The Supreme Court's latest ruling on the Miranda warning left no room for misinterpretation. The unanimous decision reaffirming the importance of reciting legal rights to suspects before trying to wrest confessions from them is reassuring.

Out of thousands of cases to reach the high court invoking the Miranda ruling on appeal, few are heard. But the Supreme Court took the unlikely test case of a convicted drug defendant who filed his own appeal without an attorney to further clarify the 1966 landmark ruling.

Four years ago John Fellers sat in his Nebraska home and talked with police officers. He recognized one of them. Both had volunteered at a hospital.

Fellers, who had been indicted on drug charges before the officers went to his house, spoke freely with police about getting into drugs after the breakup of his marriage and business problems. He says officers did not specifically say they were there to arrest him.

Only after he was taken to jail was Fellers warned of his right to remain silent, that anything he said might be used against him, and that a lawyer would be appointed to represent him if he couldn't afford to hire one.

That was too late to read the suspect his so-called Miranda rights, wrote Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for the 9-0 court.

She said Fellers, who was sentenced to more than 12 years in federal prison after being convicted of conspiring to distribute methamphetamine, was entitled to know he could see an attorney. The Bush Administration had sided with law enforcement in urging the Supreme Court to reject Fellers' appeal. It argued that the discussion at Fellers' house was not an interrogation. Call it what you will, Justice O'Conner appeared to suggest, but "there is no question that the officers in this case deliberately elicited information" from Fellers, who's now serving time in a Minnesota prison.

University of Texas law professor Susan Klein said it's not unusual for police to try to elicit a confession from an off-guard suspect. But the Fellers decision, she says, means they "can no longer intentionally circumvent Miranda by questioning first, getting a statement, then saying, 'Oh by the way, now that you've spilled the beans, here's your rights.'<0x2009>"

The right to counsel is a vital Sixth Amendment protection. It can be waived by the accused but it cannot be withheld by the accusers.

First Published January 30, 2004, 11:07 a.m.