Many business executives believe if they have done nothing wrong, they should agree to be interviewed by law enforcement if requested to do so as part of an internal or criminal investigation. Experienced white collar attorneys know better; even the truly innocent have much more to lose than they can gain by agreeing to be interviewed without the assistance of counsel. The risks business executives face during law enforcement interviews increased this June when the United States Supreme Court effectively expanded law enforcement officers’ rights to obtain incriminating evidence through custodial interviews.
In Berghuis v. Thompkins, 560 U.S. ___ 2010 (No. 08-1470, June Term, 2010), the court considered the common situation where law enforcement officers have advised the suspect of his/her right to maintain silent (the Miranda warnings), the suspect is aware of their right to remain silent, but does not explicitly state she/he will either invoke or waive these rights. The Supreme Court held suspects must unambiguously invoke Miranda to prevent subsequent statements from being offered as evidence in court proceedings. This means passively listening to Miranda warnings without explicitly claiming the right to remain silent or demanding to speak to lawyer before making a statement would allow law enforcement officers to later testify at trial concerning statements made during the custodial interview.
Miranda was intended to protect individuals from the coercive effects of law enforcement interrogations. This ruling makes the failure to invoke Miranda essentially an explicit waiver of the right to remain silent and/or have the assistance of counsel during an interview.
Tags: Berghuis v. Thompson, custodial interviews, internal investigation, Miranda warnings
………In its the Supreme Court ruled today that a suspect must unambiguously state his or her desire to invoke their Miranda rights referring to the right to remain silent in this case in order for those rights to be protected..This case came to the Supreme Court after the lower courts conflicted on whether a confessional statement from a suspect who remained mostly silent throughout a three plus hour police investigation was valid in court..Specifically in this case the suspect Van Chester Thompkins offered little verbal response throughout his interrogation but three hours into his interrogation he implicated himself in the crime by giving an affirmative answer to one of the officers questions. He later tried to revoke his confessional statement by stating that he was using his right to remain silent hence why he was so quiet throughout the rest of the interrogation…Mister Thompkins remained almost entirely silent in the face of three hours of interrogation though he did say that his chair was hard and that he did not want a peppermint. .The and that use of that right must be explicitly indicated by the suspect.