Search Result: Miranda Law

"Interrogation" has been defined by the Supreme Court to include both direct questioning and its "functional equivalent." What does this term mean? Three Supreme Court cases and numerous decisions from the federal appeals court have considered this question.

The Constitution does not forbid you to talk to a person just because that person has an attorney, or just because the attorney tells you not to do it. Instead, the law focuses on whether the suspect is willing to talk without his or her attorney present.

If a suspect wants to assert either his right to counsel or his right to silence, it is up to him to do so, unequivocally and unambiguously.

The genesis of the Miranda warnings can be traced to March 13, 1963, when Ernesto Arturo Miranda was arrested by officers of the Phoenix Police Department for stealing $4 from a bank worker and for the kidnap and rape of another woman.

Miranda warnings are triggered by a simple formula: Custody + Interrogation = The requirement for Miranda warnings. A motorist is not in "custody" for Miranda purposes when he or she is detained for an ordinary traffic stop.

The Edwards rule applies to all officers and all cases - not just to the case on which the suspect invoked the right to counsel.

One indication of the enduring misunderstanding of the Miranda jurisprudence is the fact that after 44 years, state and federal courts continue to litigate the adequacy of dozens of variations of the particular wording used by officers - and continue to get reversed by the Supreme Court.

Give Miranda warnings just before commencement of apparent custodial police interrogation-not sooner. Leave Hollywood tactics to the actors.

Devallis Rutledge, author of POLICE Magazine's Point of Law articles, discusses what officers need to know about how the Supreme Court's Kansas v. Ventris and Montejo v. Louisiana rulings have affected the way officers must conduct interrogations lawfully under the Sixth Amendment. You can also read the original articles "Sixth Amendment Revisited" from the July 2009 issue and "Sixth Amendment Waivers" from August 2009.

It will now be possible for law enforcement officers to attempt to obtain a waiver and an admissible statement from a defendant without running afoul of the Sixth Amendment.

Because warnings are only required prior to custodial interrogation, one way to minimize the adverse impact of Miranda on investigations is to try to conduct interrogations whenever possible in non-custodial settings.

Notwithstanding the explosion of youth criminality, the court has largely continued to treat juvenile offenders in a more lenient and paternalistic fashion than adults.

Ever since the 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Massiah v. U.S., it has been the rule that any statements about a crime that were deliberately elicited from the suspect by a government official or undercover agent, after the Sixth Amendment right to counsel had “attached” and been asserted, could not be used at trial to prove guilt.

How many times have you heard the expression "PC for the stop"? How about the application of Miranda once the suspect is "not free to leave?" These are common examples of improper mixing that can undercut the case against a guilty perpetrator.

One of the most troublesome legal issues in law enforcement is the question of when an officer may resume discussions with a suspect after some kind of Miranda "history" has occurred. The answer is, "It all depends."

In many instances, the suspect in a cold case turns out to be someone who is serving time for another crime. What are the considerations for conducting custodial interrogation of such a prisoner, insofar as Miranda and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel are concerned?

When custodial interrogation is imminent and it's time to give the suspect a Miranda warning, what exactly do you have to say? The answer is, nothing exactly. The U.S. Supreme Court, which created the necessity of a warning of rights and a waiver as prerequisites to the prosecutorial use of a statement obtained through custodial interrogation, has never held that any precise wording is required.