Opinion ID: 1571939
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Introduction the Evolution of Miranda's Custody Framework

Text: In Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), the United States Supreme Court held that the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment [19] applies to custodial interrogation. This Court has generally followed federal Fifth Amendment precedent in interpreting article I, section 9 of the Florida Constitution. See, e.g., Cuervo v. State, 967 So.2d 155, 160 (Fla.2007) (Article I, section 9 of the Florida Constitution provides in pertinent part that `[n]o person shall . . . be compelled in any criminal matter to be a witness against oneself.' This fundamental right is mirrored in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.). However, unlike article I, sections 12 (Searches and seizures) and 17 (Excessive punishments), section 9 does not contain a proviso that we must follow federal precedent with regard to the right against self-incrimination. Cf. Traylor v. State, 596 So.2d 957, 962 (Fla.1992) (When called upon to decide matters of fundamental rights, Florida's state courts are bound under federalist principles to give primacy to our state Constitution and to give independent legal import to every phrase and clause contained therein.). Thus, in this context, the federal Constitution sets the floor, not the ceiling, and this Court retains the ability to interpret the right against self-incrimination afforded by the Florida Constitution more broadly than that afforded by its federal counterpart. See, e.g., In re T.W., 551 So.2d 1186, 1191 (Fla.1989) (State constitutions, too, are a font of individual liberties, their protections often extending beyond those required by the Supreme Court's interpretation of federal law. . . . [W]ithout [independent state law], the full realization of our liberties cannot be guaranteed. (quoting William J. Brennan, Jr., State Constitutions and the Protection of Individual Rights, 90 Harv. L.Rev. 489, 491 (1977))). This Court is the ultimate arbiter[ ] of the meaning and extent of the safeguards provided under Florida's Constitution. Busby v. State, 894 So.2d 88, 102 (Fla.2004). To protect this right within the incommunicado confines of such questioning, the United States Supreme Court created a prophylactic framework comprised of a standard list of four warnings: Prior to any questioning, [1] the person must be warned that he has a right to remain silent, [2] that any statement he does make may be used as evidence against him, and [3] that he has a right to the presence of an attorney, [4] either retained or appointed. The defendant may waive effectuation of these rights, provided the waiver is made voluntarily, knowingly and intelligently. Miranda, at 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602 (emphasis supplied). These warnings are not themselves federal constitutional rights; [20] rather, they are required to dispel the compulsion inherent in custodial surroundings. 384 U.S. at 458, 86 S.Ct. 1602; see also Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U.S. 433, 444, 94 S.Ct. 2357, 41 L.Ed.2d 182 (1974). [21] If the State cannot demonstrate (1) that its officers issued these warnings prior to custodial interrogation and (2) that the defendant executed a knowing, intelligent, and voluntary waiver [22] of his or her associated rights, then it may not use statements, whether exculpatory or inculpatory, stemming from custodial interrogation of the defendant in its case in chief. Miranda, 384 U.S. at 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602; see also Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. 298, 307, 105 S.Ct. 1285, 84 L.Ed.2d 222 (1985) (statements obtained in violation of Miranda are available to impeach a defendant's trial testimony). The Miranda exclusionary rule . . . serves the Fifth Amendment [but] sweeps more broadly than the Fifth Amendment itself. It may be triggered even in the absence of a [traditional] Fifth Amendment [voluntariness] violation. Elstad, 470 U.S. at 306, 105 S.Ct. 1285. The dictates of Miranda apply exclusively to  in-custody interrogation. Miranda, 384 U.S. at 441-42, 86 S.Ct. 1602 (emphasis supplied); see also Jones v. State, 748 So.2d 1012, 1019 (Fla.1999) ( Miranda only applies when a defendant is subject to custodial interrogation. (emphasis supplied)). Further, there is a limited public-safety exception to the rule that law-enforcement officers must first Mirandize custodial subjects prior to interrogation. See New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649, 655-56, 104 S.Ct. 2626, 81 L.Ed.2d 550 (1984) (issuing this holding within the context of an on-scene arrest of a rape suspect who had discarded a firearm in or near a grocery store). For Miranda purposes, custody has a disjunctive meaning: [W]e mean questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way.  Miranda, 384 U.S. at 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602 (emphasis supplied). Based on this definition, Miranda applies to a broader range of situations than custodial interrogation within police stations. See, e.g., Mathis v. United States, 391 U.S. 1, 3-4, 88 S.Ct. 1503, 20 L.Ed.2d 381 (1968) (holding that Miranda applied when an IRS agent questioned a defendant who was already incarcerated in state prison concerning an unrelated offense); Orozco v. Texas, 394 U.S. 324, 326-27, 89 S.Ct. 1095, 22 L.Ed.2d 311 (1969) (holding that Miranda applied to intense police questioning of a defendant within his own bedroom). Following Miranda, commentators and lower courts attempted to determine the proper parameters of measuring whether an interrogated suspect is in custody, and thus entitled to Miranda warnings. See, e.g., United States v. Hall, 421 F.2d 540, 543 (2d Cir.1970) (citing Kenneth W. Graham, What Is Custodial Interrogation?: California's Anticipatory Application of Miranda v. Arizona, 14 U.C.L.A. L.Rev. 59, 114-15 (1966), and Yale Kamisar, Custodial Interrogation Within the Meaning of Miranda, in Criminal Law and the Constitution 339-40 (1968), as examples of relevant scholarship). Much of this early debate centered on the meaning of Miranda's fourth footnote: This is what we meant in Escobedo [v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 490-91, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977 (1964) (a Sixth Amendment right-to-counsel decision),] when we spoke of an investigation which had focused on an accused. Miranda, 384 U.S. at 445 n. 4, 86 S.Ct. 1602 (emphasis supplied); see also 2 Wayne R. LaFave et al., Criminal Procedure § 6.6(a), at 720-23 (3d ed.2007). The Court eventually ended this debate in Beckwith v. United States, 425 U.S. 341, 96 S.Ct. 1612, 48 L.Ed.2d 1 (1976), where it rejected a taxpayer's suggestion that he was in custody simply because IRS Intelligence Division agents had focused upon him as a suspect in a criminal tax-fraud investigation. The Court explained that  Miranda implicitly defined `focus,' for its purposes, as `questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way, ' which meant that focus alone was insufficient to trigger the requirement that the defendant receive Miranda warnings. Beckwith, 425 U.S. at 347, 96 S.Ct. 1612 (emphasis supplied) (quoting Miranda, 384 U.S. at 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602). The Court next faced a two-fold question with regard to defining custody for purposes of Miranda: (1) whether the test is objective or subjective; and (2) whose perspectivethat of law enforcement or that of the defendant-is the proper point of reference. By this time, the better-reasoned decisions from the lower federal courts had already settled on an objective test, which is based on the perspective of the defendant. See, e.g., Hall, 421 F.2d at 544-45 (The test must thus be an objective one. Clearly the [High] Court meant that something more than official interrogation must be shown. . . . [I]n the absence of actual arrest something must be said or done by the authorities, either in their manner of approach or in the tone or extent of their questioning, which indicates that they would not have heeded a request to depart or to allow the suspect to do so. (emphasis supplied)). The United States Supreme Court explicitly adopted this objective test in Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 104 S.Ct. 3138, 82 L.Ed.2d 317 (1984), where it held that [a] policeman's unarticulated plan has no bearing on the question whether a suspect was in custody at a particular time; the only relevant inquiry is how a reasonable man in the suspect's position would have understood his situation. Id. at 442, 104 S.Ct. 3138 (emphasis supplied). [23] The Court later reiterated this position in Stansbury v. California, 511 U.S. 318, 114 S.Ct. 1526, 128 L.Ed.2d 293 (1994), by stating that its decisions make clear that the initial determination of custody depends on the objective circumstances of the interrogation, not on the subjective views harbored by either the interrogating officers or the person being questioned. Id. at 323, 114 S.Ct. 1526 (emphasis supplied). However, the Court also clarified that the subjective perception or intent of the interrogating officer becomes relevant for purposes of the objective test when disclosed or articulated by word or deed during the course of the interrogation. Id. at 325, 114 S.Ct. 1526 (emphasis supplied). Within this objective inquiry, [e]ven a clear statement from an officer that the person under interrogation is a prime suspect is not, in itself, dispositive of the custody issue, for some suspects are free to come and go until the police decide to make an arrest. The weight and pertinence of any communications regarding the officer's degree of suspicion will depend upon the facts and circumstances of the particular case. Id. (emphasis supplied). This entire line of precedent demonstrates that a determination of whether the situation [i]s custodial for Miranda purposes will often require a careful examination of all the [objective] circumstances of the particular case. LaFave, supra § 6.6(c), at 729. The United States Supreme Court has also held that voluntary [24] interviews conducted in police stations do not necessarily trigger Miranda. See Oregon v. Mathiason, 429 U.S. 492, 495, 97 S.Ct. 711, 50 L.Ed.2d 714 (1977) (defendant not in custody where: (1) he voluntarily traveled to the police station; (2) the interrogating officer explicitly told him that he was not under arrest; (3) the interview lasted for thirty minutes; and (4) the defendant was free to leave after the interview); California v. Beheler, 463 U.S. 1121, 1123-25, 103 S.Ct. 3517, 77 L.Ed.2d 1275 (1983) (defendant not in custody where: (1) he voluntarily traveled to the police station; (2) the interrogating officer told him that he was not under arrest; and (3) the interview lasted for thirty minutes); see also Roman v. State, 475 So.2d 1228, 1230-32 (Fla.1985) (defendant not in custody where: (1) he voluntarily traveled to the police station; (2) the police did not confront him with evidence of his guilt but, instead, showed him photographs of the child victim and pleaded that he help ensure the child's proper burial; and (3) the interview lasted for 3.5 hours). Of course, this raises at least two questions: (1) What qualifies as a voluntary interview?; and (2) Once an interview is classified as voluntary, does it inexorably remain so? Similar to the traffic-stop situation at issue in Berkemer, at some point the words and conduct of the interrogating officers may transform that which once was a noncustodial, voluntary event into a custodial interrogation, which then triggers Miranda. See, e.g., Mansfield v. State, 758 So.2d 636, 644 (Fla.2000) (the interrogating detectives converted a voluntary interview into a custodial interrogation where: [1] [the defendant] was interrogated by three detectives at the police station, [2] he was never told he was free to leave, [3] he was confronted with evidence strongly suggesting his guilt, and [4] he was asked questions that made it readily apparent that the detectives considered him the prime, if not the only, suspect); Caso v. State, 524 So.2d 422, 424 (Fla.1988) (finding the defendant in custody and stating, Contrary to the defendants in Beheler and Mathiason, Caso did not initiate the contact with police. Moreover, Caso was interrogated at the police station and was not specifically informed that he was not under arrest, despite being confronted with evidence which implicated him in the crime. . . .). Thus, the statements that appear in Mathiason and Beheler indicating that the the requirement of warnings [is not] to be imposed simply because the questioning takes place in the station house, or because the questioned person is one whom the police suspect, [25] must be interpreted in light of the objective circumstances presented in those cases, as disclosed by the words and actions of the interrogating officers. In each case, the defendants were explicitly told that they were not under arrest, the interviews only lasted for thirty minutes, and the defendants were free to leave post-interview. Further, Mathiason is now of dubious validity to the extent the Court held that confrontation with evidence of guilt does not bear on custody determinations. Mathiason appears to have employed a now abandoned subjective test to hold that the officer's false claim that the defendant's fingerprints matched those recovered from the scene of a burglary was of no significance. See LaFave, supra § 6.6(d), at 734 n. 49 ([T]he [holding of the] Court in Mathiason, by stating the officer's falsehood `has nothing to do with whether respondent was in custody for purposes of the Miranda rule,' . . . cannot be squared with the Court's [modern] objective test, [therefore] it is often not followed by lower courts. See, e.g., . . . Mansfield v. State, 758 So.2d 636 (Fla.2000) (custody [occurred] at station where defendant `was confronted with evidence strongly suggesting his guilt, and he was asked questions that made it readily apparent that the detectives considered him the prime, if not the only, suspect'). . . .). The High Court most recently reaffirmed its objective reasonable person Miranda custody test in a federal habeas case, which required a deferential standard of review under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. See Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652, 655, 124 S.Ct. 2140, 158 L.Ed.2d 938 (2004) ([A] federal court can grant an application for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a person held pursuant to a state-court judgment if the state-court adjudication `resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.' (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1)) (emphasis supplied)). Under the applicable deferential standard of review, the High Court reversed the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and upheld a state-court determination that the defendant was not in custody where: (1) the seventeen-nearly eighteen-year-old, defendant voluntarily came to a sheriff's station accompanied by his parents for an interview concerning a murder investigation; (2) the recorded interview took place in a small room; (3) the parents waited in the lobby; (4) the interview lasted for two hours; (5) a single interrogating detective questioned the defendant and asked him on at least two occasions whether he needed a break; (6) the detective questioned the defendant in a nonconfrontational, nonthreatening manner; and (7) the defendant returned home after the interview. Alvarado, 541 U.S. at 655-58, 664-65, 124 S.Ct. 2140; cf. Schoenwetter v. State, 931 So.2d 857, 868 (Fla.2006) (teenage murder suspect not in custody where police confronted him with evidence of his guilt before he agreed to a voluntary interview). By recognizing that it was bound by a deferential standard of review, and that this was a close case over which fair-minded jurists could disagree, the Alvarado Court did not offer much guidance as to whether it would have upheld the custody determination under de novo review. However, the High Court did reemphasize the following objective reasonable-person framework, which it originally articulated in Thompson v. Keohane, 516 U.S. 99, 116 S.Ct. 457, 133 L.Ed.2d 383 (1995): Two discrete inquiries are essential to the determination: first, what were the circumstances surrounding the interrogation; and second, given those circumstances, would a reasonable person have felt he or she was not at liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave. Once the scene is set and the players' lines and actions are reconstructed, the court must apply an objective test to resolve the ultimate inquiry: was there a formal arrest or restraint on freedom of movement of the degree associated with a formal arrest. Alvarado, 541 U.S. at 663, 124 S.Ct. 2140 (emphasis supplied) (quoting Thompson, 516 U.S. at 112, 116 S.Ct. 457). This Court has adopted the same objective, reasonable-person framework. See Connor v. State, 803 So.2d 598, 606 (Fla.2001) (quoting the Thompson standard with approval). However, we have also adopted a subsidiary four-part channeling paradigm to organize and analyze the case-specific facts that are relevant to determining whether a reasonable person would have felt that he or she was not at liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave. See Ramirez v. State, 739 So.2d 568 (Fla.1999) (adopting the four-part test enunciated by the Iowa Supreme Court in State v. Countryman, 572 N.W.2d 553, 558 (Iowa 1997)). This four-part test requires the Court to consider: (1) the manner in which police summon the suspect for questioning; (2) the purpose, place, and manner of the interrogation; (3) the extent to which the suspect is confronted with evidence of his or her guilt; [and] (4) whether the suspect is informed that he or she is free to leave the place of questioning. Ramirez, 739 So.2d at 574. Hence, Miranda custody determinations present mixed questions of law and fact, under which the reviewing court defers to the competent factual determinations of the trial court but analyzes de novo the application of the law to those facts. See, e.g., Connor, 803 So.2d at 605-07. In this context, precedent remains a persistent guide but often plays less of a role because each custody determination depends upon the highly unique facts of the given case: Suppression issues are extraordinarily rich in diversity and run the gamut from (1) pure questions of fact, to (2) mixed questions of law and fact, to (3) pure questions of law. Reviewing courts must exercise care when examining such issues, for while the issues themselves may be posed in broad legal terms . . ., the actual ruling is often discrete and factual (e.g., whether police did in fact tell a suspect he was free to go, whether police did in fact ask a suspect if he committed the crime). State v. Glatzmayer, 789 So.2d 297, 301 (Fla.2001) (footnotes omitted).