Understanding your Miranda rights may not seem like something you will ever have to worry about.
However, no one can live with entire certainty that they will never need to know how their Miranda rights work.
Your right to remain silent
Miranda Warning discusses your Miranda rights. Many people have knowledge of these crucial rights only through their use in popular media and culture, i.e. police shows and true crime shows.
Your Miranda rights protect two crucial things: your right to an attorney and your right to remain silent, which is the most well-known right protection.
Your right to remain silent allows you to avoid answering questions or giving information during police questioning or interrogation. In other words, they cannot force you to answer them or engage in conversation.
Your right to legal counsel
Your right to an attorney guarantees that you have professional legal representation rather than having to represent yourself. This is good because attorneys know how to navigate conversations with police much better than the average citizen.
The police may try to talk you out of invoking your rights by saying that only guilty people utilize them. This is far from true, however. Anyone can accidentally incriminate themselves by simply saying or doing the wrong things in a police interrogation.
Invoking your Miranda rights is one of the best ways to protect you from this possibility. However, remember to actually remain silent after invoking the right to remain silent. Officers can still use anything you say against you, and often will.