Anyone who wasn't skeptical that sixteen hours of interrogation could be shoehorned into what is supposed to be a narrow exception to Miranda should be now. The length of the pre-Miranda interrogation of Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and the incriminating content of his alleged responses make it impossible to believe that the entire interrogation can be justified under the "public safety exception."
The "public safety exception" to the government's obligation to administer Miranda warnings was created to allow the government to ask suspects limited questions when there are "overriding concerns of public safety." (i. e. where is the loaded weapon? Is there another bomb?, etc.)
In addition to refusing to read Tsarnaev his Miranda rights and denying him access to an attorney despite his repeated requests, law enforcement officials selectively leaked prejudicial and inflammatory contents of the interrogations to the press. The leaked alleged statements have absolutely nothing to do with any ongoing threat to public safety but certainly incriminate Tsarnaev in the Boston bombing. They include statements that the original plan was to detonate bombs on July 4th and that Tsarnaev and his brother watched videos online of now-droned American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Government officials no doubt left out much of what Tsarnaev said or wrote over sixteen hours, and
All of the law enforcement officials were granted anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation.
(and what they did was legally-dubious).
I doubt Espionage Act prosecutions will result from disclosures incriminating Tsarnaev. The Justice Department reserves Espionage Act prosecutions for whistleblowers who disclose information incriminating the government.
Delaying reading a suspect his rights to elicit incriminating statements under the guise of the "public safety exception" undermines the legitimacy of entire criminal justice system, which depends upon careful protection of a suspect's rights to ensure he is presumed innocent until found guilty. Based on the selective leaks from anonymous law enforcement officials, much of the public and the press will presume Tsarnaev guilty long before his constitutionally-guaranteed trial by jury.
Even if you use the Justice Department's expanded view of the exception, which is not controlling law, the "public safety" exception is not meant to allow government interrogators to elicit lengthy incriminating statements from a suspect injured so gravely he is unable to communicate verbally. As the judge who originated the "public safety exception" opined in the New York Times:
“But resolving immediate emergencies is about as far as we should go in delaying the Miranda reading or creating exceptions to it.”
The press reports indicate that the information is was not gathered in response to an immediate public danger; rather
The new details of what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told authorities emerged as the F.B.I. moved forward on Thursday with trying to determine how the brothers were radicalized and the role that Tamerlan’s wife, Katherine Russell, may have played . . .
The government will likely attempt to use Tsarnaev's statements against him at trial (or else there would be no need for an exception to Miranda), and a judge will rule on the legality of using such statements against a defendant in a suppression hearing.
Nonetheless, much of the damage for Tsarnaev has been done. Aside from the facts that he was not read his Miranda rights and denied access to counsel despite his repeated requests (an issue I've written about in depth here), but the anonymous government officials have vilified him in the press by selectively leaking the incriminating statements he allegedly made during his sixteen hour-long pre-Miranda interrogation.
Whatever your opinion of Tsarnaev, all Americans should be concerned that the Executive branch so eagerly, unilaterally, and unapologetically runs roughshod over a citizen's well-settled constitutional rights.