Abstract
Interrogating officers need only issue Miranda warnings in “custodial” settings, and a significant degree of psychological coercion makes a setting custodial. This Article asks a question at the heart of Miranda caselaw: Have courts applied Miranda’s custody trigger consistent with people’s real experiences of police questioning? If not, courts are allowing, and justifying, the admission of unwarned self-incriminating statements by deeming those interrogations “noncustodial” even when there is a significant element of compulsion. To compare courts’ custody decisions to civilians’ perceptions of coercion in interrogations, I surveyed laypeople across two studies using forty interrogation scenarios from jurisdictionally diverse cases spanning from 1969 to 2022. The results reveal that laypeople do not feel free to leave, and even feel functionally arrested by, police interrogations that are held to be noncustodial by courts. This pair of empirical findings shows that Miranda’s custody trigger, as applied by courts, leaves civilians stranded in many interrogations without Miranda protections. I argue that the first step in improving custody jurisprudence is to clarify the test’s content and incorporate social-scientific knowledge into custody determinations. If adopted, these recommendations will not wholly transform, but will enliven, Miranda’s protections and reinvigorate public discourse about the proper role of our federal constitutional privilege against self-incrimination.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
Recommended Citation
Lauren E. Clatch, Interrogating Miranda's Custody Requirement, 103 N.C. L. Rev. 69 (2025).
