How have courts interpreted the Miranda rights in the context of criminal cases?

The fourth case of this sequence is People v. Burton (1971) 6 Cal.3d 375, 99 Cal.Rptr. 1, 491 P.2d 793. There a juvenile was arrested and taken to the police station. He asked to see his father, who had arrived at the station during the booking process, but permission was denied. Thereafter the police carefully explained to the juvenile his Miranda rights; he waived them, and subsequently confessed to assault and murder.

The ensuing convictions were reversed. We reasoned that the juvenile's request to see his father should have been deemed an invocation of his privilege against self-incrimination and should have been respected even though made prior to the Miranda warnings. The failure of the police to terminate the interrogation at that time rendered the confession inadmissible "even though it was subsequently preceded by a knowing and intelligent waiver of the privilege, as we held under identical circumstances in Fioritto, Ireland and Randall, because: 'After the initial assertion of the privilege, the defendant is entitled to be free of police-initiated attempts to interrogate him. Any statements made by a defendant in response to such questioning cannot be characterized as voluntary.' (People v. Randall, supra, 1 Cal.3d 948, 958, 83 Cal.Rptr. 658, 664, 464 P.2d 114, 120.)" (Id. at p. 384, 99 Cal.Rptr. at p. 6, 491 P.2d at p. 798.)