much since being read his rights, including the right to remain silent. we go to holly hughes, she joins us. holly, we heard this before, you have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. correct. why did the feds wait so long before mirandizing him, what s the legal strategy behind this. there s a couple things at play. number one, you have the public safety exception which means the greater good is we need to find out if there s anyone else involved, if there s any more bombs out there still. so let s get to what we need to get to immediately. there s a couple other reasons. if this suspect started voluntarily talking, sort of knew he was in the hot seat, said hey, let me tell you what happened, wasn t my fault, was my brother got me into this, if he starts to voluntarily give up information, they don t stop him midstream, say let me tell you about your rights. they can continue to gather that information without violating
radicalization. so another thing that people will be discussing in washington here. don? thank you very much. we appreciate your reporting. so, was it a mistake to have read tsarnaev the rights this monday? i ll turn to the director of palombo investigations. good to see you. unfortunately always talking about disturbing stories and it s just a reality of it. critics say if tsarnaev was treated as an enemy combatant, investigators would have had more time to question him without mirandizing him. should that have been the way to go? my opinion, don, issues the miranda warning was a proper course of action. the proper thing is the integrity of the prosecution and i think they were concerned that by not issuing a miranda warning, if down the road they weren t able to determine or
absolutely. it s actually a no-brainer on so many levels. for one, this is a strong case so why would you abandon the sort of normal system of criminal justice? but for symbolic reasons. that. but also, as for the same reason they held off on mirandized him, to get as much information from him in case there are other plots. so this is where the question of what they can get out of him and what they can use in court are sort of different questions at this stage. they can ask him a lot of questions without mirandizing him, although we believe that he has been mirandized at this stage. and get information about him, about either impending threats or what hatched to his brother and what happened over the last week or years even. that doesn t need to be used against him in a court of law. that s what s so amazing about this complaint. the charge is not a terrorism charge. use of one weapon of mass destruction presumably because his brother used the other one. right. which is broad
as one. so your thoughts on that? i don t think that that s going to happen. the obama administration has been clear, they re distancing themselves from that concept. you ve got an american citizen. we don t have dzhokhar going abroad in training. his brother apparently did. but dzhokhar didn t. and dzhokhar is going to be tried as an individual on his own right. so i think the chances of this ending up as an enemy combatant are very small. but you ve heard that because of high security concerns they would like to question him for a period of time, albeit briefly, before mirandizing him and reading him his rights. how long can they do that? how far can they go with those questions? well, that s a very good question. because the longer we go, the less likely there is that there s a public security issue here. one thing that the defense will certainly raise is the remarks of the police chief of watertown in which he said these are the only two guys, we re done.
monday. that s still well within a reasonable amount of time. okay. but the reason that they want to get at this young man, dzhokhar, without mirandizing him, is to get information that will help ensure the public safety. as more time passes and the public remains safe, there are no more incidents, any volatility, any bombs, any terrorism effects at all, does that then naturally shut down their ability to ask him questions because the public seems safe? it could, and that s a valid concern, but these were bombs that these people were dealing with. they had several bombs. there could be other people involved in the plot. we just don t know yet. there could be other bombs that are set. we don t know yet. so i think the government s got a reasonable argument to say that we need a little bit more time for this public safety exception, because certainly not going to determine that this guy is an unlawful enemy combatant and the president is not going to make that determination, which wo