In a landmark 1966 ruling, the United States Supreme Court held in Miranda v. Arizona that police in Phoenix, Arizona, must inform suspects of their constitutional rights — including the right to remain silent and to have legal counsel — before conducting custodial interrogations. The ruling established that statements made without these warnings could not be used as evidence in court. It fundamentally reshaped evidence-gathering procedures for police interrogations across the United States and became a cornerstone of constitutional criminal procedure.

Miranda warnings entered everyday American language and culture immediately after the ruling, becoming a staple of crime fiction, film, and television. The ruling represented a decisive moment in the literary and cultural conversation about the coercive gathering of evidence and the rights of the accused — themes central to the civil rights poetry of the 1960s. Writers including Amiri Baraka and Nikki Giovanni engaged with police power and the rights of Black Americans in ways directly relevant to the Miranda context.