Case ID: mich-app_83/html/0356-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Per Curiam.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

PEOPLE v KONKE
    Docket No. 31151.
    Submitted November 2, 1977, at Detroit.
    Decided April 20, 1978.
    Frank Konke and Anthony Oddo were charged with receiving and concealing stolen property. The Wayne Circuit Court, Irwin H. Burdick, J., granted the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence and ordered tape-recorded evidence of statements made by defendants to an informer suppressed. The people appeal, by leave granted, from this order. Held:
    
    Although the investigation was undoubtedly aimed at gathering evidence against the defendants, none of the elements of compulsion or coercion which trigger the requirement that Miranda warnings be given were present. Defendants were neither in custody nor in the intimidating atmosphere of a police station and they were not questioned by a figure of authority. Defendants were in a public place, engaged in voluntary conversation with one whom they thought to be a friend, and any incriminating statements were made freely and voluntarily, not under compulsion. The fact that the informer was an agent of the police does not change the fact that the incriminating statements were made freely and voluntarily and not under compulsion.
    Reversed and remanded.
    1. Criminal Law—Constitutional Law—Miranda Warnings—Investigative Focus—Coercive Environment.
    Investigative focus is an inappropriate standard upon which to determine whether a coercive environment has developed for purposes of applying the Miranda principles.
    
      References for Points in Headnotes
    
       29 Am Jur 2d, Evidence §§ 555-557, 566 et seq.
    
    
       29 Am Jur 2d, Evidence §§ 435, 436, 572.
    Admissibility of sound recordings in evidence. 58 ALR2d 1024.
    Admissibility, in criminal prosecution of evidence secured by mechanical or electronic eavesdropping device. 97 ALR2d 1283.
    Admissibility of confession as affected by its inducement through artifice, deception, trickery, or fraud. 99 ALR2d 772.
    Admissibility, in criminal prosecution, of evidence obtained by electronic surveillance of prisoner. 57 ALR3d 172.
    Obtaining evidence by use of sound recordings or of mechanical or electronic eavesdropping device as violation of Fourth Amendment—Federal cases. 17 L Ed 2d 1008.
    
      2. Criminal Law—Appeal and Error—Evidence—Tape Recordings —Informers—Search Warrants—Miranda Warnings—Compulsion—Coercion—Investigative Focus.
    Tape-recorded evidence of statements made by defendants to an informer equipped with a recording device pursuant to search warrants were erroneously suppressed, in an action for receiving and concealing stolen property, on the ground that the defendants were not given their Miranda warnings prior to being engaged in the conversation where none of the elements of compulsion or coercion which trigger the requirement that Miranda warnings be given were present, although the investigation had focused on the defendants.
    3. Criminal Law—Miranda Warnings—Compulsion—Coercion— Informers—Tape Recordings—Search Warrants—Incriminating Statements—In-Custody Questioning—Authority Figures—Police Agents.
    The elements of compulsion or coercion which trigger the requirement that Miranda warnings be given a defendant were not present when the defendants, in an action for receiving and concealing stolen property, voluntarily engaged in a conversation in a public place with one whom they thought to be a friend, but who in fact was a police informant equipped with a recording device pursuant to search warrants, where any incriminating statements were made freely and voluntarily, where defendants were neither in custody nor in the intimidating atmosphere of a police station, and where they were not questioned by a figure of authority or confronted by a police officer; the fact that the informant was an agent of the police does not change the fact that the incriminating statements were made freely and voluntarily and not under compulsion.
    
      Frank J. Kelley, Attorney General, Robert A. Derengoski, Solicitor General, William L. Cahalan, Prosecuting Attorney, Patrick J. Foley, Director, Wayne County Organized Crime Task Force, and John E. Steele, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for the people.
    
      Lawrence B. Macdonald, for defendant Konke.
    
      Edward A. Khoury, for defendant Oddo.
    
      Before: Beasley, P. J., and D. E. Holbrook, Jr., and M. J. Kelly, JJ.
   Per Curiam.

In this case the prosecutor appeals, by leave granted, from a trial court order suppressing tape-recorded evidence of statements made by defendants to an informer, who was equipped with a recording device pursuant to search warrants, as required by People v Beavers, 393 Mich 554; 227 NW2d 511 (1975).

Investigators for the Wayne County Organized Crime Task Force were informed by Norman Giveins and two others that they had in the past committed several burglaries, and had disposed of the stolen goods therefrom by consigning them to defendants for resale. On the basis of this information, the task force obtained two search warrants, one in Wayne County on August 6, 1975, and one in Macomb County on August 19, 1975, authorizing them to place hidden recording devices on Giveins before he met defendants in two named bars, one in Wayne County and one in Macomb. The meetings took place as scheduled, and were recorded. Defendants were subsequently charged on October 28, 1975, in Wayne County with receiving and concealing stolen property.

Defendants moved in Wayne County Circuit Court to suppress the tape-recorded evidence of the conversations between defendants and Giveins (who is now deceased), on grounds that their Fifth Amendment right against compulsory self-incrimination had been violated. The motion was granted and this appeal followed.

Defendants successfully argued below that because the investigation had focused on them, the doctrine of People v Reed, 393 Mich 342; 224 NW2d 867 (1975), required that they be given their Miranda warnings prior to being engaged in conversation by Giveins. We disagree. Although the investigation was undoubtedly aimed at gathering evidence against defendants, there were none of the elements of compulsion or coercion which trigger the requirement that Miranda warnings be given. Defendants were neither in custody nor in the intimidating atmosphere of a police station. Indeed, they were not even confronted by a police officer. This was not a case where a suspect is being questioned by a figure of authority, as was the case in Reed, supra, and indeed in Miranda v Arizona, 384 US 436; 86 S Ct 1602; 16 L Ed 2d 694 (1966), and Escobedo v Illinois, 378 US 478; 84 S Ct 1758; 12 L Ed 2d 977 (1964), from which the "focus” test arose.

Here, defendants were in a public place, engaged in voluntary conversation with one whom they thought to be a friend. Any incriminating statements were made freely and voluntarily, not under compulsion. That Giveins was in fact an agent of the police does not change this fact. See Hoffa v United States, 385 US 293; 87 S Ct 408; 17 L Ed 2d 374 (1966), Osborn v United States, 385 US 323; 87 S Ct 429; 17 L Ed 2d 394 (1966). Moreover, the clear implication of Beavers, supra, that electronic monitoring is a valid investigative tool, if a warrant is obtained, would be rendered useless if Miranda warnings had to be given each suspect on whom an investigation had focused.

An analogy may be drawn from the United States Supreme Court holding in Beckwith v United States, 425 US 341; 96 S Ct 1612; 48 L Ed 2d 1 (1976), wherein it was held that Miranda warnings were not required where special agents of the Internal Revenue Service interviewed a taxpayer who was clearly the focus of a criminal income tax investigation. We relied on Beckwith and Oregon v Mathiason, 429 US 492; 97 S Ct 711; 50 L Ed 2d 714 (1977), in a recent decision rejecting the focus only test relied on by defendants in the case at bar. People v Martin, 78 Mich App 518; 260 NW2d 869 (1977).

The ruling of the trial court is reversed; and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.