‘You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.”
When a police officer speaks those words as part of a Miranda warning, what does the listener understand them to mean? Students of constitutional law know that the decision in Miranda interpreted the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as requiring police to advise subjects of custodial interrogation that they may remain silent or request the assistance of an attorney, and mandating that the state pay for an attorney if the subject is indigent. But to the individual who hears that warning—and the millions of Americans who know it by heart, thanks to its ubiquitous presence in television and movies—it means just what it says. You have the right to an attorney, and if you are too poor to hire one, the state will provide one for you. But what happens after the interrogation is not what most New Yorkers expect.
