Retired Phoenix police officer in Miranda rights case dies at 87

PHOENIX — Retired Phoenix police Capt. Carroll Cooley, the arresting officer in the landmark case partially responsible for the Supreme Court’s Miranda rights ruling that requires suspects be read their rights, has died, the department said Friday. He was 87.Phoenix police said in a statement Cooley died Thursday after an illness. The location and cause of his death were not available.

Cooley joined the Phoenix department in 1958 and retired two decades later.

On March 13, 1963, Cooley arrested Ernesto Miranda in the kidnap and rape of an 18-year-old Phoenix woman. Miranda was convicted based on his handwritten confession and sentenced to 20 to 30 years in prison.

Miranda appealed, and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued a 1966 ruling overturning the conviction, saying suspects should be advised of their constitutional rights against self-incrimination and to an attorney before questioning.

That decision, along with three other similar cases that were bundled together, led to the so-called “Miranda rights” or “Miranda warning,” which is familiar to anyone who has watched a police procedural drama on television.

“You have the right to remain silent,” it begins. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.

“You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you,” it continues.

After the Supreme Court overturned his conviction, Miranda remained in jail on another conviction and was convicted again of raping and kidnapping the 18-year-old. Prosecutors at the second trial didn’t use the confession and instead relied on testimony from a woman who was close to Miranda.

After he was paroled, Miranda was fatally stabbed in February 1976 in a dispute during a card game at a Phoenix bar.