Opinion ID: 1286655
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Admissibility of Defendant's Pre-Arrest Statements

Text: As indicated above, the state introduced testimony regarding defendant's admissions that he had been drinking in Sioux Falls and in Montrose. Defendant made no pretrial motion to suppress these statements. Accordingly, he ordinarily would not be heard to question the admissibility of those statements for the first time on appeal. See, e.g., State v. Bullis, 255 N.W.2d 290 (S.D.1977). We therefore review this claim under the plain error rule, SDCL 23A-44-15. State v. Lohnes, 324 N.W.2d 409 (S.D.1982). We conclude that on the face of the record it is manifest that defendant's statements were admissible. In Berkemer v. McCarty, ___ U.S. ___, 104 S.Ct. 3138, 82 L.Ed.2d 317 (1984), a defendant was stopped after a highway patrolman observed his car weaving in and out of his lane of travel. Based upon the defendant's difficulty in standing after he stepped out of his automobile, the investigating officer determined that the defendant would be charged with a traffic offense. The defendant was not advised of this fact, however, and the investigating officer then asked the defendant to perform a field sobriety test. Thereafter, the investigating officer asked the defendant whether he had been using intoxicants, to which the defendant responded that he had drunk two beers and had smoked several joints of marijuana a short time before. The investigating officer then formally placed the defendant under arrest. Based upon these facts, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the initial stop of the defendant's automobile did not by itself render the defendant in custody within the meaning of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). The Court went on to hold that the defendant had failed to establish that he had been subjected to restraints comparable to those associated with a formal arrest between the time of the initial stop and the time that he was placed under arrest. The fact that the investigating officer had formed the intent to arrest the defendant as soon as the defendant had stepped out of his car was held to be irrelevant to the question whether the defendant was in custody at that time, the relevant inquiry being what a reasonable person in the defendant's position would have understood his situation to be. The Court concluded that nothing in the interaction between the investigating officer and the defendant gave any support to the defendant's contention that he was exposed to custodial interrogation at the scene of the stop, the Court stating: From aught that appears in the stipulation of facts, a single police officer asked respondent a modest number of questions and requested him to perform a simple balancing test at a location visible to passing motorists. Treatment of this sort cannot fairly be characterized as the functional equivalent of formal arrest. ___ U.S. at ___, 104 S.Ct. at 3152, 82 L.Ed.2d at 336 (footnote omitted). State v. Hall, 353 N.W.2d 37 (S.D.1984), handed down one day after the United States Supreme Court's decision in Berkemer, is similar in both its holding and its facts to Berkemer and to the facts in the case before us. In Hall, the investigating officer observed the defendant's car parked in the middle of a main street intersection at 3:00 a.m. Upon approaching the automobile, the officer asked the defendant driver what his problem was, to which the defendant replied that he had driven the automobile to the point where it was parked in the intersection. We held that the trial court did not err in refusing to suppress the defendant's admission that he had driven his automobile to the point where the officer found it parked, reasoning that the officer's inquiry into the problem behind the defendant's presence in the intersection was part of general on-the-scene questioning not within the reach of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination or the scope of Miranda. We conclude that Berkemer and Hall effectively refute defendant's contention that his pre-arrest admissions regarding his drinking in Sioux Falls and in Montrose were not admissible.