Opinion ID: 771366
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Statements Made at the Postal Inspection Service Office

Text: 15 After being taken to the Postal Inspection Service Office, Orso was advised of her Miranda rights. She waived these rights, was interviewed for about an hour and a half, and fully confessed her role in the crime. Orso does not claim that her confession was involuntary. Rather, she claims that it must be suppressed because it was tainted by her earlier admissions in the car. 16 In Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. 298 (1985), the Supreme Court considered when Miranda requires the suppression of statements obtained after the suspect initially makes an incriminating statement, then receives a Miranda warning, and subsequently makes a further incriminating statement. The Elstad Court held that the further statement, obtained after the warning has been given, need only be suppressed when the first statement was given in response to deliberately coercive or improper tactics and the coercive impact of the first statement has not been dissipated by factors such as the passage of time, change in place, and change in identity of the interrogators. Id. at 310, 314. 3 17 In Elstad, the first statement made by the defendant was not involuntary or the result of deliberately improper tactics; it was obtained in the defendant's own house, in the absence of any restraint, while the defendant's mother waited in the kitchen. Id. at 305-07. Although the police in fact committed a Miranda violation by interrogating Elstad without first advising him of his rights, there is no evidence that they were aware that they should have administered a Miranda warning, because it was not clear to them that the brief conversation in Elstad's living room was custodial. See id. at 315. In contradistinction to the case before us, the police in Elstad did not use deliberately improper tactics during the interrogation that produced the first incriminating statement. As the second statement was also given voluntarily, the Elstad Court held that, under the circumstances, its suppression was not required. See id. at 316, 318. 18 The rule is different, however, when the police not only violate Miranda in obtaining the first set of incriminating statements, but use deliberately improper tactics while doing so. The second set of inculpatory statements is admissible only if the taint caused by the coercive impact of the deliberately improper tactics has been dissipated. See Pope v. Zenon, 69 F.3d 1018, 1024 (9th Cir. 1995) (amended 1996); United States v. Carter, 884 F.2d 368, 373-74 (8th Cir. 1989); cf. United States v. Gale, 952 F.2d 1412, 1418 (D.C. Cir. 1992) (while some improper police conduct is not sufficient to cast doubt on later statement, a deliberate end-run on Miranda could suffice); but see United States v. Esquilin, 208 F.3d 315, 320-21 (1st Cir. 2000) (refusing to suppress postMiranda statements when pre-Miranda statement is voluntarily made, but is the result of deliberately improper tactics). Such statements are suppressed because [a] contrary holding would only encourage police to resort to unacceptable tactics to circumvent Miranda. Pope, 69 F.3d at 1024. 19 In Pope, we recognized that while initial questioning that deliberately employs improper tactics may not coerce a suspect into an immediate confession, such questioning may still have a coercive effect on subsequent statements. In that case, the detectives attempted to elicit breakthrough  incriminating information from the suspect prior to advising him of his rights, in order to use that information as a beachhead to later undermine the effect of the Miranda warning and to compel the suspect to confess in spite of them. Pope, 69 F.3dat 1023. The detective received some incriminating information from the defendant, although not a full confession, prior to advising him of his Miranda rights, and thus set him up to talk to them notwithstanding their advisement of rights. Id. In Pope, we noted that this tactic had been described in police manuals examined by the Supreme Court, and declared to be unlawful. See id.; cf. California Attorneys for Criminal Justice v. Butts, 195 F.3d 1039, 1042 (9th Cir. 2000) (condemning the police practice of deliberately questioning suspects in violation of Miranda).
20 Here, investigators used the very beachhead tactic condemned in Pope: they talked to Orso in isolation in the car without giving her Miranda warnings; falsely informed her about the evidence they had against her in order to make her fearful; and thereby elicited incriminating statements from her, including her admission that she knew one of the suspects. Orso's breakthrough statements served to incriminate her, and therefore established a beachhead from which to conduct the later full interrogation that led to her confession after the warning was given. Galetti's interrogation tactic was deliberate: he admitted that he employed it in order to get Orso to speak notwithstanding the Miranda warning that would follow. Furthermore, it worked. Orso gave a full confession after waiving her constitutional rights. As we explained in Pope, use of this tactic is precisely what the Supreme Court had in mind in Elstad when it exempted such conduct from the general rule that a post-Miranda statement is admissible if it is voluntary. Pope, 69 F.3d at 1024. 4
21 We must suppress Orso's confession at the Postal Inspection Service Office unless the taint caused by her prior statements resulting from the inspectors' deliberately improper tactics is sufficiently attenuated. Elstad, 470 U.S. at 310. In our cases applying Elstad, when considering whether the taint has been dissipated, we have considered the following factors: the time between the two sets of statements, a change in environment or identity of interrogators, the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct, and other surrounding circumstances that may indicate a break in the chain of events arising from the original statement. See United States v. Jenkins, 938 F.2d 934, 941 (9th Cir. 1991); United States v. Patterson, 812 F.2d 1188, 1192 (9th Cir. 1987). 22 The record provides substantial evidence that the taint of the prior interrogation did not dissipate by the time Orso confessed at the station. The confession occurred approximately ten minutes after the colloquy in the car ended and did not involve a change in the identity of the interrogators. The memory of the prior incriminating statements was unquestionably still in Orso's mind. Moreover, the deliberate use of improper tactics and the deliberate failure to give Orso a Miranda warning prior to the initial interrogation had their intended effect. There was no break in the chain of events. Accordingly, we suppress the statement Orso made at the Postal Inspection Service Office.