Police officers can’t use an interrogation strategy that calls for giving no Miranda rights warnings to suspects until interrogation has produced a confession, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled.

The court, in a 5-to-4 vote, ruled against the strategy in the case, MISSOURI v. SEIBERT.

Justice Souter said: “This case tests a police protocol for custodial interrogation that calls for giving no warnings of the rights to silence and counsel until interrogation has produced a confession. Although such a statement is generally inadmissible, since taken in violation of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S 436 (1966), the interrogating officer follows it with Miranda warnings and then leads the suspect to cover the same ground a second time. The question here is the admissibility of the repeated statement. Because this midstream recitation of warnings after interrogation and unwarned confession could not effectively comply with Miranda’s constitutional requirement, we hold that a statement repeated after a warning in such circumstances is inadmissible.”

The interrogation strategy has been growing in popularity in recent years.

According to court papers, Officer Hanrahan, one of the arresting officers in the case, testified that he made a “conscious decision” to withhold Miranda warnings, thus resorting to an interrogation technique he had been taught: question first, then give the warnings, and then repeat the question “until I get the answer that she’s already provided once.”.

(via U.S. Supreme Court)