A suppressed statement is rarely bad luck. It is almost always one of a handful of avoidable mistakes, made in the interview room and locked in before anyone reaches a courtroom. The Suppression Database collects the decisions; this page is the short version of the pattern they show.
1. Miranda defects
The most common reason a statement disappears is a Miranda problem: warnings not given before custodial interrogation, a waiver that was invalid or ambiguous, or questioning that continued after the suspect invoked the right to silence or to counsel. The fix is not memorizing the card. It is recognizing custody and interrogation in real time and documenting the waiver so it survives a suppression hearing. See the Miranda and Custodial Interrogation lines in the Suppression Database.
2. Voluntariness and coercion
Even with valid warnings, a statement can be excluded as involuntary: coercive pressure, improper promises or threats, marathon sessions, or exploiting a vulnerable subject. Rapport-based interviewing is the direct answer, because it produces cooperation without the pressure that makes a statement look coerced on review. The Voluntariness entries in the database show where the line falls.
3. Custodial-interrogation missteps
Suppression often turns on two threshold questions: was the encounter custodial, and did what officers did amount to interrogation? Misjudging either one invites exclusion, because it decides whether Miranda applied at all. Training investigators to read that line as it happens, and to document it, is what keeps admissible statements admissible.
4. The question-first “two-step”
Questioning a suspect to draw out a confession, then delivering Miranda warnings and having them repeat it, is the deliberate two-step the courts have condemned. It is one of the fastest ways to lose a statement, and it is entirely avoidable. The evidence-based method never needs it, because it does not treat the confession as the only acceptable outcome. See the Two-Step Interrogation line in the database.
5. Deception a statute now restricts
In a growing number of states, tactics that were once treated as standard, false claims about the existence of evidence and implied promises of leniency, are now grounds for suppression, especially with minors. What was a tactical choice is becoming a legal defect. Interviewing After the Deception Ban lays out which states have acted and the standard investigators now have to meet.
The pattern, and the fix
Across all five, the pattern is the same. Statements fail when the method leans on pressure, shortcuts, or deception. They hold when the method is built to gather reliable, complete information and to document it as it is obtained. That is the whole design of Teach to Talk® and the From Information to Evidence course: an interview that produces evidence which survives review, rather than a confession a court can take back.