Cite as: 532 U. S. 162 (2001)
Kennedy, J., concurring
choice of suspects who have received proper advice of their Miranda rights but waived them nonetheless. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966). The Miranda rule, and the related preventative rule of Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U. S. 477 (1981), serve to protect a suspect's voluntary choice not to speak outside his lawyer's presence. The parallel rule announced in Jackson, however, supersedes the suspect's voluntary choice to speak with investigators. After Jackson had been decided, the Court made the following observation with respect to Edwards:
"Preserving the integrity of an accused's choice to communicate with police only through counsel is the essence of Edwards and its progeny—not barring an accused from making an initial election as to whether he will face the State's officers during questioning with the aid of counsel, or go it alone. If an accused 'knowingly and intelligently' pursues the latter course, we see no reason why the uncounseled statements he then makes must be excluded at his trial." Patterson v. Illinois, 487 U. S. 285, 291 (1988).
There is little justification for not applying the same course of reasoning with equal force to the court-made preventative rule announced in Jackson; for Jackson, after all, was a wholesale importation of the Edwards rule into the Sixth Amendment.
In the instant case, Cobb at no time indicated to law enforcement authorities that he elected to remain silent about the double murder. By all indications, he made the voluntary choice to give his own account. Indeed, even now Cobb does not assert that he had no wish to speak at the time he confessed. While the Edwards rule operates to preserve the free choice of a suspect to remain silent, if Jackson were to apply it would override that choice.
There is further reason to doubt the wisdom of the Jackson holding. Neither Miranda nor Edwards enforces the
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