Withrow v. Williams, 507 U.S. 680, 13 (1993)

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692

WITHROW v. WILLIAMS

Opinion of the Court

"many of our fundamental values and most noble aspirations: . . . our preference for an accusatorial rather than an inquisitorial system of criminal justice; our fear that self-incriminating statements will be elicited by inhumane treatment and abuses; our sense of fair play which dictates 'a fair state-individual balance by requiring the government to leave the individual alone until good cause is shown for disturbing him and by requiring the government in its contest with the individual to shoulder the entire load;' our respect for the inviolability of the human personality and of the right of each individual 'to a private enclave where he may lead a private life;' our distrust of self-deprecatory statements; and our realization that the privilege, while sometimes 'a shelter to the guilty,' is often 'a protection to the innocent.' " Murphy v. Waterfront Comm'n of New York Harbor, 378 U. S. 52, 55 (1964) (citations omitted).

Nor does the Fifth Amendment "trial right" protected by Miranda serve some value necessarily divorced from the correct ascertainment of guilt. " '[A] system of criminal law enforcement which comes to depend on the "confession" will, in the long run, be less reliable and more subject to abuses' than a system relying on independent investigation." Michigan v. Tucker, supra, at 448, n. 23 (quoting Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U. S. 478, 488-489 (1964)). By bracing against "the possibility of unreliable statements in every instance of in-custody interrogation," Miranda serves to guard against "the use of unreliable statements at trial." Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U. S. 719, 730 (1966); see also Schneckloth, 412 U. S., at 240 (Miranda "Court made it clear that the basis for decision was the need to protect the fairness of the trial itself"); Halpern, Federal Habeas Corpus and the Mapp Exclusionary Rule after Stone v. Powell, 82 Colum. L. Rev. 1, 40 (1982); cf. Rose v. Mitchell, 443 U. S. 545 (1979) (Stone does not bar habeas review of claim of racial discrimination

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