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Matthew B. Johnson, Kimberly Citron-Lippmann, Christina Massey, Chitra
Raghavan & Ann Marie Kavanagh
INTRODUCTION
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that suspects in custody must be in-
formed of their rights (Miranda warnings) and that any waiver of such rights
must be done “knowingly,” “intelligently,” and “voluntarily” (Dickerson v.
United States, 2000; Miranda v. Arizona, 1966). Findings from several sources
(Kassin, 2005) indicate that approximately 80% of suspects waive their rights
and submit to police interrogation. Early research on the Miranda waiver
process focused on comprehension of Miranda rights (Grisso, 1980, 1981).
Grisso (1980, 1981, 1998, 2004) developed a four-part assessment instrument
to empirically assess various aspects of Miranda comprehension. The four
parts were Comprehension of Miranda Rights (CMR), Comprehension of Mi-
randa Rights–Recognition (CMR-R), Comprehension of Miranda–Vocabulary
(CMV), and Function of Rights During Interrogation (FRI). There was con-
cern that faulty comprehension was an obstacle to the informed exercise
of the privilege against self-incrimination and the right to counsel. Much of
the attention was focused on juveniles (Grisso, 1980, 1981) and their vul-
nerability related to limited knowledge, inadequate experience, and lack of
maturity....