If an officer asks a citizen if they are willing to answer questions without reasonable suspicion or probable cause, what is the citizen's status?

When an officer asks a citizen if they are willing to answer questions without reasonable suspicion or probable cause, the citizen's status is that they are free to leave. This is because, in the absence of any reasonable suspicion or probable cause, the situation does not constitute a detention or arrest. The citizen is not being compelled to answer questions, which means they retain the right to walk away from the encounter without facing legal consequences.

In this context, custody typically implies that a citizen is not free to leave and may be under legal constraints, which is not the case here. Similarly, being under arrest suggests that the individual is formally taken into custody due to suspicion of a crime, which also does not apply when no legal justification exists. Being detained involves a temporary restraint on a citizen’s freedom for investigative purposes, but again, without reasonable suspicion, there is no basis for such a detention. Thus, the correct answer highlights the individual's autonomy in this scenario.