Free Republic

Regular viewers of Fox News are used to seeing popular host Megyn Kelly on their televisions every afternoon, but on Thursday morning Kelly made a special appearance during the morning to break some surprising information: according to her sources, the FBI was “shocked” to see a magistrate “waltz into” the hospital room of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and read him his Miranda rights. So why were they shocked? According to Kelly, the FBI was under the understanding that they would get much more time with Tsarnaev under the “public safety exemption” before he was read his rights. Adding to the shock: the...

Thanks to the "Public Safety Exception" to Miranda (which was created in 1980), the government is not forced to choose between treating a suspect as an enemy combatant or immediately allowing said suspect to hide behind an attorney and the right to remain silent. In extraordinary circumstances, when a suspect is believed to be part of a broader conspiracy that might result in the loss of innocent life, authorities have 48 hours to question the suspect before mirandizing him. Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the man suspected of being a co-conspirator in the Boston Marathon bombings, was mirandized after only 16 hours of...