State v. Fleurie (2007-190)
2008 VT 118
[Filed 05-Sep-2008]
NOTICE: This opinion is
subject to motions for reargument under V.R.A.P. 40
as well as formal revision before publication in the Vermont Reports.
Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Vermont Supreme
Court,
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2008 VT 118 |
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Supreme Court |
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On Appeal from |
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Thomas J. Devine, J. (motion to suppress); M. Kathleen Manley, J. (final judgment) |
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Kyle Sipples,
Plaintiff-Appellee.
Allison N. Fulcher of Martin & Associates, Barre, for Defendant-Appellant.
PRESENT: Reiber, C.J., Dooley, Johnson, Skoglund and Burgess, JJ.
¶ 1.
REIBER, C.J. Defendant appeals the Caledonia District
Court’s partial denial of his motion to suppress his confession to assault and
robbery. The court suppressed statements defendant made in his home
before he was given Miranda warnings, but did not suppress subsequent
statements made after officers administered Miranda warnings at the
police station. See Miranda v.
¶ 2.
The undisputed facts on appeal are as follows. During an afternoon
vehicle patrol on January 26, 2006, two St. Johnsbury
police officers noticed defendant, an eighteen-year-old male they recognized
from prior encounters, at the intersection of
¶ 3. Because the witness’ description of the clothes matched those worn by defendant, whom they had just seen, the officers proceeded to defendant’s mother’s apartment, which was only a few minutes’ walk from the drug store, and where one of the officers knew he lived. One officer knocked on the front door while the other proceeded around the house to watch the back door. By the time defendant’s mother opened the door, at least four officers and two police cruisers were at the scene. One officer told defendant’s mother that they were investigating an armed robbery and asked permission to speak with her son inside the apartment. Permission was granted.
¶ 4. Officer Bickford saw that defendant was wearing jeans with a distinct yellow insignia on the rear pocket. Officer Bickford told defendant that he matched the description of a suspect in an armed robbery. Defendant replied that he had no guns or mask, a statement Officer Bickford found significant because he had not mentioned the details of the robbery to defendant. Without administering Miranda warnings, Officer Bickford then proceeded to question defendant about his whereabouts during the day. Defendant denied leaving the apartment. When defendant asked for a cigarette and moved towards the kitchen to get one, the officer told him to stay where he was and that he was not allowed to smoke. Officer Bickford told defendant that the officers had seen him outside walking near the drug store. Defendant again denied being outside that day. To this the officer responded: “C’mon, I know you were outside. I saw you”; “C’mon, tell the truth”; and “Tell me what you really did.” For approximately ten minutes, Officer Bickford continued this line of questioning. Defendant again asked if he could smoke, and was again denied. At no time did any of the officers unholster their guns or get out their handcuffs. None of the officers touched or searched defendant.
¶ 5. At some point, Officer Maurice came in through the back door and asked defendant why there was a puddle of water—presumably from melted snow—on the floor under his boots if he had not been outside that day. Defendant then acknowledged that he had been out very briefly to see his girlfriend. The trial court found that this statement was incriminating because it placed defendant outside the apartment in the same general time and area where the crime had occurred. During the questioning in the apartment, defendant did not make any other admissions and continued to deny any involvement in the robbery.
¶ 6. About midway through the interrogation, Officer Bickford noticed the odor of alcohol and asked defendant if he would submit to a preliminary breath test. Defendant agreed. The test results indicated a blood alcohol content of 0.04. At this point the officers decided to arrest defendant for an underage-drinking violation, 7 V.S.A. § 657(a)(3), but did not inform defendant of this.[1] Officer Bickford questioned defendant about the robbery for an additional thirty minutes before bringing him to the police station, a few minutes’ drive from the apartment.
¶ 7. The officers did not question defendant while he was in the police cruiser. At the police station, an officer handcuffed defendant to a wall while waiting for defendant’s mother to arrive on foot. Officer Maurice informed defendant of his Miranda rights for the first time. When his mother arrived, defendant waived his Miranda rights and confessed to participating in the robbery.
¶ 8. Defendant moved to suppress the statements he made during the initial interrogation in his home, as well as the statements he made later at the police station. The State opposed this motion, arguing that defendant was not “in custody” when he was interviewed in his home, and, since Miranda applies only to “custodial police interrogation,” the statements were admissible. The trial court found that while the questioning at the home may “have begun as an investigative detention . . . the situation transformed itself into a full scale interrogation.” It concluded that, “[g]iven the totality of the circumstances . . . this was a custodial interrogation. The failure to give Miranda warning[s] requires suppression of the statements defendant made within his home.”
¶ 9. Relying on Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. 298 (1985), however, the trial court concluded that the confession given after the Miranda warnings was admissible. In support of this conclusion, the court found that there was “no sign defendant’s will was overborne, or that there were threats made, or any overreaching by the officers, or any of the psychological pressure games.” The court also noted that there was no showing that defendant waived his Miranda rights as a result of coercion or overbearing tactics, stating that “[d]efendant’s waiver of Miranda rights was a rational, informed and voluntary decision.” Moreover, the court found that defendant’s admission during the initial interrogation that he was outside the house at the same time and in the same general vicinity of the robbery, while somewhat incriminating, was not “a full confession which rendered further denial of involvement all but impossible to sustain.” Defendant entered a conditional plea of guilty to the robbery charge, reserving his right to appeal the partial denial of his motion to suppress.
¶ 10.
The sole issue raised on appeal is whether the trial court erred in
concluding that the confession obtained at the station was admissible. “A
motion to suppress evidence presents a mixed question of fact and law.
While we uphold the trial court’s factual findings absent clear error, we
review the trial courts conclusions of law de novo.” State v. Bauder, 2007 VT 16, ¶ 9, 181
¶ 11.
The Fifth Amendment gives every citizen the right not to be “compelled
in any Criminal Case to be a witness against himself.” U.S. Const. amend.
V. To protect this right, law enforcement officers must warn a person in
custody “that he has a right to remain silent, that any statement he does make
may be used as evidence against him, and that he has a right to the presence of
an attorney, either retained or appointed.” Miranda, 384
¶ 12. This dispute requires us to consider in detail the Supreme Court’s decisions in Elstad and Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600 (2004). Both of these cases addressed situations in which defendants received Miranda warnings only after the police had already begun questioning them. Defendant argues that Seibert is controlling and requires the exclusion of his post-Miranda confession. The State asserts that the confession is admissible under Elstad and that Seibert is inapplicable. The State further argues that, even if Seibert did control, defendant has failed to show that the post-Miranda statements should be excluded.
¶ 13. In Elstad, a witness contacted the police and reported that Elstad, an eighteen-year-old male, had committed a burglary. After obtaining a warrant for Elstad’s arrest, two police officers drove to Elstad’s home. Elstad’s mother answered the door and led the officers to Elstad’s room. The officers asked Elstad to get dressed and to accompany them into the living room. While one officer talked to Elstad’s mother in the kitchen, the other officer briefly questioned Elstad about the burglary without administering Miranda warnings. According to the officer’s testimony, the extent of the interrogation was as follows:
“I sat down with Mr. Elstad and I asked him if he was aware of why Detective McAllister and myself were there to talk with him. He stated no, he had no idea why we were there. I then asked him if he knew a person by the name of Gross, and he said yes, he did, and also added that he heard that there was a robbery at the Gross house. And at that point I told Mr. Elstad that I felt he was involved in that, and he looked at me and stated, ‘Yes, I was there.’ ”
¶ 14.
At trial, Elstad moved to suppress the
statement, “Yes, I was there,” made to the police officer at his house.
He also moved to suppress his subsequent confession because, after the first
admission “let the cat out of the bag,” his stationhouse confession was “fruit
of the poisonous tree.”
[A]bsent deliberately coercive or improper tactics in obtaining the initial statement, the mere fact that a suspect has made an unwarned admission does not warrant a presumption of compulsion. A subsequent administration of Miranda warnings to a suspect who has given a voluntary but unwarned statement ordinarily should suffice to remove the conditions that precluded the admission of the earlier statement.
¶ 15.
The Supreme Court held that, despite the officers’ initial failure to
administer Miranda warnings, Elstad’s
post-warning confession remained admissible: “[o]nce
warned, the suspect is free to exercise his own volition in deciding whether or
not to make a statement to the authorities.”
¶ 16.
Seibert, decided nearly twenty years later, presented just this scenario.
In that case, the police woke the suspect, Seibert, at 3:00 a.m. at a hospital
where her son was being treated for burns he suffered in a house fire that the
police suspected Seibert had set. Seibert, 542
¶ 17.
The plurality characterized this question-first strategy as designed to
undermine the effectiveness of Miranda warnings.
¶ 18.
To determine whether Miranda warnings delivered mid-interrogation
could be effective, the Seibert plurality outlined five factors: (1) the
completeness and detail of the questions and answers in the first round of
interrogation, (2) the overlapping content of the two statements, (3) the
timing and setting of the first and the second statements, (4) the continuity
of police personnel, and (5) the degree to which the interrogator’s questions
treated the second round as continuous with the first.
¶ 19.
The plurality in Seibert observed that the unwarned interrogation
was “systematic, exhaustive, and managed with psychological skill. When
the police were finished there was little, if anything, of incriminating
potential left unsaid.”
¶ 20.
Justice Kennedy concurred in the judgment, but concluded that the
plurality’s multi-factor test should not apply in every case of a two-stage
interrogation. “[T]his test cuts too broadly. Miranda’s
clarity is one of its strengths, and a multifactor test that applies to every
two-stage interrogation may serve to undermine that clarity.”
¶ 21.
Because there was no majority opinion in Seibert, we must first
decide which opinion is controlling. It is well settled that “[w]hen a
fragmented Court decides a case and no single rationale explaining the result
enjoys the assent of five Justices, the holding of the Court may be viewed as
that position taken by those Members who concurred in the judgments on the narrowest
grounds.” Marks v. United States, 430
¶ 22.
The interrogation in the instant case, while it was a two-step
interrogation, was materially different from those in Elstad
and Seibert. Elstad involved a
very brief questioning that did not seek or obtain a detailed confession.
The brief stop in the living room in Elstad
was not for the purpose of interrogating the suspect, but rather to give the
second officer time to inform Elstad’s mother of the
reason for his arrest. 470
¶ 23.
Here, the initial unwarned custodial interrogation was no mere oversight
or good-faith mistake as in Elstad. But
neither is it clear that the officers intended to undermine the efficacy
of Miranda warnings, as in Seibert. While the initial
interrogation was persistent, and at times confrontational, it was not
conducted in bad faith or in an abusive manner. In contrast to Seibert,
the police did not elicit a full confession from defendant before administering
Miranda warnings, and defendant makes no showing that Officer Maurice
attempted to use defendant’s prior statements to pressure him into his
subsequent confession.[4]
Absent a showing that the officers deliberately withheld Miranda
warnings, the principles of Elstad apply.
See Seibert, 542
¶ 24. In practice, the principles of Elstad’s “voluntariness” test and the five factors in the Seibert plurality’s “effectiveness” test have substantial overlap, and together they operate essentially as a totality-of-the-circumstances analysis. Elstad presumes that a defendant’s waiver is knowingly and voluntarily made unless the circumstances surrounding the first, unwarned confession were so coercive as to violate not just Miranda, but the Fifth Amendment itself. Seibert provides a multi-factor test to determine if the circumstances compromised the effectiveness of mid-interrogation Miranda warnings. Both effective warnings and a voluntary waiver are needed to safeguard defendants’ rights. We conclude that the warned confession here was admissible under Elstad and the plurality’s test in Seibert, that the Miranda warnings defendant received functioned effectively, and that defendant voluntarily waived his Miranda rights.[5]
¶ 25.
Recently, in State v. Yoh, we reached a
similar conclusion under different circumstances. 2006 VT 49A, 180
¶ 26.
As the Elstad Court noted, “[t]here is
a vast difference between the direct consequences flowing from coercion of a
confession by physical violence or other deliberate means calculated to break
the suspect’s will and the uncertain consequences of disclosure of a ‘guilty
secret’ freely given in response to an unwarned but noncoercive
question.” 470
¶ 27.
In Tankleff v. Senkowski,
the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had occasion to consider
this issue. 135 F.3d 235 (2d Cir. 1998). In Tankleff, the police questioned a suspect on the
morning of his parents’ murder for nearly four hours in various locations,
including two hours of continuous interrogation in a windowless room at the
police station.
¶ 28. Having concluded that defendant’s initial interrogation did not taint his later confession, we now consider defendant’s contention that, under the circumstances, the warning he was given did not effectively convey that he had a right to remain silent. The ensuing analysis is similar to the voluntariness analysis above, and demonstrates that the Miranda warnings meaningfully informed defendant of his right to remain silent.
¶ 29.
We first consider the level of detail in the officers’ questions and
defendant’s answers—the more detailed the pre-warning interrogation, the more
difficult it is to later deny culpability. See Seibert, 542
¶ 30.
The second factor concerns the degree to which defendant’s prewarning and postwarning
statements overlapped—the greater the overlap, the stronger the inference that
the warnings were ineffective. See id. In Seibert,
the Court found it important that after the first interview, “there was little,
if anything, of incriminating potential left unsaid.”
¶ 31.
The third and fourth factors—the timing and setting of the two
interrogations and the degree of continuity of police personnel—can signal to a
suspect that the postwarning interrogation was a
separate and distinct experience, and that he possessed a real choice between
exercising or waiving his right to remain silent.
¶ 32.
The fifth and final factor concerns the degree to which the
interrogator’s questions treated the second round as continuous with the
first.
¶ 33. Accordingly, the prewarning interrogation did not render the later Miranda warnings ineffective. Defendant’s subsequent waiver of his Miranda rights was voluntary, and his confession was properly admitted.
Affirmed.
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FOR THE COURT: |
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[1] The underage-drinking charge, along with a violation-of-conditions-of-release charge, see 13 V.S.A. § 7559(e), were later dropped.
[2]
In State v. Badger, we stated that intervening Miranda warnings
alone did not render a subsequent confession admissible. 141
[3] The
[4]
The “psychological impact” of prior statements that “let the cat out of the
bag,” without more, does not compel the conclusion that a subsequent confession
was compelled. Elstad, 470
[5]
As discussed, supra, ¶ 15 n.3, the Supreme Court of the