Dickerson v. United States, 530 U.S. 428, 15 (2000)

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442

DICKERSON v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

as Amicus Curiae 28-39. We agree with the amicus' contention that there are more remedies available for abusive police conduct than there were at the time Miranda was decided, see, e. g., Wilkins v. May, 872 F. 2d 190, 194 (CA7 1989) (applying Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388 (1971), to hold that a suspect may bring a federal cause of action under the Due Process Clause for police misconduct during custodial interrogation). But we do not agree that these additional measures supplement § 3501's protections sufficiently to meet the constitutional minimum. Miranda requires procedures that will warn a suspect in custody of his right to remain silent and which will assure the suspect that the exercise of that right will be honored. See, e. g., 384 U. S., at 467. As discussed above, § 3501 explicitly eschews a requirement of preinterrogation warnings in favor of an approach that looks to the administration of such warnings as only one factor in determining the voluntariness of a suspect's confession. The additional remedies cited by amicus do not, in our view, render them, together with § 3501, an adequate substitute for the warnings required by Miranda.

The dissent argues that it is judicial overreaching for this Court to hold § 3501 unconstitutional unless we hold that the Miranda warnings are required by the Constitution, in the sense that nothing else will suffice to satisfy constitutional requirements. Post, at 453-454, 465 (opinion of Scalia, J.). But we need not go further than Miranda to decide this case. In Miranda, the Court noted that reliance on the traditional totality-of-the-circumstances test raised a risk of overlooking an involuntary custodial confession, 384 U. S, at 457, a risk that the Court found unacceptably great when the confession is offered in the case in chief to prove guilt. The Court therefore concluded that something more than the totality test was necessary. See ibid.; see also id., at 467, 490-491. As discussed above, § 3501 reinstates the totality test as

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