Questioning of Juveniles ...................................................... 699 C. The Need to Move Beyond Confession Rates ............................. 701 II. CLEARANCE RATES AS AN INDIRECT MEASURE OF MIRANDA’S EFFECT ON CONFESSION RATES ...................................................................... 702 A. How Clearance Rates Could Affect Confession Rates ................ 702 ∗ Ronald N. Boyce Presidential Professor of Criminal Law and University Distinguished Professor of Law, S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah. ∗∗ Professor, Economics Department, University of Utah. The authors thank Al Alschuler, Shima Baradaran Baughman, Patricia Cassell, Don Dripps, Jeffrey Fagan, Amos Guiora, Susan Herman, Carissa Hessick, Cathy Hwang, Yale Kamisar, Paul Larkin, Wayne Logan, Tracey Maclin, Daniel Nagin, Mike Rappaport, Chris Slobogin, George Thomas, Charles Weisselberg, Marvin Zalman, and the participants in discussions at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, Boston University School of Law, and Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University for helpful comments. Although this Article was a collaborative effort, Cassell had initial responsibility for data collection and legal analysis, whereas Fowles had initial responsibility for statistical analysis. Librarians Lee Warthen and Felicity Murphy, graphic designer Dana Wilson, as well as research assistants Emily Cassell, Chauncey Bird, Zach Williams, and Christopher Mitchell were also vital to the success of this project. We appreciate financial support provided by the University Research Committee of the University of Utah, as well as the Albert and Elaine Borchard Fund for Faculty Excellence. This Article draws heavily on past articles by the authors, especially Paul G. Cassell & Richard Fowles, Handcuffing the Cops? A Thirty-Year Perspective on Miranda’s Harmful Effects on Law Enforcement, 50 STAN. L. REV. 1055, 1059-60 (1998); and Paul G. Cassell, Miranda’s “Negligible” Effect on Law Enforcement: Some Skeptical Observations, 20 HARV. J.L. & PUB. POL’Y 327, 331 (1997). 685 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3000098 686 BOSTON UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 97:685 B. What Clearance Rates Tell Us About Miranda’s Effects ............ 705 1. The National Clearance Rate Trend ..................................... 706 2. Using Regression to Sort Through Competing Causes ........ 710 3. A Model of Crime Clearance Rates ...................................... 714 4. Regression Equation Results ................................................ 723 C. Quantification of Miranda’s Cost ............................................... 732 D. Explaining the Pattern ................................................................ 732 III. MODEL SPECIFICATION ISSUES: FURTHER ANALYSIS OF JOHN DONOHUE’S SPECIFICATIONS ............................................................. 736 A. The Donohue Model with Data Extended Through 2012 ........... 737 B. Bayesian Model Averaging and the Cassell/Fowles and Donohue Specifications .............................................................. 743 C. Simultaneity Issues ..................................................................... 749 IV. DATA COLLECTION ISSUES: A RESPONSE TO FLOYD FEENEY ............ 751 A. Data Collection Problems in the Nation’s Cities ....................... 752 1. Clearance Rate Declines in the Nation’s Fourteen Largest Cities ........................................................................ 752 2. Clearance Rate Declines in the Nation’s Cities Organized by Population ...................................................... 760 B. California Clearance Rate Data ................................................. 764 V. WHY CLEARANCE RATES WILL INHERENTLY UNDERESTIMATE MIRANDA’S COSTS .............................................................................. 773 A. How Miranda Is Relevant to Clearance Rates ............................ 774 B. Empirical Studies on Miranda’s Capacity to Change Clearance Rates.......................................................................... 778 1. A Pre-Miranda Study on Police Investigations .................... 779 2. Post-Miranda Studies on Police Investigations .................... 781 a. Robbery Studies ............................................................. 782 b. Larceny Studies.............................................................. 785 c. Burglary Studies ............................................................ 787 C. Miranda’s Harmful Effects on Primary and Secondary Clearances .................................................................................. 788 1. Lost Clearances as Lost Primary Clearances ........................ 789 2. The Harm of Lost Secondary Clearances ............................. 795 D. Falling Clearance Rates as an Understated Telltale for Lost Convictions ......................................................................... 796 E. How Police Interrogation Remains Important in an Era of Advancing Forensic Science ....................................................... 798 VI. THE CAUSALITY QUESTION: ATTRIBUTING DECLINING CLEARANCE RATES TO MIRANDA ............................................................................ 801 A. Contemporaneous Explanations of the Clearance Rate Decline ........................................................................................ 801 B. Alternate Explanations Proposed by Feeney .............................. 804 1. Race Riots and Related Disturbances ................................... 804 2. Increasing Heroin Use .......................................................... 812 C. Other Supreme Court Decisions Apart from Miranda ................ 818 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3000098 2017] STILL HANDCUFFING THE COPS? 687 D. The Implausibility of Declining Coercion as an Explanation ................................................................................ 822 E. The Logic of Miranda as a Cause ............................................... 824 VII. REFORMING MIRANDA ........................................................................ 827 A. Eliminating Miranda’s Waiver Requirement and Questioning Cut-Off Rules ......................................................... 828 B. Modifying Miranda’s Warnings .................................................. 834 C. Recording of Custodial Interrogations ....................................... 838 D. Renewed Focus on the Voluntariness Test ................................. 841 E. Fewer Costs, More Benefits Than Miranda ................................ 845 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................. 848 “I believe the decision of the Court . entails harmful consequences for the country at large. How serious these consequences may prove to be only time can tell. The social costs of crime are too great to call the new rules anything but a hazardous experimentation.” —Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 504, 517 (1966) (Harlan, J., dissenting). “When we get a little distant, some things get clearer.” —THE INDIGO GIRLS, It’s Alright, on SHAMING OF THE SUN (Epic Records 1997). INTRODUCTION The fiftieth anniversary of Miranda v. Arizona1 offers a chance to assess how the decision has played out in the real world and, in particular, to determine whether it has harmed law enforcement. On the day the Supreme Court handed down its decision, four dissenters predicted that its price would be reduced police effectiveness in solving crimes. In dissent, Justice Harlan warned that the decision would produce social costs, the size of which “only time can tell.”2 Justice White, also dissenting, predicted that “[i]n some unknown number of cases the Court’s rule will return a killer, a rapist or other criminal to the streets and to the environment which produced him, to repeat his crime whenever it pleases