Interrogation

Interrogation is the process of questioning individuals with the goal of extracting a confession or obtaining information. Subjects of interrogation are often the suspects, victims, or witnesses of a crime.

According to Innis, interrogation includes direct questioning as well as its "functional equivalent," which can be understood to be any declarative statement by police directed toward a subject with the intention of illiciting a verbal reaction from the subject.

Limitations
Individuals retain certain protections against police interrogation:
 * No person can be made to answer police questioning (Fifth Amendment)
 * No person can be made to implicate himself in a crime (Fifth Amendment)
 * A person may retain legal counsel during police questioning (Sixth Amendment)

Legalities
While the above rights protect individuals from certain practices, interrogators also retain certain legal avenues by which to pursue information. Furthermore, physical evidence obtained by way of statements made by suspects are admissible in court even if those statements are inadmissible because they were uttered prior to Mirandization, so long as the statements were not forced by police (Patane).
 * A person must make an "unambiguous or unequivocal request for counsel" in order to exercise his right to an attorney (Davis). A suspect who tells police, "I think I should talk to a lawyer" has not legally invoked his right to counsel, and police may still interact with him.
 * A person must also invoke his right to silence unambiguously and unequivocally (Berghuis). The act of remaining silent is, alone, insufficient to invoked the right, and a voluntary reply even after a lengthy silence may be construed as implying a waiver of the right to silence.