Opinion ID: 2101401
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Were the juvenile defendant's two statements admissible?

Text: A statement obtained after an illegal arrest must be purged of the taint of any fourth amendment violation so as to represent a product of the detainee's free will. The United States Supreme Court, in Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979), applied as determinative the factors established in Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975): [2] [t]he temporal proximity of the arrest and the confession, the presence of intervening circumstances    and, particularly, the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct   . And the burden of showing admissibility rests, of course, on the prosecution. Brown, 422 U.S. at 603-04, 95 S.Ct. at 2261-62, quoted in Dunaway, 442 U.S. 200, 219, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 2260, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979). The Dunaway court excluded a confession because in the less than two hours that had elapsed between the arrest and the confession there was no intervening event whatsoever. 442 U.S. at 219, 99 S.Ct. at 2260. Further, the Dunaway arrest was clearly an expedition for evidence. [3] The situation in our present case is very similar to the Dunaway case with regard to defendant's first statement. The same evils are not attendant upon the second statement. Under Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963), defendant's release and subsequent return the next day were sufficiently independent to erase the taint of an illegal arrest if it occurred. Defendant's mother was by then well informed of the seriousness of her daughter's predicament and they were able to confer in private before returning to the station. Defendant's mother testified at the omnibus hearing that during part of the day and the evening before defendant returned to the station they discussed the seriousness of the incident and her mother's concern about it. Moreover, the police did not transport defendant to the station the second time. Her mother drove her there voluntarily. Defendant was by then aware that the police had statements from Croft and Back and her careful correction of the first statement shows the seriousness with which she viewed her situation. Defendant tries to analogize to U.S. v. Johnson, 626 F.2d 753 (9th Cir.1980), in which the court indicated that since Johnson had already committed himself in the first statement, there was little incentive to withhold a repetition of it and therefore the taint of the illegal arrest remained. This analogy is without merit because defendant's second statement was not a repetition but a correction of the first and it contained new information. These intervening events are sufficient to have rendered the second statement admissible even if an illegal arrest had been found to have occurred. Having found the second statement to be admissible under the fourth amendment, we must reexamine the circumstances under which it was given to determine if any fifth amendment violations occurred. Did the juvenile defendant voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently waive her constitutional rights to silence and to an attorney so as to allow her statements to be admissible at trial? In the recent case of Fare v. Michael, 442 U.S. 707, 99 S.Ct. 2560, 61 L.Ed.2d 197 (1979), the United States Supreme Court assume[d] without deciding that the Miranda principles were fully applicable to juvenile proceedings. Id. at 717, n. 4, 99 S.Ct. at 2567, n. 4. The determination of whether statements obtained during custodial interrogation are admissible against the accused mandates an inquiry into the totality of the circumstances. Id. at 724, 725, 99 S.Ct. at 2571, 2572. [4] There are two distinct determinations to be made to decide if a valid waiver of Miranda rights has occurred: was the waiver voluntary and were the rights knowingly and intelligently waived? Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 68 L.Ed.2d 378 (1981). The burden of proof is on the State and is a heavy burden. Tague v. Louisiana, 444 U.S. 469, 100 S.Ct. 652, 62 L.Ed.2d 622 (1980) (per curiam).