WHAT ARE THE LAWS governing the admissibility of statements made when a defendant encounters the police at his or her own home?ANSWER:
The general rules governing the admission of a statement when you encounter a police officer at your home are the same as those that apply to the admissibility of statements made in any other setting. THAT is the statements must be VOLUNTARY and, if the defendant is in custody, prefaced by MIRANDA warnings.
What is different about these home based encounters as opposed to on the side of a highway or side street corner is that the courts are less willing to find a defendant is in custody, for MIRANDA purposes where the interrogation occurs in a familiar setting. THUS, interrogation in a suspect’s home is viewed as noncustodial. See Beckwith v United States, 425 US 341 (1976).
As the U.S. Supreme Court explained in Minnesota v Murphy, 465 US 420 (1984), a suspect in familiar surroundings, such as his or her home, does not face the same pressures as a suspect in the comparatively more intimidating atmosphere of the police station.
Custodial arrest is said to convey to the suspect a message that he has no choice
But to submit to the officer’s will and to confess. …Many of the psychological ploys
Discussed in Miranda capitalize on the suspect’s unfamiliarity with the officers and the
Environment. …
PAT-DOWN SEARCHES
If, during a pat-down the officer feels something other than a weapon, whose incriminating nature is ‘immediately apparent,” he or she is entitled to seize item. This is called the so-called plain-feel test.
One of the first things an officer does is perform a pat- down. Many of the videos that I have seen show the officer asking the individual out of their car, followed by a pat down search.
What is important to know that the circumstances that actually justify such searches occur far less often than the searches themselves. The famous rule that actually establishes pat- down searches was established in TERRY v OHIO, 392 US 1 (1968), which held that an officer may conduct a pat-down search of a suspect if the officer has a reasonable suspicion that the individual stopped for questioning is armed and, thus, poses a danger to the officer. THE OFFICER’S REASONABLE SUSPICION MUST BE SUPPORTED BY SPECIFIC AND ARTICULABLE FACTS. Therefore, the officer who, as a matter of routine, pats down any driver he or she removes from a vehicle violates your rights under Terry. Terry, “strictly limits the permissible scope of a patdown search to that reasonably designed to discover guns, knives, clubs, or other hidden instruments that could be used to assault an officer.