Questioning Detainees
Last updated
Last updated
n most cases, the fastest way for officers to confirm or dispel their suspicion is to pose questions to the detainee and, if any, his companions. Thus, after noting that such questioning is “the great engine of the investigation,” the Court of Appeal observed in People v. Manis:
When circumstances demand immediate investigation by the police, the most useful, most available tool for such investigation is general on-the-scene questioning designed to bring out the person’s explanation or lack of explanation of the circumstances which aroused the suspicion of the police, and enable the police to quickly determine whether they should allow the suspect to go about his business or hold him to answer charges. 143
Detainees cannot, however, be required to answer an officer’s questions. For example, in Ganwich v. Knapp the Ninth Circuit ruled that officers acted improperly when they told the detainees that they would not be released until they started cooperating. Said the court, “[I]t was not at all reasonable to condition the plaintiffs’ release on their submission to interrogation.” 144
Although detainees are not free to leave, a Miranda waiver is not ordinarily required because the circumstances surrounding most detentions do not generate the degree of compulsion to speak that the Miranda procedure was designed to alleviate. 145 “The comparatively nonthreatening character of detentions of this sort,” said the Supreme Court, “explains the absence of any suggestion in our opinions that [detentions] are subject to the dictates of Miranda.” 146
A Miranda waiver will, however, be required if the questioning “ceased to be brief and casual” and had become “sustained and coercive,” 147 or if there were other circumstances that would have caused a reasonable person in the suspect’s position to believe that he was under arrest. As the U.S. Supreme Court pointed out in Berkemer v. McCarty:
If a motorist who has been detained pursuant to a traffic stop thereafter is subjected to treatment that renders him “in custody” for practical purposes, he will be entitled to the full panoply of protections prescribed by Miranda. 148
The question arises: Is a waiver required if the detainee is in handcuffs? In most cases, the answer is yes because handcuffing is much more closely associated with an arrest than a detention. 149 But because the issue is whether a reasonable person would have concluded that the handcuffing was “tantamount to a formal arrest,”150 it is arguable that a handcuffed detainee would not be “in custody” if, (1) it was reasonably necessary to restrain him, (2) officers told him that he was not under arrest and that the handcuffing was merely a temporary safety measure, and (3) there were no other circumstances that reasonably indicated he was under arrest.151
A further question: Is a suspect “in custody” for Miranda purposes if he was initially detained at gunpoint? It appears not if, (1) the precaution was warranted, (2) the weapon was reholstered before the detainee was questioned, and (3) there were no other circumstances that indicated the detention had become an arrest. As the court said in People v. Taylor, “Assuming the citizen is subject to no other restraints, the officer’s initial display of his reholstered weapon does not require him to give Miranda warnings before asking the citizen questions.”152
Until last year, one of the most hotly debated issues in the law of detentions (especially traffic stops) was whether a detention becomes an arrest if officers prolonged the stop by questioning the detainee about matters that did not directly pertain to the matter upon which reasonable suspicion was based. Although some courts would rule that all off-topic questioning was unlawful, most held that such questioning was allowed if it did not prolong the stop (e.g., the officer questioned the suspect while writing a citation or while waiting for warrant information), or if the length of the detention was no longer than “normal.”153
In 2009, however, the Supreme Court resolved the issue in the case of Arizona v. Johnson when it ruled that unessential or off-topic questioning is permissible if it did not “measurably extend” the duration of the stop. Said the Court, “An officer’s inquiries into matters unrelated to the justification for the traffic stop do not convert the encounter into something other than a lawful seizure, so long as those inquiries do not measurably extend the duration of the stop.”154 Although decided before Johnson, the case of United States v. Childs contains a good explanation of the reasons for this rule:
Questions that hold potential for detecting crime, yet create little or no inconvenience, do not turn reasonable detention into unreasonable detention. They do not signal or facilitate oppressive police tactics that may burden the public—for all suspects (even the guilty ones) may protect themselves fully by declining to answer.155
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