On April 20th, the Supreme Court will hear argument in an important case on Miranda rights, Vega v, Tekoh. The basic question in Tekoh is whether there can be a civil remedy for a Miranda violation. In Chavez v. Martinez, back in 2003, a badly-splintered Court held that the law is not violated if a police officer obtains a confession in violation of Miranda that is never actually admitted in Court. It's the admission in court of the unwarned statement that is the problem, the various opinions concluded, not the obtaining of the statement alone. In the words of Justice Kennedy's partial concurrence, without the admission of the statement there is no "completed constitutional violation actionable under 42 U. S. C. § 1983."
Tekoh raises a follow-up question: If an unwarned statement is wrongfully admitted, is that a completed violation actionable under 42 U. S. C. § 1983? And if it's actionable, who is responsible for it?
I would have thought that the first question was definitively resolved by Dickerson v. United States, which concluded that Miranda is "a constitutional decision of this Court [that] may not be in effect overruled by an Act of Congress." If Miranda is a constitutional decision, and the constitutional wrong is the admission of the unwarned statement, then logically doesn't the admission of the unwarned statement have to be a constitutional violation? Violating a constitutional rule is a constitutional violation, after all.
