The Back-Office Interview: Two and a Half Hours Over $2,400
A regional retailer retains you over $2,400 in suspicious refunds at store #114. The assistant manager, 22 and non-union, is the only cashier on the flagged transactions. The store manager tells you to 'get a confession' in the back office. The interview starts at 4:10 p.m. The manager takes her phone 'for safekeeping,' locks the office door, and tells her 'we'll call the police when we're done.' She asks twice to leave and is told to 'sit down and think about it.' At 6:40 p.m. she signs a one-page statement you typed from her answers. At 7:20 p.m. police arrive; she recants and says she was scared. The manager hands you her phone in a ziplock bag; you photograph three text threads on the screen and return the phone to the manager.
1. Assess the legal exposure created by the detention and by the statement that was taken.
Read the worked answer
The detention. Because the employer and the investigator are private actors, Miranda does not apply - unless police directed or participated in the interview, which would convert it into state action. That is the only thing Miranda analysis turns on here, and it is not the main problem.
The main problem is false imprisonment. The elements are intent to confine, actual confinement, awareness of the confinement, and absence of consent or lawful authority. A locked door, a confiscated phone, two refused requests to leave, and 160 minutes of interrogation satisfy every element on the face of the facts.
The merchant's detention privilege is narrow and does not rescue this. It requires reasonable grounds, a reasonable manner, a reasonable time, and a purpose connected to investigating or recovering property from a person detained at or near the point of a suspected theft. It is not a license to hold an employee in an office until she confesses. Prolonged confinement can also be charged as unlawful imprisonment under MCL 750.349b.
The statement. Voluntariness is the touchstone, even for a private statement later used in a civil suit, an unemployment hearing, or a criminal case. A statement typed by the investigator from answers given after two hours of confinement, with the phone taken and the door locked, is coercive on its face. Expect it to be excluded or given no weight, and expect the recantation to be treated as corroboration of coercion rather than as proof of innocence or guilt.
2. Redesign the interview - before, during, and after. What would you have done differently, and what documentation should exist?
Read the worked answer
Before. Get the engagement in writing, with the employer's objectives and the limits of your role. Confirm the employee is hourly, on the clock, and free to leave. Do not take her phone; if she offers it, document that it was voluntary and hand it to the manager with a receipt. Do not lock the door. Have a second person present, ideally a witness of the same gender, and identify everyone at the start.
During. Open with a clear statement: she is not under arrest, she is free to leave at any time, she does not have to answer, she may take breaks and use the restroom. Note the exact time you said it. Use open questions first - 'walk me through how a refund is processed' - before narrowing. One question at a time. Offer a break every 45 to 60 minutes and log each one. No promises of leniency, no threats of arrest, no references to her family or her job prospects.
After. Have her write the statement in her own words, or read back what you wrote line by line, with initials on every page and every correction. Include a voluntariness acknowledgment with the time she was told she could leave. Preserve your handwritten notes, do not recopy them, and complete your report within 24 hours while memory is fresh.
Documentation that should exist: time log, witness identity, break log, the statement and its drafting history, the notes, and the report.
3. Analyze the handling of the phone: chain of custody, preservation, and what you would say about admissibility.
Read the worked answer
Chain of custody is broken in three places. The manager seized the phone and did not document the seizure. She handed it to you in an unsealed ziplock with no record of who held it in between. You then returned it to her. At no point was the bag sealed, labeled, dated, or signed, and there is no receipt showing transfer of control.
What you should have done. Do not take the phone. If the employer insists on securing it, treat it like evidence: photograph it in place, record the serial number and lock-screen state, place it in a sealed evidence bag, sign and date across the seal, log every transfer, and hand it to police or the employer's counsel with a signed receipt. Do not scroll, do not open apps, and do not delete anything.
Screenshots. Photographing a screen without scrolling is better than nothing, but a screenshot is a copy. Authentication requires testimony about when and how it was made, and the best-evidence rule favors the original device. Expect a challenge that the threads were incomplete, out of order, or altered.
The access question. A personal phone is not a company device. Reviewing its contents without consent exposes the firm to intrusion-upon-seclusion and stored-communications claims. The employer may have a policy-based right to review company equipment, but that argument does not transfer to her personal phone. Say so in the report and recommend counsel obtain the records by subpoena or consent.