Questioning criminal suspects who are not in custody does not require a Miranda advisal or waiver.
Robert Phillips
Robert Phillips
  • Ref # CAC00053
  • November 22, 2021

Questioning criminal suspects who are not in custody does not require a Miranda advisal or waiver.

CASE LAW
  • Miranda and the Non-Custodial Interrogation:
  • The Beheler Admonishment:
RULES

A Beheler admonishment, telling a suspect that he is not under arrest and is free to go, at least under the right circumstances, avoids the need to Mirandize a criminal suspect before questioning him.

FACTS

Defendant Robert William Potter had been sexually molested by an uncle when he was 12 or 13 years old.  He also engaged in “inappropriate sexual contact” with his brother and sister when he was still a child, and then again with his sister when he was a little older.  None of this, apparently, was ever revealed.  Defendant eventually married and had several children, including a daughter referred to here simply as “H.”  Over the first five years of H.’s life, defendant and his wife separated several times.  Once, in 2015 when H. was three years old, she’d told her mother that defendant had put his penis in her mouth (calling it the “popsicle game.”).  But H. refused to talk about it when interviewed by counselors at the “special assault forensic evaluation” ....

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