In case you haven’t heard, a Utah nurse was arrested for refusing to allow a police phlebotomist without a warrant to draw blood from an unconscious patient.
Video shows her being placed under arrest and put into a police car. Why did the officer not read her the Miranda rights? Did he violate procedure by failing to do so?
News accounts said she was not charged. What is the difference being placed under arrest, and charged? Doesn’t the officer have to specify what law you are violating to be able to arrest you?
Despite what every episode of Law & Order shows, it’s not necessary to read someone their rights immediately upon being arrested. It is necessary to read them before interrogating them, if you want that information to be admissible in court.
People are arrested frequently without being formally charged. The standard is probable cause. To make an arrest, a police officer needs to be able to point to facts/observations that make him believe a crime has probably been committed. Upon further investigation, it may turn out that no crime has been committed. In that case, the person will be released.
The officer in this case wrongly believed that he had implied consent to draw blood, and therefore the nurse was obstructing his duties, which is a crime. Upon further investigation, it turned out that this officer was just a dickhead.
While you’re correct that the arresting officer was a stupid dickhead, he was smart enough to know he was too stupid to have a clue. The arrest was ordered by his supervisor, also a stupid dickhead.
Both dickheads, I guess, will be punished with paid vacation.
It is probably a violation of department procedure, but it doesn’t make any difference. As friedo notes, it only affects admissibility of any statement.
However, the Miranda rights to more than just ensure statements are voluntary. There is also the “you have a right to an attorney” part. There are often advantages to knowing that, regardless of your intent to incriminate yourself.
Washington State, and probably others, require advising people of this right upon arrest.
Again, I’m not sure what the remedy would be if you’re never charged.
Just to expand on this a little , it’s not at all uncommon for someone to be arrested without any interrogation happening. Sure, in the cases you see on TV shows, people who are arrested get interrogated all the time. Because no one would watch a TV show where people were being arrested for minor crimes that don’t really require investigation and it’s a waste of time to interrogate someone if you don’t need information form them. Leaving aside all other aspects of this case, the nurse was never going to be interrogated. Simply because there was no need to get any admission/confession/other information regarding the charges from her after her arrest. If what she did* had* been a crime, the cops would have witnessed all of it
If nvestigations after the arrest revealed for eg that the nurse knew the driver socially and personally then her actions would be construed as obstructing a police officer. There would then have been an interrgation before which her right to silence would have been read out.
The police officer being blamed and called a ‘dickhead’ on this thread has no way of knowing what if the nurse was wilfully obstructing him for the reason given above or just applying the hospital rules. So an arrest was not unjustified.
The officer could have been aware of and followed the actual law, instead of arresting a nurse for following the actual law in this case. If he was aware of the actual law, he wouldn’t have attempted the illegal blood draw that he arrested the nurse for preventing. The arrest was grossly and obviously unjustified.
IANAL, but I thought you only had to be given access to an attorney before the police question you, and before you are charged (if you ask for one). If they never question you and never charge you, you don’t get access.
IOW they can arrest you, cuff you, put you in the back of the squad car, take you to the station, book you, take your possessions, put you into a holding cell, and if you say anything at all they can use it against you. If they decide to release you without charging you, your Miranda rights have not been violated.
Actually she was shown on camera showing the officer a written version of hospital policy. Also, the officer’s actions violated U.S. constitutional law based on a 2016 Supreme Court decision as well as Utah state law. So this excuse doesn’t hold water.
In Washington (and probably other places), they are required to inform you of your right to an attorney as soon as possible once you’re in custody, whether they intend to interrogate you or not. No mention of what happens if they don’t. The *Miranda *decision discusses the use of statements you made while in custody and in response to questioning, but that’s not the only issue in play.
That is part of the Rules of Criminal Procedure, so you don’t have a remedy if you’re never charged, since the Rules don’t come into play. I suppose you could bring a civil suit, but what are your damages?
I don’t know in practical terms but I would think this would be considered harassment since there was no legitimate legal reason to arrest her. This was not probable cause, this was ignorance of the law.
As I recall from the original news story, the Detective involved was a “trained police phlebotomist” and this is a regular part of his job, so there is little excuse for him not knowing the specific laws which pertain to the subject.
Probable cause to detain I thought. However, if the LEO is not aware of the law then it’s a moot point. I find it all very odd as LEO’s usually have to go through routine trainings to maintain their awareness of any changes to law, policy, procedure, etc. There’s no way in the past ten years that the law governing the this and the agreement between the hospital and precinct from last year wasn’t covered. The attendance of those trainings are usually documented, so, there’s probably a paper trail that he attended.
As already posted, legally one has to be in custody AND being questioned before Miranda is mandatory. Even in those places/departments where it’s required no matter what I’m sure there is a grace period of time on it. The scenes you see on TV where officers are fighting to get the cuffs on, huffing and puffing, yet reciting Miranda is nonsense. Doesn’t work that way.
Without defending the officer in this specific case, it’s not the nurses place to do that at that moment. Even if it doesn’t stick an officer can arrest arrest for obstructing what he believes is his lawful order, not what you believe it is. The time to argue things like this is after the fact. If the officer is wrong the egg ends up on his face.
An assistant DA would have told the officer the actual law, which he was not interested in following. I listened to the full 22 minute tape several times & you hear the officers make several disturbing comments: 1. The know they don’t have probable cause to get a warrant to draw blood; 2. Threatening to arrest the nurse if she doesn’t allow the blood draw, even though if she complied she would be violating federal HIPAA laws, which could cost her her job, nursing license & a lot of $$$. “I’m either leaving with vials or a body in tow”. 3. The cop’s supervisor can be heard on the phone telling the cop to tell her she’s getting arrested if she doesn’t comply, even though he acknowledges that a ‘they can’t make an arrest stick’, yet tells the nurse directly that she is guilty of obstruction of justice. 4. In frustration over the hospital’s refusal to break the law, the officers are discussing ‘what happens in other cases like this’, the cop says ‘No one’s ever taken it this far’ insinuating that they routinely bully hospital staff into breaching patients’ rights. 5. After they unhandcuff her, the thug cop, who also drives an ambulance part time, says he’ll retaliate by only bringing indigent patients to this hospital & funneling “good patients” elsewhere.
The police dept did nothing after this incident & the cops were on active duty up until the nurse’s lawyer released the video to the media last week. The entire situation reeks of systemic corruption on every level.
Can certainly see how that would be true for a random bystander getting in the cop’s way. This was however a patient under that nurse’s care, doesn’t that change the situation?
In your opinion, where does that end? It appears that the officer wanted the nurse to draw the blood - I say that both because a couple of articles said that he wanted her to draw the blood and because after watching the video it is not possible to believe that she physically prevented him from drawing the blood himself. Is it also not her place to refuse to stop treating another patient so that she can work on a less severely injured officer if an officer orders her to? Is it her place to refuse to follow an officer’s order to give a patient Haldol? This guy might have arrested her for not following those orders as well. It’s impossible to say that it’s not the nurse’s place to protect her patient without saying that the officer has the right to tell medical staff what to do.
Might it have been easier for the nurse to follow his instructions?Maybe. If you leave out the part where she is violating HIPAA, may lose her license and may be committing a crime herself. Because lets not forget, she would have been sticking that needle into the patient without consent and with no medical purpose.