The White House announced on Monday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will not be treated as an enemy combatant, which adds more nuance to the legal debate regarding the 19-year-old terror suspect's legal rights.
After being taken into custody, federal authorities said Tsarnaev, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, was not read his Miranda rights. Law enforcement cited the public safety exception, which was first carved out in a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the New York v. Quarles case.
In that situation, police questioned an assailant about the location of a weapon before reading his Miranda rights.
University of Louisville Law Professor Russ Weaver told WFPL the exception defined in the Quarles case is rarely used and remains legally controversial
"There have been very few decisions applying that ruling since then so nobody really knows what it means. The question is when is it going to be applied and what does it mean? I don’t think anybody really knows," he said.
"You can make an argument for a case like this, saying ‘Look there may be a bombing ring or could be other things being plotted so there is a public safety reason for not applying Miranda in this situation.'"
