Robert M. Cipes

Without noticeable movement toward a meeting of minds, the American press and bar have been debating the conflict between a free press and the rigid to a fair trial. This article, try a lawyer and writer now based in Santa Barbara, will be part of THE CRIME WAR,to be published by New American Library, Mr. Cipes here examines the controversial Reardon Committee report of the American Bar Association and the press’s generally outraged and sometimes fatuous response to it.

“Coddling criminals” and “handcuffing the police” are the latest bitter charges aimed at the Supreme Court. In fact, the stormy course the Court has followed through its Escobedo and Miranda decisions is much simpler, if subtler, than most of its critics realize. Mr. Cipes, a lawyer, former federal prosecutor, and now attached to the Georgetown University Institute of Criminal Law and Procedure, charts the Court’s wary but determined progress toward guaranteeing the rights of the accused in the police interrogation room. The article is drawn from Mr. Cipes’s book THE CRIME WAR, to be published by New American Library in January.