WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court took an intensive new look yesterday at its Miranda decision and dropped hints that the famous ruling could survive, but perhaps only with deep division among the justices.
After a one-hour hearing, it appeared that the future of Miranda warnings would depend on the willingness of key justices to put the 1966 ruling on a firmer legal basis. Doing so would mean that local police, as well as federal agents, would still be obliged to inform suspects of their rights to remain silent and to consult a lawyer.
The justices' questions and comments ranged widely over the powers of the court and Congress to control police tactics. The hearing showed the court to be keenly aware that it had to make a difficult choice about what to do with one of its best-known criminal law rulings, Miranda vs. Arizona.
Congress, in a law it passed two years after Miranda, sought to overrule the decision by saying that confessions could be used against suspects even if they had not been informed about their rights. That 1968 law had its first test before the court yesterday.
Watching the hearing from a spectator seat was Charles Thomas Dickerson of Prince George's County, the central figure in the new case. Questioned by officers about his role in a bank robbery in Alexandria, Va., Dickerson gave damaging statements, apparently without first being given the Miranda warnings. He does not want those statements used against him when he goes to trial.
With the support of the Justice Department, Dickerson is challenging the constitutionality of Congress' attempt to eliminate the required warnings, at least in federal criminal cases.
By the end of the hearing, it appeared that the outcome would probably be controlled by two swing justices -- Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy. Those two will likely be swayed mainly by their view of the court's power to write rules that affect local police interrogations.
Those two justices did not clearly tip their reactions to the case. But both focused their questions on whether Miranda warnings were required as a constitutional mandate or were simply a procedural device that Congress was free to displace.
At one point, O'Connor asked a Justice Department lawyer, Solicitor General Seth P. Waxman: "What is it [that Miranda requires], and how do we have the power to require it?"
