COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that social workers don’t have to inform criminal defendants of their Miranda rights when conducting interviews.
At issue are statements given to a social worker by a jailed Cleveland man accused of raping a 14-year-old girl.
A judge allowed the social worker to testify at trial about offender Demetrius Jackson’s statements.
He was convicted and sentenced to 11 years in prison. A lower court overturned that conviction in 2016.
The high court ruled 6-1 Thursday that social workers’ duty to cooperate with investigators does not make them agents of law enforcement.
Jackson’s attorney, Johnathan Garver, called the ruling disappointing. He noted that the full-time job of the social worker who talked to Jackson was interrogating alleged perpetrators of sex crimes against children.
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