In the case Missouri v. Seibert, No. 02-1371, currently being considered by the U. S. Supreme Court, the investigating officer indicated that he used a two-stage interrogation technique to obtain the respondent's confession. The technique consists of interrogating a person in custody without advising them of their Miranda rights. Then, if a confession is obtained, the suspect is carefully advised of their Miranda rights and questioned again. Then at trial only the second confession is used against the accused. The investigating officer stated that he had been trained at a "national" institute to use such a technique. In their "Petition For Writ Of Certiorari" the petitioner speculates in footnote 8 that "The officer may have been referring to the Reid Institute when he testified that he had been trained at a "National Law Police Institute."

For the record, John E. Reid and Associates, Inc does not teach such a two-stage interrogation process at any of our training seminars on The Reid Technique of Interviewing and Interrogation. We scrupulously teach in our training seminars and our publications that if a suspect is in custody he/she must first be advised of their Miranda rights and make the appropriate waiver before any questioning can take place. In our book, Criminal Interrogation and Confessions, we state:

The only time a police interrogation maybe conducted of a suspect who is in custody or otherwise restrained of his freedom is after he has received the required warnings and after he has indicated a willingness to answer questions. (page 491)

No one from the State Solicitor's office or the Missouri Attorney General's office contacted us about this issue before they offered such speculation in their petition.