What is the current state of the law on whether police should interrogate a suspect in a murder case where the victim has not yet been found?

California, United States of America


The following excerpt is from People v. Dean, 114 Cal.Rptr. 555, 39 Cal.App.3d 875 (Cal. App. 1974):

1 Perhaps the majority are holding that so long as the victim has not been found there is, as matter of law, a paramount interest in attempting to save the victim's life. There is no basis for such a broad reading of the Modesto holding. The paramount interest ought to be, in an appropriate case, one of the factual determinations made as part of the foundation to the introduction of a confession. There appears to be no good reason to formulate a rule that, as a matter of law, any time the police have not yet found the victim's body the police may interrogate the suspect, and certainly not in a case where they had been told the victim was dead.' (People v. Jacobson, supra, 63 Cal.2d 319, 340, fn. 1, 46 Cal.Rptr. 515, 529, 405 P.2d 555, 569.)

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