Watching a ‘real-life’ cop show today, I saw a teenage girl talking with a detective in an interrogation room. I don’t know whether the girl had spoken to a lawyer or not yet (there was none present at the time), but she had given a few pieces of factual evidence to the detective: i.e. her whereabouts of the night in question, and the names/description of people with her. From what I gathered, the girl was not a principal in a crime, but may have been a direct witness to things.
My question, is can the police use these ‘leads’ and go question those in her company? Can they do this solely on the teenager’s answers, or must they have some other evidence to approach the other persons of interest? Does it matter if the teenager was a witness or a principal? Or, is all of this really dependent on the judge’s intepretation?
Tripler
And no, this is not an “Need Help Quick!” thread.
Cops don’t need anything to approach a person of interest. Now whether that person decides to talk to them, and what the cops can do if they don’t want to talk, is a different question.
The police can come and question you because they feel like it. They don’t need any reason at all, so, yes, they could go and question someone based on her answers.
That sort of encounter would be a “consensual encounter” with police – that is, the police would be free to approach a person and start asking questions, and that person would be free to disregard their questions and go about his business.
Information from witnesses is invaluable in solving crimes. The thing is, if a cop says to a kid, “You’re not in any trouble (unless you actually did ___). I just want to find out who actually did do it” – then they can’t turn that around to charge the kid as an accessory – it’s an informal form of transactional immunity, so far as I can tell.
As long as the girl was not in custody, they Miranda isn’t required and anything she says can be used.
On the other hand, if she should have been Mirandized and wasn’t, then any leads she gave could be tainted and what they lead to could be suppressed (what the courts call “fruit of the poisonous tree”).
How would she know if she was to be Mirandized or not? Ultimately she (as we all should know) should not talk to the police, but how would she/her/other lawyers know if she ought to be Mirandized–or is this something that would be determined by her participation as a witness or accessory/principal?
Tripler
I’m not a lawyer, but I want to play one on TV.
I was in an “interrogation room”. Actually it was more like a small generic office with a desk, three chairs, and a video camera up in the corner, and had a cop asking me all sorts of questions. Yup, it was an real interrogation, and no, not a soul advised me of my rights and I didn’t have/want/need a lawyer.
I had seen a guy climbing out of a window of a business he’d just burgled. The guy had tripped a silent alarm so a security guard arrived pretty quick and I waited around for the cops while the security guy checked things out. The cops decided to “take me downtown.” (aka: They asked me to follow them in my car.)
So I spent probably about a half-hour in the “interrogation room” providing as much information about the burglar as I could and they asked me more and more detailed questions (most of which I couldn’t answer because I wasn’t close enough).
I was never in custody, I was a material witness. So no need to advise me of any rights against incriminating myself. And as a material witness, they could and did use the information I provided to go and arrest the dimwit burglar.
Being informed of your Miranda rights is required when a person is subjected to a custodial interrogation, that is, when you are arrested and questioning is poised to begin. A person is in custody when “given [the circumstances surrounding the interrogation] . . . a reasonable person [would] have felt he or she was not at liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave.” Thompson v. Keohane, 516 U.S. 99, 112 (1995). Miranda warnings are based on one’s present situation, not whether one will be a witness or not. Nevertheless, since the remedy for Fourth Amendment violation is typically suppression of evidence, innocent illegal search and seizure victims will have no real recourse. Although Section 1983 affords a civil remedy, state actors, backed by qualified immunity, have a very strong defense in those suits.
Additionally, there are such creatures as the Terry stop, predicated on reasonable suspicion rather than the probable cause that must back an arrest, does not require Mirandizing. A Terry stop, the Court’s jurisprudence helpfully informs us, must necessarily be “brief.”
Most people being interrogated do not know this backstory, as you point out. As criminal procedure is littered with pitfalls for suspects, it might seem that some sort of information could usefully be given to suspects to ensure that their rights are protected. This is the rationale for the holding in Miranda (and why the Court calls it a “prophylactic rule”–it is designed to prevent constitutional abuses, but it itself is not a free-standing constitutional right). However, after United States v. Drayton (where the Court declined to command police to inform those they wanted to search of their right to refuse the officer permission to search), it seems that Miranda is the outer limit of prophylactic rules that the Court will constitutionalize.
Another facet to consider: who has the right/protected interest? If the police obtain evidence, it is (generally) up to the defendant to file a motion to exclude (or whatever remedy may be appropriate). However, if the defendant’s rights were not violated, there may not be sufficient grounds for the motion to succeed.
It is not that the defendant doesn’t have sufficient grounds, but rather, a defendant does not have standing to vindicate the Fourth Amendment rights of a third-party, however palpably unconstitutional the search/interrogation of that third-party might have been. That is, the defendant loses, there is no “maybe” about it.
So if the police arrested Mumbles Malone and started questioning him before they Mirandized him, and he tells them that he kidnapped the Lindburg baby and that Lemur866 helped him, Mumbles will have a good shot at getting that confession thrown out at HIS trial, but I won’t be able to get his confession thrown out at MY trial?
That’s only with respect to her. She has no constitutional right to refuse to answer questions about someone else’s wrong doing which can then be excluded from trial. She can’t be forced to admit to things about her own conduct.
What she says about what she saw someone else do is fair game. No standard of review disallows that: it’s not protected by patient-doctor, priest-penitent, or even husband-wife. Those only protect “discussions” not “I saw my wife barbecue the neighbor” type stuff.
Besides which is the fact that no one is required to “Mirandized” when being asked about another’s conduct.
You neglect one important requirement: if you’re going to be questioned about your own conduct. No one is entitled to a reading of Miranda when they’re a.) in forced custody, and b.) being asked about someone else’s conduct.
If they happen let slip that they broke laws while not being asked about it, that’s on them. But if the cops have no intention of questioning them about any illegal conduct they themselves have done, there’s no reason to “Mirandize” them.
Quite right. As the Court stated in Alderman v. United States, “[t]he established principle is that suppression of the product of a Fourth Amendment violation can be successfully urged only by those whose rights were violated by the search itself, not by those who are aggrieved solely by the introduction of damaging evidence. Coconspirators and codefendants have been accorded no special standing.” 394 U.S. 165, 171-72 (1969).
No, actually I didn’t. The reason I did not include that “requirement” is that it is not required under Miranda or its progeny that the interrogating officer ask you about your conduct. So long as the circumstances of interrogation would lead a reasonable person to conclude that he or she is not a liberty to leave, beyond that level of curtailment present in a Terry stop or a routine traffic stop (Berkemer v. McCarty. 468 U.S. 420 (1984)), Miranda warnings must be provided before commencing questioning.
Gotcha. So if someone kidnaps my 4 year old while I’m shopping at Target and drives off with her, I shouldn’t provide the license plate or description to the police until I’ve found an attorney to represent me.
