Are federal agents not required to Mirandize suspects?

Factual Questions
1

I was reading coverage in my local paper of a recent Supreme Court ruling (Corley v. U.S., IIRC) which held that confessions from suspects must be obtained in the first six hours to be admissible in federal court. The article noted in passing that the ruling only applies to federal courts and that state and local courts are covered by the Miranda ruling. Does that mean that federal agents are not required to Mirandize suspects?

Thanks,
Rob

2

Nope. As far as I can tell, the Supreme Court in 1957 decided that if a person who was arrested was not presented promptly before a magistrate, any confession made during the delay was inadmissible. In 1968, Congress passed a law which said that confessions made within six hours of arrest could not be excluded simply because of the delay. That law apparently was open to multiple interpretations of delays longer than 6 hours - some federal courts automatically excluded them and others didn’t, and that situation led to Corley. Federal agents have the same Miranda requirements as state and local law enforcement -I don’t know why the newspaper article even mentioned Miranda.

3

Miranda was mentioned because the issue decided in the ruling was part of the U.S. Code, and does not apply to state and local courts. In judging the admissibility of a confession, these courts (and law enforcement agencies in their jurisdictions) need only consider Miranda rights, whereas federal courts (and agents) must consider both Miranda and Mallory.