Relying on the decisions in McNeil v. Wisconsin, 501 U.S. 171 (1991) and Sapp v. State, 690 So. 2d 581 (Fla. 1997), the Fifth District held that for purposes of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, “the police are not required to give Miranda warnings to a suspect who is not both in custody and subjected to interrogation.”
“The question before the Florida Supreme Court is whether the inevitable discovery rule requires the prosecution to demonstrate that the police were in the process of obtaining a warrant prior to the misconduct or whether the prosecution need only establish that a warrant could have been obtained with the information available prior to the misconduct. We conclude that permitting warrantless searches without the prosecution demonstrating that the police were in pursuit of a warrant is not a proper application of the inevitable discovery rule. The rule cannot function to apply simply when police could have obtained a search warrant if they had taken the opportunity to pursue one, but can only apply if they actually were in pursuit of one. Within the inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule there is no room for probable cause to obviate the requirement to pursue a search warrant, for this would eliminate the role of the magistrate and replace judicial reasoning with the current sense impression of police officers.”
