Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Arizona: The Confession with Jami Nato

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

In this episode, Sharon is joined by friend and successful entrepreneur, Jami Nato, to discuss the story behind Miranda v Arizona. We’ve all heard the line “You have the right to remain silent” but most don’t know the fascinating tale of Ernesto “Ernie” Miranda and how his smalltown trial led to one of the most iconic Supreme Court cases in American history. Sharon and Jami share their thoughts about why the trial of an undoubtedly guilty man was appealed by the Court and how it reflects the Court's emphasis on upholding constitutional rights. Sharon explains why sometimes the Supreme Court doesn’t necessarily focus on “putting the bad guys away” but instead strives to uphold and reestablish constitutional principles. For more information on this episode including all resources and links discussed go to https://www.sharonmcmahon.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, hello! Thank you for joining me today! So glad you're here. I'm excited to be chatting with my friend Jamie Nadeau, who is H-L-A-R-I-O-S. So hilarious I had to add an extra syllable. She's one of those people who can carry a joke on for an extremely long time with a totally straight face. You know, the kind of person I'm referring to. I love to watch her because she cracks me up nearly every single day. We're chatting about a story today that you probably know portions of, but you probably don't know the entire backstory. So let's get into it. Let's dive into the confession. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast.

Jamie, you're here. Do you know who Ernesto Miranda is? I do not. Well, you're going to learn. So he was a gentleman born in the fine state of Arizona in the 1940s, and he had some, you know, rough relationship with his parents. Things quickly started to the 1940s. And he had some, you know, rough relationship with his parents. Things quickly started to take a dive. When he was in middle school, he decided, you know, what is right for me is a life of crime. The authorities, however, disagree. They disagree that he should have a life of crime. They sent him to the Arizona State Industrial School for Boys, which is basically like, you can't live at your house anymore. You're in too much trouble.

Go live at this residential facility and they'll try to reform you. Right? Wow. He gets sent there in eighth grade. After he got out, he was not reformed. he got out of the Arizona State Industrial School for Boys and immediately returned to a life of crime, like breaking into cars and breaking into houses. And he became a peeping Tom, you know, like, Hmm. Yeah. Like looking in windows, he gets in trouble for being a peeping Tom and breaking into stuff. And he's like, you know what? I am out of here. I'm moving to California. And this of course was back in the way, way back in

the day before we had the internet, where it was easy to search for people. So he moved to Los Angeles and the authorities in Los Angeles also turns out not amused with his behavior. They were also not into having a 17 year old peeping Tom without any parents all around the neighborhoods of Los Angeles. And so he gets arrested in Los Angeles and is finally extradited back to Arizona because he's a minor. Like, what are you doing out here? Where are your adults? Go back to Arizona. You can do that. Yeah. He had a parent, one of his parents died, but he had a parent that was legally responsible for him. They literally said you have to go home. Okay. You have to go home, but go back to Arizona. He gets back to Arizona and he's like, I don't, I don't know. He had never had a job for more than

two weeks. He doesn't know what he wants to do with his life. So of course the natural solution is to just join the army, right? Let me just join the the army because that's going to offer the flexible schedule that i'm looking for no no he was in the army for 18 months and spent over one third of it in solitary confinement in a military lockup that is how bad he was at being in the army. Well, can't you get fired from the army? Yes. Okay. Yeah. He eventually was fired from the army. He was dishonorably discharged. Right. They were eventually like, listen, Ernie, it's not going to work out. Being dishonorably discharged is actually, it's a big deal. It's like having a felony on your record. Being dishonorably discharged is not something any service member would ever desire. Right. That's like a scarlet letter.

It is. It is. So he gets out of the army and he's like, you know, again, I'm not hip to Arizona. Let me just go ahead and move to Texas. He was quickly arrested in Texas and sentenced to federal prison for stealing cars he just clearly cannot get away from his compulsion to be a criminal right right so eventually he finishes his sentence for car theft and gets out of prison and moves back to California. He's 21 now. He's 21. He gets to California and he meets this older woman. He meets a woman who's 29 and she has a couple of children and she wants to get a divorce from her husband, but she can't really afford it. So Ernie and this woman's name is Twyla. They don't actually get married because she's not divorced. She's already married, but they decide they're going to live together. And they have a child together,

a daughter that they named Cleopatra. Eventually they move back to Arizona and he gets a job that he actually is good at. He's working on it like a dock worker, only job he's ever had for more than a couple of weeks. And he is, you know, maybe trying to turn his life around. He has this live-in girlfriend and a daughter and her children to provide for, and he appears to try to be turning it around. Right. Okay. So let's leave Ernie for a moment and then let's move on to somebody that we'll just refer to as Jane Doe, a woman who was very young and she was very shy, very self-conscious. She is later described in court papers as being slightly developmentally delayed or developmentally disabled in some way. And of course, at the time they used language that is not appropriate for today, you know,

but you get, you get the gist and she had a job at a movie theater. She was getting off of work one evening and was walking towards the bus to get on the bus to go home. And a car pulled up in front of her, like squealed its tires in front of her. A man got out and put his hand over her mouth and said, don't scream and you won't get hurt. No. He ties her up, puts her in his car, drives her for 20 minutes outside the city, for 20 minutes outside the city, assaults her in very bad ways, rapes her. And then afterwards, he seems like he's kind of maybe a little upset by it. He says to her, whether you tell your mother what happened or not is none of my business, but pray for me. That was what he said to her, but pray for me. And he drives her back into town, asks her where she lives and then

drops her off four blocks from her house. He didn't want to pull up to the house. Oh yeah. Well, yeah, right. That would be too suspicious. It would be very suspicious. Dropped her off four blocks from her house and she walked into the house absolutely hysterical, as one would do. This was a woman who rarely spoke. Her stepbrother that lived with her said that in the 11 years they had known each other, she had maybe said 30 words to him. Okay, so that just gives you a little peek into how shy she was, how introverted she was. She comes into the house. It's now like two o'clock in the morning. She is absolutely hysterical. Okay. So her family sees her as being so distraught and they're like,

what, what's happening? What is going on? Tell us, tell us. And she doesn't want to talk about it. And she finally confides in her sister what has happened. And her sister immediately calls the police. And the police come out. They take her statement. They begin their investigation. She describes the person who attacked her. She describes him as being a certain height, a certain weight, a certain hair color, a

certain ethnicity. as being a certain height, a certain weight, certain hair color, certain ethnicity. And then as the police are questioning her, they say, okay, is this accurate? Is this everything you can remember? And she says, you know, I am not entirely certain about his ethnicity. She had described him as Mexican, but she was like, maybe he was Native American. Maybe he was Italian. I don't know. It was dark. You know, like she's not a hundred percent sure. How, how would you tell him that? How would you know? So she is scarred, traumatized as one would be. And her brother-in-law begins meeting her at her job and driving her to the bus stop and waiting for her to get on the bus to make sure that she's safe. And one day, a few weeks later, he notices a car outside the bus stop,

just kind of creep by really slowly. And he, and like, he was looking at the person getting on the bus and the brother-in-law was like, that's suspicious. What are you doing? And he made a note of a portion of the license plate. So they called the police and they're like, I don't know if this is anything, but there was this creepy car that was green. And Jane Jo remembered the car that she was kidnapped in as being green. And I got three letters of the license plate, DFL. And the police began digging. Of course, they didn't have computerized databases during this time. This is in the 1960s.

They're looking through all the motor vehicle records, looking for a car that is green, you know, like is the make and model of the car and has the letters DFL in the license plate. Oh my gosh. make and model of the car and has the letters DFL in the license plate. Oh my gosh. Narrow it down to a certain number of possibilities and begin their investigation, begin knocking on doors. They finally narrow it down to who should be Miranda, but Twyla, his it's Twyla's car. Yep. So they go to his house. They go to, cause of course, Ernie and Twyla's car yep so they go to his house they go because of course Ernie and Twyla are living together they go to the house and they're like hello we would like to speak with you and

they realize that Ernie fits the description of the person that Jane Doe said attacked her he's the perfect description they say we'd like to speak with you. Come down to the station, please. They put him in a lineup and bring Jane Doe in to look at the lineup, asking, can you pick him out of this lineup? And she couldn't, she could not pick him out of the lineup. So then they continue questioning him and they're like, you need to tell us everything you know, you need to tell us everything you did. You know, they use all of their police interrogation techniques to try to get information as one would do the police. Don't just say, hi, did you do it? And then, and then the person says,

no. And then they say, okay, bye. You know, like that's not how it works. There's like a whole technique to it. Right. So they, they interrogate him for a period of time. And he finally confesses that it was him. It was Ernesto Miranda who kidnapped and raped Jane Doe and said, pray for me and drove her back to near where she lived. And then this is the part when I was reading all of the records of this case that I was like, what? They then, to make sure that he just confessed to kidnapping and raping the right person. Right. They brought Jane Doe into the interrogation. No.

And said, is this the woman you raped? And he said, yes, that's her. No, that's not a great tactic. No. Can you imagine? I hope we retired that one. Yeah. One would assume so, but can you imagine just being like brought into a small room, like face-to-face with the person who had just raped you? And then they ask him, is this the person that you raped? And he's like, yeah, that's her. That's heartbreaking. It is really sad. It says typed at the top of the paper that he wrote the confession on. With full knowledge of my legal rights, understanding any statement I make may be used against me. He writes

the confession and he signs it. Okay. So of course, now he's going to be put on trial. He's going to be prosecuted for kidnapping and raping this woman. He is assigned a public defender. The public defender's name is Alvin Moore. He was paid $200 to defend Ernie, which I did the math is the equivalent of $1,745 in today's money, which is not bargain bin, bargain attorney, bargain bin.blogspot.attorney.com. So they eventually just zooming ahead a little bit, they eventually get to the trial and the prosecution has several key pieces of evidence. They have the victim statement. They have the victim's statement. They have her sister's testimony. They have the two detectives are going to take the stand. And then they have Ernie's

confession. You're like, case is closed. Why are we even? Why are we even here? Why aren't you pleading guilty? So the Alvin Moore, Ernie's attorney, gets up and he is questioning one of the detectives in the case. And he says, did you warn my client about his rights? And the detective said, these are quotes straight out of the court transcript. Yes, sir. At the heading of the statement is a paragraph typed out. And I read this paragraph to him out loud. I just referenced that. And Alvin Moore, the attorney says, I don't see in the statement where it says he's entitled to the advice of an attorney before he made a statement and the detective said no sir the lawyer said it's not in the statement that he's allowed to speak to an attorney the detective said no sir and the attorney said is it not your practice to advise people you arrest that they're entitled to the services of the attorney before they make a statement?

And they said, no, sir. At the time, this was all perfectly permissible. The judge said his confession is admissible. He gave his confession voluntarily. He wrote it down. And the judge told the jury, the confession is admissible. Consider the confession when you are making your decisions, when you're deliberating. And so he was very quickly convicted of kidnapping and raping Jane Doe. Right. Okay. So of course he, you know, he's sent to prison and he appeals his conviction. And there were really three reasons that his attorney, Alvin Moore gave about why he should be granted a new trial. If you are an attorney, okay. How do you sleep at night? Like if you

know, he, he said he did this, but you have to defend someone. I mean, but this is going to great lengths. I mean, you already defended the guy, right? Like you already, you did your best, but now we're appealing. It's entitled to appeals. Jamie, that's like a common thing. People feel like, how do you sleep at night defending rapists and murderers and kidnappers? How do you try actively to get them out of jail? A lot of people feel that way.

Like, you know, they're bad, right? I mean, I guess everyone is entitled to a fair trial. I know that. And I believe that, but well, I guess if you're using that logic, then I'm outlogicing myself because you know, if everyone deserves that, even rapists and murderers deserve that. But as the attorney, I don't know, my dad's an attorney and the things he works on, it's heartbreaking, like custody cases, divorce cases. I mean, he takes it like personally, I would just think. Difficult, difficult, really difficult. Yes. But you are right that everyone is entitled to a defense under the constitution. And we cannot have a system in which some people get an adequate defense and some people don't. So attorneys really view it as their job, as like the system depends on me giving him or her the best defense possible. And then if the state has done their job

in attempting to prove them guilty, then they'll be convicted. They'll go to prison. Whether or not you're convicted is not always based on if in fact you are guilty or innocent. It is based on whether or not the state has done a good enough job convincing the jury that you are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Right? Yep. So these are the three reasons that Alvin Moore, his attorney gave of like, here's why they should grant his appeal. The first one is that Jane Doe did not do her utmost to resist him. Okay. I'm going to, I have to leave to go flip a table real quick. Hold please while I break a window. Oh my gosh. Just mute it real quick. I'm going to say some things.

She didn't do her utmost to resist him. And thus it wasn't really like, wasn't really rape. She didn't, she didn't really resist him strongly enough. The other two reasons kind of snuck into the appeal. This was not his primary reason. The other reasons he snuck into the appeal were did my client actually get all of his constitutional rights? You know, like, were they super, super clear that he had the right to an attorney before he confessed? And also is bringing him down to the station and putting him in a, you know, interrogation room. Isn't that coercive? Was he really there voluntarily? Did he really feel like he had the right to leave? Was it coercion? The bottom line

is, did he make his confession voluntarily? Didn't you talk about this? What actually does that consist of? Like, what does it mean to do it on your own or to be coerced? So coercion in a legal sense requires that somebody feel in this context that they don't have a choice. Their only choice is to confess or else X, Y, Z, bad things are going to happen as the result of their non-confession. One example, confess, or we're going to arrest your wife. Confess, or we're going to call the places where your kids work and we're going to make sure they get fired. Like where you feel like I have no choice, but to confess otherwise other horrible things are going to happen. The question about how voluntary the statement was becomes important later. So eventually again, Ernie's sitting in prison. Alvin Moore is like, you know what? I've done what I can

do. The appeal didn't work. And he's like, I'm not interested in taking this any farther. Best of luck to you. So Ernie tries filing an appeal on his own, like to the Supreme Court, and that doesn't work. Meanwhile, another person was, his name was Robert Corcoran. He worked for the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union. And he is reading through, again, this is the 60s, reading through a journal article that was outlining all of the cases that the Court of Appeals, the circuit court, had heard recently. And he came across Ernie's case. And he was like, that is, you know what, that's very interesting. I'm going to give my friend John Flynn a call. John Flynn was a very, very successful attorney at a large law firm, like one of the big time law firms.

He was a fantastic public speaker, law students, associates at his firm would take the day off of work to go listen to his closing arguments because he was that fantastic of a speaker. Like we need to study him. What does John Flynn do? So John Flynn at the firm that he worked at had a deal with ACLU. We will take two pro bono cases a year. You guys pick what they are. We'll take them and we will see what we can do. So they agree to take Ernie's appeal. John Flynn involves this other attorney at his firm, John Frank. So Flynn and Frank became the team that worked on this. John Frank was a former Supreme Court clerk. He had a lot of familiarity with how appeals to the Supreme Court worked. So the two of them began working on this case together and they later estimated they had accrued over $50,000 in office hours working on this appeal. Like that's how much

time they had spent. And that's $50,000 in like 1960s money. Right. That is just, this is just seems so strange. This is too strange. Like you actively found a case that lost, right? And now you're going to spend time. Why were they interested? Like what was the interesting piece? That's a great question. And the big reason that they were interested is they were wanting to explore, have the Supreme Court potentially explore these ideas of, was his confession given voluntarily? And was he afforded all of his constitutional rights? Because the paper that he signed said, you know, I'm giving these statements voluntarily. You know, I understand my rights.

But the paper did not actually say, you have the right to an attorney. And he never asked for an attorney. The question was whether he had all of his constitutional rights afforded to him. So if you are those attorneys, I don't know why. I mean, I already think these characters are strange, but if you are these attorneys, you're trying to defend the law. Okay. This is making more sense. That's correct. It's not based out of benevolence for Ernie. It is based out of having the Supreme Court clearly define what exactly are a potential defendant's rights? So it's based on the principle of the matter and not because they inherently believe that Ernie was innocent. Hey Torontonians, recycling is more than a routine. It's a vital responsibility. By recycling properly, you help conserve resources,

reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, and protect the environment. Toronto's Blue Bin Recycling Program ensures the majority of the right items are recovered and transformed into new products. Recycling right is important and impactful. Let's work together and make a difference, because small actions lead to big change. For more tips on recycling, visit toronto.ca slash recycle right. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm angela kinsey we are best friends and together we have the podcast office ladies where we re-watched every single episode of the office with insane behind the scenes stories hilarious guests and lots of laughs guess who's sitting next to me steve in the studio every wednesday we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and

our friendship with brand new guests and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments so join us for brand new office ladies 6.0 episodes every wednesday plus on mondays we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. Got it. Okay. Yep. So Flynn and Frank file an appeal to the Supreme Court. At the time, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren, was also very interested in this idea of what are your rights under the Fifth Amendment, under the Sixth Amendment? Let's clarify. Let's

make it clear so that the justice system can work more fairly. So Earl Warren asked his clerks, every Supreme court justice gets a number of clerks who comb through the thousands of appeals that are filed at the Supreme court every year. Well, a clerk is different than an attorney or a clerk is an attorney. A clerk is an attorney. They have finished law school and they are generally speaking to be a Supreme Court clerk. You need to be graduating from a top, top law school, and you need to be at the top of your class at a top law school. And you are working in conjunction with one Supreme Court justice. Each justice gets three to four clerks and you help them comb through potential cases.

You help them with research. Sometimes you help them with writing opinions. And you're basically supporting the work of the justice because there's too much work to be done by just these nine individuals. Man, that's a resume booster. are headhunters who do nothing but place Supreme Court clerks in the most premium law jobs in the country. Being a Supreme Court clerk is a ticket to a six-figure law position. You're basically guaranteed an amazing job as an attorney if you've been a Supreme Court clerk. Oh, fascinating. And most Supreme Court justices were Supreme Court clerks. It absolutely is a golden ticket in the legal world to be a Supreme Court clerk. Yeah, but you paid your dues. Yes. So he has the Supreme Court

clerks looking through cases. He says, please circle any cases that come across your desk that are related to the right to counsel, right to have an attorney. Let's make a pile of those. And the Supreme Court gets on average 7,000 requests a year, and they hear about 100 of them. That's what they have time for. Yes, hear about 100. To even get on anybody's radar is a big deal. So the Supreme Court clerks find three cases that are happening in the United States that are about the right to counsel. And Ernie Miranda's name was first alphabetically, Miranda v. Arizona, and they granted his appeal. You're kidding. The likelihood that it would even get to the Supreme Court is very small. And then the likelihood that his case was chosen was it just was his name was first up with that. So they go to the Supreme Court, they argue the

case, they, you know, do a fantastic job. And a few months later, the Supreme Court issues their decision. And what they decided was that, in fact, his confession was not voluntary and that he was not given all of his guaranteed rights under the constitution. Oh my gosh. This is from the Miranda versus Arizona Supreme Court decision. And this is one of the most famous phrases in a Supreme Court opinion by far written by the Warren Court. This is going to crack this wide open for you, Jamie, of what we're talking about here. This is what the opinion said. first be informed in clear and unequivocal terms that he has the right to remain silent and that anything he says can and will be used against him in court and that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and have that lawyer with him during the interrogation. If he cannot

afford one, a lawyer will be appointed to him. Wow. Do you recognize where that is? I mean, is that not in every like crime show? Absolutely. Anything you watch on C-SPAN? Yeah. You have the right to remain silent. Who doesn't? But we've all heard that phrase. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. What are those referred to? Your Miranda rights. You, oh my gosh. Based on the name of this Supreme court case, which is based on the name of Ernesto Miranda. I did not think that it was a name.

I don't know what I thought Miranda was, but I did not think it was a name. It was a person. Oh, that is out of an obscure case to be picked. Something so important came out of that. Yes, absolutely. This seemed like a more run-of-the-mill violent felony. And I hate that we have to use the word run-of-the-mill violent felony, but people are sexually assaulted all the time. And it's not something that the Supreme Court really takes on. So it is unusual that they would hear this case to begin with and that he was first in the alphabet and that his case has had such a lasting and profound effect on the U.S. legal system.

So to wrap up the story of Ernesto Miranda, you would think they would, you know, like the fact that they ruled his confession inadmissible, you would think that means he's let go and that's the end of it. But what it just means is that he's granted a new trial. And the state of Arizona said, fine, we're going to try you again because you did it. Putting you on trial again because you did it. And now we're going to make sure. Do you understand that you have the right to an attorney? Report this. Correct. Do you understand that anything you say can and will

be used against you in a court of law? They have to try him again, but this time without his confession. And so they are concerned. Are we going to get a conviction because his confession is out? We can't use it. And of course, not going to confess to it a second time. Of course, this is what I don't understand. When they're like, we strike that from the record. But it's like, everybody already heard it. But like, as a human, are you supposed to act like you didn't hear that? Or you didn't know that he made the confession?

Like. Yes. You're not supposed to consider that in the totality of facts. Which is real hard for humans to do. I was like, okay. Yeah. It's like a friend telling you that you're ugly. And then people being like, disregard, just ignore that. Pretend it never happened. Right. You look cute. You look cute. Disregard. I didn't, that wasn't a thing that didn't happen. Didn't happen. So they're concerned. Like, are we going to be able to get a conviction,

you know, be without his confession? And so he'd been out of prison for a while and he had decided that he wanted to have visitation rights with his daughter, Cleopatra. And Twyla at this point had changed her name. Twyla had moved on. She was like, I am not interested in being married to a rapist in prison or they weren't really married, but like, I'm not interested in waiting for you. So I'm not interested in being fake married to this rapist anymore. Right. This fake marriage is over. So who should show up in the office of the attorney who is prosecuting this case, the district attorney, um, the day before the trial is to begin, but Twyla. Twyla says,

I would like to testify against Ernie. And here's what I have to say. When I visited Ernie in prison, when I visited him, he asked me for a favor. And the favor was, I want you to go to the family of that girl that I raped. And I want you to tell them that I would be willing to marry her. Okay. And then that will fix it. But don't worry, Twyla. I will leave her and come back to you. Don't worry.

I'm not going to stay with her. I would offer to marry her to like, make it better. So she's not like a ruined woman. I would offer to marry her. Oh gosh, that I ruined. That now I'm going to unruin. I'm going to unruin you by marrying you. This is a made for TV movie. It absolutely is. Twyla, you know, after hearing that, that was, you know, kind of her like, no, we're done with this. I'm going to offer to marry the woman you raped. And by the way, he's confessing when he tells her that, of course, right? So she realizes he really did do it.

And she testifies against him. And it takes the jury one hour to determine that he was guilty. Because they had lunch in there too. I mean. So he was sentenced to 20 to 30 years in prison. He gets out of prison after five years. He's out of prison in 1972. He gets out of prison.

He then continued to like bounce in and out of prison, violating his parole. Shocking. You know, like, oh, parole violation. You had a gun. You didn't show up where you're supposed to. You're like back to prison for six months, like in and out of prison over the next few years until we arrive to 1976, four years after he was paroled. When he goes to a bar in Phoenix, he begins playing poker with a couple of individuals at the bar, and they get into an argument over some change that's on the bar. The argument erupts and becomes violent. And one of the men who was playing in poker takes out a knife and stabbed Ernesto Miranda twice. The bar calls 911. They show up. They put him in the ambulance. They take him to the hospital. And by the time Miranda arrived at the hospital, he was dead.

And by the time Miranda arrived at the hospital, he was dead. Oh my gosh. Here's the last thing. The person who stabbed him got away. Was never caught, never prosecuted. The person who was the accomplice, the stabber's accomplice in this fight was found in a dark alley outside the back of the bar. He was arrested, put into the police cruiser. And as soon as he was put in the back of the police cruiser, he was handed a card that said, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you and he had just

participated in killing ernesto miranda the person who was the reason he was even handed that card isn't that crazy my full circle full circle man after he was out of prison like that time between Full circle. Full circle. Man. After he was out of prison, like that time between 72 and 76, and even while he was in prison, after the Supreme Court decision came down, like he became prison famous. Like everybody was like, Ernie, dang, you know, like prison famous. He gets out of prison and he begins selling cards that have Miranda warnings on them. Your Miranda warnings or Miranda rights autographed with his name. He begins selling them for $1.50. Has anybody seen those? Like, has anyone found those?

I wonder if like you could find one on eBay. Find one on the internet. Yep. It's a little card that's typed that looks kind of like laminated that has the rights. You have the right to remain silent, et cetera. And then he wrote in big letters across the top in his beautiful cursive. It's very beautiful. Ernesto A. Miranda.

Some of them he dated, but he sold those for a long time because his name was famous. That is a weird, crazy story. If you've ever been arrested and that's been read, not that I have, but a friend told me. And it's like such a part of our system now that it's weird to think that that was not long ago. Not long ago that he wasn't read those rights. And the judge was like, I see no problems here. This is the thing is that in the sixties, when this was happening and the judge was like, I see no problems here. This is the thing is that in the 60s, when this is happening and the judge was like, his confession was fine. It was fine under the current interpretation of the law.

It was not like the judge was all like, oh, I don't care. No, that was the prevailing understanding at the time. And it wasn't until the Supreme Court clarified in this decision that things changed. So it wasn't necessarily like a shady judge, just trying to slip it under the radar. It was like, that's how it was. And it wasn't until this case that it changed. You know, like hearing this, it gives me a greater respect for the law. It gives me a greater respect for the different sides. And like, you know, I was like, well, how can you sleep at night? And now I say, oh, okay. They were trying to protect the law. They were trying to protect the citizens. And it wasn't about what I thought it was about. I guess, you know, you make up

stories about people in your head all the time. And then once you know more information can be your friend, like once you know more, it gives you a greater understanding. And I think compassion too, and respect for people who uphold the law. You know, this is one of the constant tensions in the legal system is that sometimes we have decided that principle is more important. Principle of the law of like citizens are entitled to an attorney before they confess. This principle at that moment was more important than the admissibility of this confession. And sometimes it does mean that we sacrifice putting a bad guy away on the altar of principle.

Do you know what I mean? And that, that is a constant tension in the legal system of like, yeah, but that confession wasn't legal, even though he really did do it. You have to follow the rule of law. That's extremely fascinating. And also like, wow, we have a lot of checks and balances going on, you know, behind the scenes in court and in our systems. Well, this is really fun. Thank you for doing this. Tell everybody where they can find you, Jamie. I do most of the Lord's work on Instagram. I, you know, just really shine on my stories. I don't want to brag, but it's very humble of me to say, I think I'm very, very hilarious. My husband's like, you're not funny. And I'm like, Hey, you don't even respect good work. So he married me. So

I guess he does secretly. So I mostly on Instagram, Jamie Nato, there's no E in my name. And, um, I have a blog, you know, jamienato.com keeping it simple. I was a blog spot for a long time, but I thought let's get professional. Let's be professional. Yeah. I told you that on this podcast, I was going to, since your last name is NATO, I was going to call you Jamie North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Every time you do a story on NATO or mention it, you know what I respond to every time. Stop talking about me. Stop talking about me. Just at me, Sharon, just at me. Just make sure I'm tight. All right. Thank you so much. It was so fun. And I think such a good,

fun idea to like educate people like through story. Yes. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to have another mind blownblown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.