I understand, which is why I defined person of suspect as a person who may have knowledge, without being involved in the crime itself.
I only said that it often means suspect, but they can’t formally call the person that unless they have proof that they can call him that.
The term itself does not mean suspect. It’s just most of the time the person of interest becomes a suspect, statistically speaking.
Legally speaking you are just wrong. The police saw him running away and put his photo out. They aren’t looking for him because they think he may have seen something.
There are subjects, witnesses, suspects and charged/accused. These is no weasel category where we clearly think this person was the likely offender, but golly we aren’t sure we can call him a suspect. The instant you believe someone is anything other than a pure witness, they are a suspect. Suspects might get cleared and other times they get charged.
And when they find this “person of interest” and arrest him with a SWAT team and cuff and search him, that tells the court they thought he was involved. They had better have read him his rights before the interrogation.
Person of interest as a PIO word. It literally became famous in pop culture when the FBI was using it against Richard Jewell. They had 100% formed the opinion that he was the Olympic Park bomber. They were sweating him, following him around, making a big show about parking in front of his house, release Tempus name to the press…. Everything. It’s a legal fiction for the FBI to have pretended he was not a suspect. He was THE suspect.
No different than the term person of color, minor attracted person, etc. But Person of Interest has no legal meaning not covered by the original categories. Even DOJ does not claim that.