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Article: On 'custody'.
- Article from:
- Trial
- Article date:
- February 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 American Association for Justice, formerly Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA®). This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Stone walls do not a prison make Nor iron bars a cage--Richard Lovelace (1)
Recently, the Supreme Court in Yarborough v. Alvarado found itself contemplating the nature of confinement. (2) More specifically, it considered the meaning of "custody" for the purposes of determining whether Miranda warnings should have been given to a suspect. (3) Like the 17th-century British poet Lovelace, all nine justices agreed that "custody" is a state of mind, not necessarily a purely physical condition. However, the justices divided 5-4 on the nature of the "reasonable person" whose state of mind decides whether a person was, in fact, in custody.
A few months before ...