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By Stephen Lee

	Footnote Comics: Batman, Detective Comics, Batgirl : Year One, Robin, Nightwing, Gotham Central Published by DC Comics. What are these comics about? : Scarred by the murder of his parents, Bruce Wayne grew up to become a billionaire philanthropist by day and Batman, the Dark Knight Detective, by night. But he is not alone. Barbara Gordon was Batgirl in her youth, but was then shot by the Joker and left paralyzed; she decided to continue to fight crime as Oracle, an information-broker and computer genius who provides the information needed in Batman's mission. Tim Drake is the third Robin; the first, Dick Grayson, became Nightwing, and the second died in action. And then there are the detectives of Gotham City's Police Department, who work cases without the benefit of superpowers or special abilities; they are led by Commissioner Atkins, who took over after James Gordon retired. Recommended Reading : There are a lot of comics and graphic novels starring Batman and the Batman family, which can make it difficult to know where to begin. I recommend starting with graphic novels, like Officer Down or The Long Halloween. As for the monthly comic-book series, I recommend Batman, Detective Comics, or Gotham Central. For more information, go to DCComics.com. Topics :   Miranda Rights and Interrogations New! Height Requirements Bruce Wayne : Felon Batman as Urban Legend (and the Fourth Amendment) Gotham Central #5 (c) DC Comics New! Panel from Batgirl : Year One #1. Height requirements, sex discrimination. Cover from Detective Comics #766. Bruce Wayne - felon? Panel from Gotham Central #2. Law enforcement, vigilantes, and the Fourth Amendment. Panels from Batman #584. Law enforcement, vigilantes, and the Fourth Amendment. All covers and panels are copyright DC Comics. The Miranda Recitation of Rights (last updated March 12, 2003) (back to top) As anyone who has seen a modern cop show knows, you have the right to remain silent, and anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney, and if you cannot afford an attorney, an attorney will be provided you. That is the basic recitation of constitutional rights established in the case of Miranda v. Arizona (1966) as the absolute minimum necessary to ensure a constitutional police interrogation, and it remains the minimum despite a constitutional challenge that was rejected in 2000. But the rights against self-incrimination are not as broad as people generally think and the recitation is not always required when a suspect talks to police. Basically, the Miranda recitation is designed to prevent coercion, not stupidity or gullibility. So, even if police think you're a suspect, they can still talk to you without reading you your rights, and they generally can trick you into admitting information that you probably shouldn't have revealed. What they cannot do is hold you in custody (which doesn't necessarily mean in jail, just that you're not free to go) and then question you without reading you your rights. But even if they did, all that generally means is that the police could not use any subsequent statements you make as evidence. Gotham Central #5 (back to top of article) In Gotham Central #5, for example, the police talk to three suspects. Yancy is in jail and is thus obviously in custody, so police presumably read him his rights while locking him up. Joey the former Firebug isn't in jail, but he was captured by police and must have been read his rights off-stage as well. But Harlan Combs comes into the precinct thinking that he is just going to identify Yancy and leave. He doesn't think he is a suspect and he thinks he can leave freely whenever he wants. He is not in custody, so everything he says up until the second panel of page 17 is completely admissible and in keeping with the Fifth Amendment, even though he wasn't read any rights. The situation when Combs says he wants to leave but is not allowed to do so. From that point on, he almost definitely is in custody and the detectives should have read Combs his rights if they actually wanted to use anything he then said as evidence. Accordingly, Combs' response to Driver's accusation about being responsible for the death of Charlie Fields ("That – that wasn't my fault. I didn't … no – ") would probably not be admissible in court; Driver obviously had enough evidence by that point and was just looking to vent. Finally, Combs' attempt to kill Driver would be admissible evidence because it was an action, not a statement. The action would be admissible in terms of the murder of Bonnie Lewis as it helps show that Combs knew he was guilty, and it would be directly admissible in terms of the new charge of attempting to kill a police officer. How the Miranda Rights Evolved (back to top of article) The Miranda recitation arose from a re-evaluation of police procedures in the 1960s by the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Warren Berger. One problem was dealing with police brutality during interrogations. A report in the 1930s showed that the common police procedure was to assume a suspect's guilt and to beat a confession out of him; such procedures had softened by the 1960s but still occurred. The Supreme Court tried to prevent such police behavior through rulings that confessions had to be voluntary and not coerced to be admissible in court. But this bogged down the courts with litigation over whether a confession was voluntary or not, forcing the courts to look closely at what occurred in the interrogation room. The Supreme Court thus revisited the issue with the Miranda case, and in 1966 came up with a bright-line rule that would be easy for police to follow and that would cut down on evidentiary motions by defense lawyers. Basically, once a suspect has been taken into custody, he must be informed of his rights against self-incrimination if the police interrogation is to be used against him in court. At a minimum, the Court said, police must inform suspects of their rights under the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments (see the full text of them here). The Supreme Court hoped that police would come up with additional, more effective safeguards, but set this baseline as a minimum. The Miranda decision was criticized by police at the time, but actually became useful for law-enforcement, because it made showing that a confession was voluntary easier than before. Rather than having to explain the circumstances in detail each time, the police need only convince a suspect to sign a form indicating he had been told of his rights, and any subsequent statements were admissible. The main effect of Miranda and other court-imposed mandates in the 1960s was to force police culture to become more professional and regulated with new rules and requirements. Police adapted to those changes and some studies have shown that the number of confessions has, in fact, stayed the same or even increased since Miranda. Attempts to Undo the Miranda Requirement (back to top of article) Miranda remains the law of the land today, despite an attempt in the 1990s to argue that it had been superseded by Congress in 1968. In the wake of the Miranda decision, Congress passed a federal law that enabled the use in federal court of confessions that did not involve a recitation of rights and that would still be considered voluntary under the pre-Miranda case law. Law-enforcement did not invoke this provision for decades, but the issue arose in the 1990s and eventually reached the Supreme Court. In 2000, Chief Justice William Rehnquist upheld the Miranda requirements as a matter of constitutional law that Congress could not supersede in a 7-2 majority. But what would have happened if the Supreme Court had overruled Miranda? As far as interrogations go, arguably not much. Years before Miranda, the Court found that confessions must be voluntary in order to be admitted; the Miranda decision in some ways simply set out a presumption that any statement in an interrogation is voluntary if made after a suspect hears and understands the warnings. How Miranda Gets Applied (back to top of article) There are some nuances to the Miranda rights, most of which are based on the principle that Miranda's only purpose is to prevent police coercion during an interrogation. It does not guarantee that you fully understand the consequences of your confession, it does not mean that police have to give you the warning each time they speak to someone, and it does not mean that you have a right not to be stupid. For example : Miranda does not ensure that you are fully rational and properly motivated when you make a statement to the police. In the case of Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157 (1987), a defendant was given the Miranda warnings and then confessed, but later claimed that he had been compelled by inner voices to give the confession. The Supreme Court ruled that the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination is intended solely to prevent police coercion, nothing else, and the confession was admissible. Miranda only applies when a suspect is being interrogated. Interrogation is not the same as conversation, and the difference requires a determination by the courts. Did the police engage in express questioning or its functional equivalent? Should the police have known that their words or acts were reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from the subject? If the answers to these questions are no, then Miranda is not triggered. A leading case here is Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291 (1980). Undercover agents do not need to give Miranda warnings because the suspects are not being subjected to government coercion. Miranda simply prevents coerced questioning. The pressures of police-dominated atmosphere and government coercion do not exist when the undercover agent is maintaining his or her cover and thus has shown no authority. You can waive your Miranda rights without knowing the strength of the government's case against you or knowing of other circumstances. Your choice to waive your rights has to be voluntary and has to be made with a full awareness of the rights being waived, but it need not be fully-informed as to all relevant circumstances. See for example the Supreme Court case of Moran v Burbine, 475 U.S. 412 (1986). However, there is the possibility of a due process violation if extreme police conduct that transgresses against fundamental fairness. Even if police didn't give the Miranda recitation, they can use subsequent statements in some some ways. Usually, statements made after a Miranda recitation should have been given are inadmissible. But police can still use the statements to show that the suspect is lying at trial if he testifies and says something different. Police generally can still use evidence discovered as a result of the inadmissible statement (so-called "fruit of a poisonous tree"), and police can even get the confession into direct evidence if it was obtained in emergency circumstances. Sources: Stephen A. Saltzburg and Daniel J. Capra, American Criminal Procedure : Cases and Commentary (Fifth edition) (West Publishing Co., 1996). Supreme Court Cases are available on-line via Findlaw.com : Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), is on-line here, and Dickerson v. United States (2000) is on-line here. Height Requirements (last updated January 1, 2003) (back to top) The kinds of height requirements that frustrated Barbara Gordon's initial career plans are not simply annoying or sexist; they are probably discriminatory and illegal. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires "the removal of artificial, arbitrary and unnecessary barriers to employment when the barriers operate invidiously to discriminate on the basis of racial or other impermissible classification," as the Supreme Court majority wrote in a leading case on invalid job qualifications. Such illegal barriers can include height and weight requirements when they (a) would actually disqualify significantly more women than men, and (b) are not justified as having a "manifest relationship to the employment in question." Thus, the United States Supreme Court in 1977 upheld a ruling that an Alabama correctional facility violated Title VII by denying Dianne Rawlinson a job as a correctional counselor trainee because she did not meet a 120-pound weight requirement. A lower court first found that this weight requirement was discriminatory because it would exclude 22.29 percent of women and only 2.35 percent of men nationwide for the job; the corresponding height requirement of 5' 2'' was also discriminatory because it would exclude 33.29 percent of women and only 1.28 percent of men nationwide. The Alabama correctional facility claimed that the qualifications had a relationship to strength, but the court rejected this explanation as insufficient justification. If the job did require a certain degree of strength, then the employer should measure strength directly rather than using height and weight requirements as a proxy, the Supreme Court wrote. "Such a test, fairly administered, would fully satisfy the standards of Title VII because it would be one that 'measure[s] the person for the job and not the person in the abstract.' But nothing in the present record even approaches such a measurement," the Court wrote. The FBI, for the record, does not currently have any height or weight requirement for special agents. To qualify as a special agent, one must be a U.S. citizen, possess a valid driver's license, possess a degree from a four-year college or university, be between 23 and 47 years old when appointed, have good uncorrected vision and good hearing, and be "in excellent physical condition with no defects which would interfere in firearm use, raids, or defensive tactics." Finally, the mean height for women aged 20-29 in the United States from 1988 to 1994 was 5' 4.1'', whereas the mean height for similarly situated men was 5' 9.3''. Sources: Dothard v. Richardson, 433 U.S. 321 (1977), on-line here. Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424, on-line here. Information on job qualifications for FBI special agents was available via www.fbijobs.com. National height statistics are available from the Centers for Disease Control's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey here. Bruce Wayne : Felon (last updated February 15, 2003) (back to top) Bruce Wayne may not be a murderer, but he is probably still a felon. In the "Murderer" and Fugitive" storylines, now collected as graphic novels, Bruce Wayne was charged with murdering his former girlfriend, Vesper Fairchild. He and his bodyguard, Sasha Bordeaux, were put in custody. Wayne escaped in order to continue his work as Batman, leaving Sasha behind to be convicted of murder, and he did not re-appear in Gotham City as Bruce Wayne again until Cain, a professional assassin, confessed to the murder. The murder charges were dropped against Wayne, and his life returned to normal. Of course, things aren't that simple. In real life, you don't escape from custody without consequences, even if you're not guilty of the crime for which you were originally incarcerated or awaiting trial. In New York, for example, escaping from custody when charged with a crime like murder is a Class D felony under Penal Law 205.15. Sentences for such a crime usually run one to seven years, though a judge could take note of the nature and circumstances of the crime and history and character of the defendant and fix a term of one year or less. Maybe Wayne did get out of serving any jail time due to his standing in the community, but he certainly had to plea guilty to escaping. And what about Sasha? She was convicted of helping Bruce Wayne commit a murder, but Wayne was later recognized officially as not having committed the crime. Inconsistent verdicts where accompliaces are convicted but not the organizer are possible, but this one would not stand in real life. A defendant like Sasha can get a new trial based on newly-discovered evidence such as Cain's confession if the (1) the evidence was discovered after the trial, (2) the evidence could not have been discovered earlier with due diligence, (3) the evidence is material to the case and not simply cumulative, and (4) the evidence would likely produce an acquittal. Sasha would probably have her conviction thrown out and charges dropped. The only problem for her is that a government agency faked Sasha's death while in jail so that she could become a secret agent with a new identity. There is little point anymore to clearing Sasha's name, especially since she does not seem to have any family behind, so the courts may not bother hearing Wayne's petition on her behalf. Sources : Stephen A. Saltzburg and Daniel J. Capra, American Criminal Procedure : Cases and Commentary (Fifth edition) (West Publishing Co., 1996). Batman as an Urban Legend (last updated February 16, 2003) (back to top) Put aside the inconsistency in believing that people in the DC Universe still doubt Batman's existence while knowing of the Joker, Two-Face and even Superman. Why can't the Gotham City Police Department officially acknowledge Batman's existence? Batman himself has said that an air of mystery and uncertainty is necessary for what he does. But that isn't the best or even most likely reason if Batman operated in the real world. Public acknowledgement of Batman's existence would make Batman a de facto agent of the police, thus making all his actions subject to the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees that "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated." It might also make Batman subject to the Fifth Amendment, which prevents the police from getting coerced confessions. If that happened, Batman would have to change his actions considerably to fit within constitutionally-allowed guidelines. If he did not, the GCPD would either be liable for his actions or would have to refuse to cooperate with him. The GCPD might even have to try arresting him. The Fourth Amendment regulates how police investigate crimes by forcing them to justify their methods and procedures in each case. Police thus have to get warrants supported by "probable cause" or be under emergency conditions whenever they conduct a search or seize evidence; if their justifications are insufficient, courts exclude the resulting evidence from trial under the Exclusionary Rule adopted by the United States Supreme Court at the federal level since 1914 and at the state level since 1961. This hampers law-enforcement but preserves civil liberties; whether it's good or bad often depends on your personal view at the time. (The Supreme Court adopted the Exclusionary Rule in order to give some meat to the Fourth Amendment. Without such a rule, the Court explained in the 1961 case of Mapp v. Ohio, constitutional protections against bad searches and seizures would be just words, "valueless and undeserving of mention in a perpetual charter of inestimable human liberties," "so ephemeral ... as not to merit this Court's high regard as a freedom 'implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.'" However, critics say that there are other ways of regulating police behavior.) The Fourth Amendment normally does not apply to private individuals, but Batman could still be subject to it if courts recognized him as a de facto government agent. The standard for that is not so high; the United States Supreme Court held in 1989 that private railroad companies were subject to the Fourth Amendment when conducting drug tests because there were "clear indices of the Government's encouragement, endorsement and participation." Along those lines, Batman would probably be considered a government agent subject to the Fourth Amendment since he receives information and tips directly from the police. But if the courts simply assume Batman is an urban legend or conspiracy theory, Batman can collect evidence that the police cannot. Under a 1914 Supreme Court case, Burdeau v. McDowell, the Exclusionary Rule does not apply to private individuals who are not acting as de facto government agents, so criminals can be convicted with evidence seized by Batman. He can break into people's apartments and homes, he can use advanced surveillance equipment to spy on people, and he can place tracking devices and use wiretaps, and he can then turn over the evidence to the police to use to build their own case (they probably cannot use the evidence directly, since they would have a hard time explaining the chain of custody in court without admitting Batman's existence). Criminals, however, could try suing Batman for his violations of their civil rights. They would have a hard time serving him and bringing him to court given his secret identity, but the Supreme Court did acknowledge in Burdeau v. McDowell that criminals had a right of action against the private individuals who stole the papers that the government used as evidence against the criminals. Maybe that's why billionaire Bruce Wayne should never reveal his identity. As for the Fifth Amendment, it prevents police from coercing people into confessing. The Miranda rule, adopted by the United States Supreme Court in the 1966 case of Miranda v. Arizona, helps prevent police from doing so by making sure that police inform suspects held in custody of their rights before conducting an interrogation. But the Fifth Amendment does not apply if the suspect thinks he is talking to a private individual and it does not apply if the suspect is not in police custody, which means that Batman can get away with interrogations that would be clearly impermissible under the Constitution. Sources : Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966). Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U.S. 465 (1921). Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives Ass'n, 489 U.S. 602 (1989). Stephen A. Saltzburg and Daniel J. Capra, American Criminal Procedure : Cases and Commentary (Fifth edition) (West Publishing Co., 1996). For more on Batman as an urban legend, see Batman #584, as well as Gotham Central #2 and #5, and go here.			Marvel * Alias * Daredevil * Truth * The Ultimates * Ultimate X-Men * X-Men * X-Statix DC/Wildstorm * Batman * Green Lantern * Superman * Wildcats 3.0 Vertigo * Sandman * Y : The Last Man Other * CrossGen * Eagle * Queen & Country * Supernatural Law * Three Strikes All art is copyright their respective owners. Footnote Comics is a service mark of Stephen Lee. Newsaic and FootnoteTV are registered service marks of Stephen Lee.
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