Waiver of Miranda Rights.

Question

Description

evaluating whether a criminal suspect for competence. For this writing assignment, you will specifically attempt to create a measure for assessing competence to waive one's Miranda rights. Write 10 to 20 questions that you, as a clinical psychologist, could ask a defendant to determine whether they are competent to waive their Miranda rights. You may also describe activities you could do with the suspect that would help you assess competence.

For each question, also offer a brief explanation of how that question helps you arrive at a judgment of competency.

Ensure that your questions are for Miranda rights rather than some other competency issue. If your questions do not generally have to do with Miranda-related competency, you should expect a low grade.

Tips: It may help to review the psychological abilities associated with competency questions (on page 223). A good evaluation will cover several of the psychological abilities related to competency. Remember that you may be interviewing someone with a low IQ, so keep your questions understandable. In general, closed-ended questions are bad, and you should especially avoid leading questions.

Here is an example question that is very good, but you may not use in your response:

"Why do you think that a person talking to the police might want to have a lawyer with them?" This question assesses not only understanding by examining whether they understand the role of an attorney, but also gets at the reasoning ability in competence by allowing them to evaluate the relevancy of an attorney's presence: weighing the advantages and disadvantages of having an attorney to prevent self-incrimination versus how it may appear to the interrogators to seek an attorney.