Brown v. Mississippi

Brown v. Mississippi marked the development of the test of voluntariness as the means used by the Court to evaluate the constitutionality of criminal confessions. The ruling was the first of a series of cases heard over the next three decades through which the Court restricted the means available to law enforcement personnel seeking to obtain confessions from criminal suspects. This series of cases culminated in the Court's landmark decision in Miranda v. Arizona (1966), which mandated that suspects be made aware of their constitutional rights before being questioned by police.