What is the significance of understanding the meaning of in custody interrogation

Restriction of movement supports a finding of custody. What time was it when the conversation took place? Was it the middle of the night? Or during the day? An interview at an odd hour may point to custody. How long did the questioning last? Longer interviews lean toward a finding of custody. What was the style of the interview? Were the questions accusatory or routine? An interviewer accusing the suspect of certain acts in a threatening manner may indicate a custodial situation.

Was the suspect free to leave at the end of the conversation? A "yes" answer tends to suggest that the suspect wasn't in custody. Reasonable Person Standard When considering the above questions in order to determine whether someone was in custody, most courts use what's called a reasonable person standard. Talk to a Lawyer Start here to find criminal defense lawyers near you. Practice Area Please select Zip Code. How it Works Briefly tell us about your case Provide your contact information Choose attorneys to contact you.

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In the event that the subject wishes to speak to a relative or an attorney, the following advice is tendered: "The interrogator should respond by suggesting that the subject first tell the truth to the interrogator himself rather than get anyone else involved in the matter. If the request is for an attorney, the interrogator may suggest that the subject save himself or his family the expense of any such professional service, particularly if he is innocent of the offense under investigation.

You can handle this by yourself. In essence, it is this: To be alone with the subject is essential to prevent distraction and to deprive him of any outside support. The aura of confidence in his guilt undermines his will to resist. He merely confirms the preconceived story the police seek to have him describe. Patience and persistence, at times relentless questioning, are employed. To obtain a confession, the interrogator must "patiently maneuver himself or his quarry into a position from which the desired objective may be attained.

It is important to keep the subject off balance, for example, by trading on his insecurity about himself or his surroundings. The police then persuade, trick, or cajole him out of exercising his constitutional rights. Even without employing brutality, the "third degree" or the specific stratagems described above, the very fact of custodial interrogation exacts a heavy toll on individual liberty and trades on the weakness of individuals.

This fact may be illustrated simply by referring to three confession cases decided by this Court in the Term immediately preceding our Escobedo decision. In Townsend v. Sain, U. The defendant in Lynumn v. This Court as in those cases reversed the conviction of a defendant in Haynes v. Washington, U. In other settings, these individuals might have exercised their constitutional rights. In the incommunicado police-dominated atmosphere, they succumbed.

In the cases before us today, given this background, we concern ourselves primarily with this interrogation atmosphere and the evils it can bring. In No. Arizona, the police arrested the defendant and took him to a special interrogation room where they secured a confession.

New York, the defendant made oral admissions to the police after interrogation in the afternoon, and then signed an inculpatory statement upon being questioned by an assistant district attorney later the same evening. United States, the defendant was handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation by local authorities after they had detained and interrogated him for a lengthy period, both at night and the following morning.

After some two hours of questioning, the federal officers had obtained signed statements from the defendant. Lastly, in No. Stewart, the local police held the defendant five days in the station and interrogated him on nine separate occasions before they secured his inculpatory statement.

In these cases, we might not find the defendants' statements to have been involuntary in traditional terms. Our concern for adequate safeguards to protect precious Fifth Amendment rights is, of course, not lessened in the slightest. In each of the cases, the defendant was thrust into an unfamiliar atmosphere and run through menacing police interrogation procedures. The potentiality for compulsion is forcefully apparent, for example, in Miranda, where the indigent Mexican defendant was a seriously disturbed individual with pronounced sexual fantasies, and in Stewart, in which the defendant was an indigent Los Angeles Negro who had dropped out of school in the sixth grade.

To be sure, the records do not evince overt physical coercion or patent psychological ploys. The fact remains that in none of these cases did the officers undertake to afford appropriate safeguards at the outset of the interrogation to insure that the statements were truly the product of free choice. It is obvious that such an interrogation environment is created for no purpose other than to subjugate the individual to the will of his examiner.

This atmosphere carries its own badge of intimidation. To be sure, this is not physical intimidation, but it is equally destructive of human dignity. The current practice of incommunicado interrogation is at odds with one of our Nation's most cherished principles - that the individual may not be compelled to incriminate himself. Unless adequate protective devices are employed to dispel the compulsion inherent in custodial surroundings, no statement obtained from the defendant can truly be the product of his free choice.

From the foregoing, we can readily perceive an intimate connection between the privilege against self-incrimination and police custodial questioning. It is fitting to turn to history and precedent underlying the Self-Incrimination Clause to determine its applicability in this situation.

We sometimes forget how long it has taken to establish the privilege against self-incrimination, the sources from which it came and the fervor with which it was defended.

Its roots go back into ancient times. Perhaps the critical historical event shedding light on its origins and evolution was the trial of one John Lilburn, a vocal anti-Stuart Leveller, who was made to take the Star Chamber Oath in The oath would have bound him to answer to all questions posed to him on any subject. He resisted the oath and declaimed the proceedings, stating: "Another fundamental right I then contended for, was, that no man's conscience ought to be racked by oaths imposed, to answer to questions concerning himself in matters criminal, or pretended to be so.

On account of the Lilburn Trial, Parliament abolished the inquisitorial Court of Star Chamber and went further in giving him generous reparation. The lofty principles to which Lilburn had appealed during his trial gained popular acceptance in England. These sentiments worked their way over to the Colonies and were implanted after great struggle into the Bill of Rights. Those who framed our Constitution and the Bill of Rights were ever aware of subtle encroachments on individual liberty.

They knew that "illegitimate and unconstitutional practices get their first footing. The privilege was elevated to constitutional status and has always been "as broad as the mischief against which it seeks to guard.

Hitchcock, U. We cannot depart from this noble heritage. Thus we may view the historical development of the privilege as one which groped for the proper scope of governmental power over the citizen.

As a "noble principle often transcends its origins," the privilege has come rightfully to be recognized in part as an individual's substantive right, a "right to a private enclave where he may lead a private life. That right is the hallmark of our democracy. Grunewald, F. We have recently noted that the privilege against self-incrimination - the essential mainstay of our adversary system - is founded on a complex of values, Murphy v. Waterfront Comm'n, U. Shott, U.

All these policies point to one overriding thought: the constitutional foundation underlying the privilege is the respect a government - state or federal - must accord to the dignity and integrity of its citizens.

To maintain a "fair state-individual balance," to require the government "to shoulder the entire load," 8 Wigmore, Evidence McNaughton rev. Chambers v. In sum, the privilege is fulfilled only when the person is guaranteed the right "to remain silent unless he chooses to speak in the unfettered exercise of his own will.

Hogan, U.