Beheler Admonishments and the Non-Custodial Interrogation

Beheler Admonishments and the Non-Custodial Interrogation

Robert C. Phillips
Deputy District Attorney (Ret.)
October, 2015

            Thirty-three years ago, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case decision of California v. Beheler[1] that merely because a person is questioned concerning his or her possible involvement in criminal conduct does not necessarily invoke the advisement and waiver requirements of Miranda v. Arizona.[2]  Whether or not such “un-Mirandized” questioning is permissible, thus allowing for the suspect’s responses to be available to the prosecution for admission into evidence, depends upon whether the suspect was “in custody” at the time in issue, as “custody” is defined by Miranda and its progeny.[3]  

Determining whether a suspect is in custody requires an evaluation of the “objective circumstances of the interrogation, not on the subjective views harbored by either the interrogating officers or the person being questioned.”[4]  Rather, it depends upon “how a reasonable man (or woman) in the suspect’s shoes would have understood his (or her) situation.”[5]  An individual is in custody for the purposes of Miranda if he or she is “deprived of his (or her) freedom in any significant way or is led to believe, as a reasonable person, that he (or she) is so deprived.”[6] 

Based upon this legal reasoning, law enforcement has developed the practice of attempting to ....

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