Feds Make Miranda Rights Exception for Marathon Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Now that authorities have captured Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old believed to be the second suspect in the bombings at the Boston Marathon on Monday, federal law enforcement officials are invoking the public safety exception regarding his Miranda rights, a senior Justice Department official told ABC News.
The exception, according to the FBI's website, "permits law enforcement to engage in a limited and focused unwarned interrogation and allows the government to introduce the statement as direct evidence."
"Police officers confronting situations that create a danger to themselves or others may ask questions designed to neutralize the threat without first providing a warning of rights," according to the FBI.
Anticipating that Tsarnaev may be in a condition to be questioned, expect the activation of the president's High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG).
The group, set up in 2009, is made up of agents from the FBI, CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. They have been on standby waiting for the moment the suspect was taken in.
According to the FBI, the HIG's "mission is to gather and apply the nation's best resources to collect intelligence from key terror suspects in order to prevent terrorist attacks against the United States and its allies."
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ABC News' Jack Cloherty contributed to this report.