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To: Meet the New Boss
I completely get your point on this, but I simply can't imagine a defense attorney successfully arguing that there is no ongoing public safety threat when the police are finding his, and his brother's, bombs all over the place.

I think there really is a public safety reason to ask this punk some questions, especially since we don't want some explosives in a storage unit to go undiscovered until they blow up and kill someone.

If the police then discover evidence in said theoretical storage unit packed with explosives that implicates other parties, again, I can't imagine a successful argument that it was fruit of the poisoned tree.

Police presently have every reason to believe there may be additional explosives out there. If they Mirandize him, they cannot (for court purposes) ask him any questions because he is in distress (injured, drugged, etc.) or, even if they do, any subsequent evidence they find could not be used against future implicated parties.

I've had many cases where I employed the public safety exception, to great effect, particularly with firearms used in violent felonies.

103 posted on 04/19/2013 8:13:03 PM PDT by 101stAirborneVet
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To: 101stAirborneVet

Okay, so you let’s say you DON’T mirandize the kid.

And you ask him, and he mumbles something about a storage locker. You send other officers and EOD to open the locker. There are no devices in there, but there are a whole lot of written notebooks detailing the planning for the crime, naming other accomplices to the crime, and a whole bunch of stuff - a veritable gold mine for the prosecuting attorneys.

Except later, the defense moves to exclude all of that — it turns out what the perp claims he mumbles to you was “there are no bombs in the locker but my notebooks are in a locker at...” Some leftwing nutbag Obama-appointed judge denies your public safety exception.

So all that stuff is excluded. And now the best the prosecutors can argue is that investigators had an independent source of that evidence - they would have found it anyway. Is that gonna fly? Maybe, maybe not.

As I say, this college kid ALREADY KNOWS he doesn’t have to talk to police. He’s seen a thousand cop shows in his life. You gain nothing by not mirandizing him.


108 posted on 04/19/2013 8:22:19 PM PDT by Meet the New Boss
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