4

In Chris Hansen's new show Takedown, episode "James and the Giant Lie", the following situation occurs.

The television personality Chris Hansen lures a man into a sting house. This man is alleged to be attempting to have sexual relations with a minor. The man immediately tries to leave, but is confronted by the police who place him in handcuffs and sit him on the couch. Chris Hansen then interrogates the man about the allegations.

During the sequence, Miranda rights are not read to the man. Is this a Miranda violation?

As far as I understand, the Miranda rule applies to custodial interrogations. It seems clear that the man is indeed in custody, and is being interrogated. However, since Chris Hansen is a private citizen and not a member of law enforcement, it is unclear that this counts as a custodial interrogation. On the other hand, this would be a quite clear loophole of Miranda if police could cooperate with private citizens in order to perform interrogations without reading Miranda rights.

Note that there is a similar previous question about Chris Hansen's previous show "Hansen vs Predator." However, my question different because the suspect is in police custody during the interrogations.

In the linked question, user Mary does make this comment.

If the police reliably show up when he pulls this ploy, any competent lawyer will be able to establish in court that he's acting as an agent of the police and under the same restrictions. (Otherwise the cops could just hire someone whenever they wanted to violate your rights.)

So Mary thinks that even in weakening the assumption to the case where the man is not in police custody, there is a Miranda issue. This implies that in the stronger conditions of my question, where the questioning does take place in direct police custody, there is a Miranda violation. Unfortunately, fleshing out Mary's comment requires the argument of a "any competent lawyer", which is not supplied.

Mark
  • 151
  • 5

2 Answers2

2

This probably doesn't work to make the evidence admissible since it is done with the participation and collusion of the police while someone is under arrest. The person asking the questions in this context has been de facto deputized to ask question and is functionally a law enforcement officer, so Miranda should apply.

This is distinct from private citizens questioning someone who is detained by private citizens, which probably isn't covered by Miranda.

ohwilleke
  • 257,510
  • 16
  • 506
  • 896
-5

Assuming that the victim gets out alive, they would sue for false imprisonment. And in that situation it is obvious that they would have feared for their life, being held by three dangerous criminals, of which two pretend to be police officers, and would do or say anything to escape unharmed.

gnasher729
  • 35,915
  • 2
  • 51
  • 94