Invoking the Miranda Right to Counsel: The Defendant's
Burden
By Kimberly A. Crawford, J.D. 

Special Agent Crawford is a legal instructor at the
FBI Academy. 

Beginning with the 1966 Supreme Court decision in
Miranda v. Arizona,1 law enforcement has endured three
decades of court-imposed restraints on its ability to
engage in custodial interrogation. The most
significant of these restraints curtails law
enforcement's ability to conduct custodial
interrogation once the suspect invokes the right to
counsel. The practical result of Miranda and its
progeny is that a custodial suspect's invocation of
the right to counsel effectively precludes any further
government-initiated attempts at interrogation outside
the presence of counsel.2