Many people have heard of their Miranda rights due to the popular trope in movies and shows featuring police officers.
However, you may not actually understand how your Miranda rights work. You may not know the purpose of these rights in real life, or what giving up these rights can mean.
What is your right to remain silent?
According to Miranda Warning, your Miranda rights could provide you with important protections. First, they protect your right to remain silent. But what exactly does this mean?
In short, it protects you from accidental self-incrimination by allowing you to refuse to speak to police until you have legal counsel present.
Officers may attempt to convince you that you seem guiltier by invoking your Miranda rights. However, innocent people can and have accidentally incriminated themselves in cases in the past because they do not know how to interact with law enforcement.
In order to avoid falling into this same predicament, it is simply better to wait for legal counsel to represent your thoughts in the appropriate way.
Your legal counsel
This brings up the second right that your Miranda rights protect: your right to legal counsel, i.e. an attorney. Not everyone has the money to afford hiring a private attorney, and the state recognizes this.
Thus, your Miranda rights provide you with a guaranteed attorney, which the state will provide if you cannot afford one on your own.
Together, these rights can provide you with what you need to face questioning with dignity and knowledge of how the interrogation may thusly proceed.