Orzoco v. Texas

This decision extended the application of the Miranda rule to in-custody interrogations occurring outside of a police station. The Miranda rule, originally adopted by the Supreme Court in a case involving a station house interrogation, requires police to inform a suspect prior to questioning of the right to remain silent and the right to counsel. Any confession or incriminating statement made by a suspect without these warnings is presumed involuntary and is inadmissible at trial. The case also established the proposition that a suspect arrested and questioned in his home is "in custody," for Miranda purposes. The effect of Orozco was to require law enforcement officers to give Miranda warnings to suspects who are "in custody" regardless of where the questioning takes place.

The Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and right to representation have their roots in English law. In the 1600s, The English Parliament abolished the infamous inquisitorial Court of Star Chamber after John Lilburn, a vocal opponent of the Stuarts who occupied the British throne, resisted the Star Chamber oath, which would have required him to answer all questions posed to him on any subject. Lilburn resisted the oath on the grounds that no man ought to be required to answer questions concerning himself in criminal matters. The Lilburn principle made its way to the English colonies in America and was implanted in the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In the 1930s, a presidential commission's report revealed that, despite the protections of the Fifth Amendment, use of police violence and the "third degree" to extract criminal confessions flourished in the United States. In 1961, the Commission on Civil Rights found evidence that policemen resorted to physical violence to obtain confessions. Police manuals and texts in use in the 1960s documented interrogation procedures that relied on psychological or mental coercion through isolation, relentless questioning, cajolery, and trickery. In 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court issued Miranda v. Arizona, which required police to inform in-custody suspects prior to interrogation of their right to remain silent, to have a lawyer's advice before making a statement, and to have a lawyer appointed if the suspect could not afford to hire one. This decision was an attempt to place limits on custodial interrogation in hopes of eradicating the use of physical violence or the "third degree" to coerce a confession.

In 1966, Orzoco was convicted of murder in a Texas state court and sentenced to two to ten years in prison following a midnight shooting outside of a restaurant. Four hours after the shooting, police went to Orzoco's boarding house and questioned him in his bedroom. During police questioning, he admitted to having been at the restaurant and produced a pistol, which was subsequently proved to be the weapon used in the shooting. At trial, the court allowed one police officer to relate Orzoco's statements concerning the gun and his presence at the restaurant, despite objections by Orzoco's lawyer that the statements were inadmissible because police failed to give the petitioner the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona. On appeal, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held, with one judge dissenting, that Miranda did not apply to interrogations occurring outside a police station and that the failure to give Miranda warnings did not preclude the admission of police testimony concerning the statements the petitioner had made in his own home. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction, rejecting the petitioner's contention that a material part of the evidence against him was obtained in violation of the self-incrimination provision of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that: "No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." The petitioner's sought a writ of certiorari from the U.S. Supreme Court. A writ of certiorari is a means whereby the Supreme Court obtains the case from the lower court for appellate review. The U.S. Supreme Court granted the writ.