Jacqueline Crowley, a partner in the law practice of Farkas & Crowley of West Palm Beach, Florida, explains the purpose of the Miranda Rights Warning, which is more about questioning and interrogation than related to an arrest.

Both attorneys, Adam Farkas and Jacqueline Crowley have experience and strong legal backgrounds. Together they serve their clients, and as Jacqueline says, you are getting two lawyers for the price of one.

Transcript: 

” No. I think that that’s a very common misunderstanding about the law. Everybody hears that the second that you’re placed in those handcuffs or you’re placed under arrest that the next thing that the police officer should do is read those Miranda rights. Often times, it happens that way because it’s best practice if an officer is going to ask questions.

Basically, the purpose of your Miranda rights is with regard to any custodial interrogation, meaning that once you’re in custody, not free to leave, not necessarily in handcuffs but in a situation where one would feel that they’re not free to leave and walk away from a police officer or a group of police officers, and they begin asking you questions, questions that could lead to incriminating evidence, that could illicit an incriminating response. That’s really what your Miranda rights deal with is your right to remain silent. I mean, that’s what everybody hears.

If a police officer knows that they’re just putting you under arrest and they’re going to stay completely quiet; they’re not going to ask you any questions, they do not have to Mirandize you. If you’re sitting in the back of a police car—we see this a lot—all of that is recorded. There’s recording going on in the back of the police car, and you’ll hear people in the back just yapping away saying different things, being argumentative with the police officers, making different statements. All of those statements can be used against that person, even without having been read Miranda, as long as that police officer did not ask a question or did not do anything to elicit that answer.

You’ll hear it phrased as a spontaneous statement or a spontaneous utterance, that the defendant spontaneously said such and such. That’s to trigger or give the indication that it wasn’t based on a law enforcement question. It wasn’t interrogation. The need for Miranda never came into play.

Your Miranda rights really don’t have all that much to do with arrest. They have to do with interrogation, and another important thing to note about that is you could find yourself in a situation where Miranda should have been read. You were never actually under arrest, but a person similarly situated, a reasonable person that was in your situation would feel that they had to option but to speak to the police, or they had no right to walk away and leave.

The most common types of situations where the case law really supports that is really dealing with situations where there’s a lot of law enforcement around. There’s some type of feeling that you can’t leave. An example of which might if they ask for your identification and they’re still in possession of your document, so you can’t leave. You’re not going to leave until somebody gives you your things back.

I’m not going to get into it, but there’s various examples of those types of situations where you’re not technically under arrest but you’re in a custodial situation. It’s just important to note. You’ll get those phone calls where people will say I was arrested. Nobody read me Miranda or nobody read me my rights. I’m going to get off this case.

That’s not true. That’s not what triggers Miranda. If in fact an arrest occurs and Miranda should have been read or your rights to remain silent should have been noted because they were going to ask you questions, the only thing that would then happen is that they would be precluded from using those statement later, but it would not mean that your case is getting thrown away. It would not mean the entire arrest gets thrown away.”