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  What Is a Proffer Agreement? The Document You Sign Before You Speak A proffer agreement is the most consequential document a federal defendant will sign before trial, and it is the least understood…

The Federal Baseline The right to record a federal agent exists, in most of the country, before the agent ever arrives at the door. Under 18 U.S.C. 2511(2)(d), federal wiretap law permits the recording…

The Gap Between Belief and Protection Your rights during a non-custodial FBI interview are fewer than you imagine, more consequential than you expect, and almost entirely contingent on whether you comprehend them before agents…

Federal agents are permitted to lie to you during an interrogation, and the legal authority for that permission is older than most of the agents who exercise it. The answer to the question in…

Miranda does not protect most people who need it in federal criminal cases, because it does not apply at the moment they assume it does. The protection attaches only when two conditions converge: custody…

The Silence That Costs Nothing Miranda v. Arizona protects less than most people believe, and it protects it later than they expect. The warning itself, familiar from courtroom dramas and from the particular anxiety…

Cooperation is not a binary. It is a sequence of smaller decisions, each carrying its own risk, and the first one is almost always made before the person understands what cooperation will cost. The…

The answer is no, not always, and the circumstances under which the obligation does not apply are far more common than most people recognize. Miranda warnings attach to a specific legal event: custodial interrogation.…

The Interview That Is Not an Interrogation Federal agents do not read Miranda warnings during most of the interviews that produce criminal convictions. The warning itself, perhaps the most recognized sentence in American criminal…

The Architecture of a Federal Investigation The federal government does not announce its interest in you. The investigation, if one exists, began before you suspected it, proceeded without your knowledge, and has likely reached…