Defendant charged with child neglect after son's death from bedsores

¶ … 2004 case of Missouri v. Seibert that was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to generate a new rule prohibiting a specific practice often used by, and taught to police officers. That technique involved a two-tiered interrogation strategy expressly designed and intended to circumvent the Fifth Amendment constitutional protections guaranteed by the Miranda rule. The way the strategy worked was that police would deliberately delay reading Miranda warnings to question suspects for the purpose of acquiring information about their culpable conduct. Afterwards, they would Mirandize the same subject and then re-open the discussion, referencing that information. The suspects invariably made admissions of guilt after being Mirandized because they knew they had already provided the information and were unaware of the legal distinction of statements "inside" and "outside" of Miranda warnings.

The first admission is absolutely inadmissible. At the time it was made, the suspect was already participating in a custodial interrogation by police because she was clearly not free to leave their company. Nothing revealed by the suspect before being Mirandized is admissible at trial because it is precluded by the exclusionary rule. The second admission is also inadmissible ever since the Supreme Court ruled on that issue in Siebert. Specifically, where the evidence suggests that police deliberately delayed issuing Miranda warnings and deliberately interrupted pre-Miranda and post-Miranda questioning to satisfy the letter of Miranda rules while violating their spirit, the evidence produced by the second round of questioning are also (now) excluded and inadmissible at trial. Only good-faith or inadvertent breaks in interrogation of this type are exempt from the application of the exclusionary rule. The Supreme Court expressly made that distinction in reference to the 1985 Oregon v. Elstad case, where the break in interrogation was natural and circumstantial, and not one imposed purposefully and with the specific intention of circumventing the restrictions on custodial interrogation imposed by Miranda v. Arizona (1966).