If a defendant is in custody, and is being questioned or law enforcement makes statements to him to elicit an incriminating response, then those statements should be suppressed as a violation of the defendant's right against self incrimination.
WHEN IS THE DEFENDANT IN CUSTODY
A Defendant is deemed to be in custody when he is under arrest, or his freedom has been restrained to a degree associated with arrest. The Florida Supreme Court in Mansfield v. State, 758 So.2d 636 (Fla. 2000) set out the a four prong test to determine whether a Defendant was in custody for purpose of Miranda.
Mansfield v. State, 758 So.2d 636 (Fla. 2000)
The four prong test to determine whether a defendant is in custody for purposes of Miranda is: (1) the manner in which police summon the suspect for questioning; (2) the purpose, place, and manner of the interrogation; (3) the extent to which the suspect is confronted with evidence of his or her guilt; (4) whether the suspect is informed that he or she is free to leave the place of questioning.
STATEMENTS INTENDED TO ELICIT AN INCRIMINATING RESPONSE
Statements made by law enforcement that are likely to elicit an incriminating response from a Defendant in custody violate the Defendant’s right against self incriminaltion, unless the Defendant has been read his Miranda rights.
Timmons v. State, 961 So.2d 378 (Fla. 4th DCA 2007)
The Supreme Court explained in Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 100 S.Ct. 1682, 64 L.Ed.2d 297 (1980), what constitutes interrogation for purposes of Miranda warnings:
"Interrogation," as conceptualized in the Miranda opinion, must reflect a measure of compulsion above and beyond that inherent in custody itself. We conclude that the Miranda safeguards come into play whenever a person in custody is subjected to either express questioning or its functional equivalent. That is to say, the term "interrogation" under Miranda refers not only to express questioning, but also to any words or actions on the part of the police (other than those normally attendant to arrest and custody) that the police should know are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from the suspect. . . . [T]he definition of interrogation can extend only to words or actions on the part of police officers that they should have known were reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response.
