Opinion ID: 2508855
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Lack of Miranda Advisements Prior to March 21 Interview

Text: Defendant contends he was held in custody during his interview at the police station on Monday, March 21, 1983, and should therefore have received Miranda advisements prior to the interview. He also argues the lack of advisements and what he characterizes as the accusatory content of the interview rendered his March 21 statement (consisting primarily of his false alibi) involuntary, and that both that statement and the following day's statement (assertedly a product of the false alibi's collapse) should be suppressed on that ground as well. Having learned through neighborhood canvassing and contact with the victims' mother that defendant was a possible boyfriend or would-be boyfriend of Debbie and discovering that he was on parole for an assault, Sheriff's Detectives Dean and Hash attempted, on the evening of March 21, to contact defendant through the Sacramento area parole offices. From a central office, the fact that sheriff's detectives wanted to talk to defendant was relayed to Willard Stinnett, the lone parole agent on duty at the local office where defendant was scheduled that evening for drug and alcohol testing. When defendant arrived about 6:00 p.m., Stinnett handcuffed him to avoid any possible violence, then telephoned the detectives and talked with Dean. According to Dean, he told Stinnett that he and Hash wanted to talk to defendant and would leave their office for the parole office immediately. He asked if defendant would still be there when they arrived, and Stinnett assured him he would. Stinnett testified he told Dean he had defendant in his office and would remain with him until the detectives got there. Dean said it would take them 15 or 20 minutes and asked if Stinnett would wait; Stinnett said he would. He did not think he told the detectives he had handcuffed defendant. Hash remembers Dean asking Stinnett if there were some way he could delay defendant's testing so he would still be at the parole office when the detectives got there. Arriving at the parole office, the detectives were surprised to find defendant in handcuffs. According to Hash and Stinnett, Stinnett immediately released defendant at the request or suggestion of one of the detectives; according to Dean, he himself uncuffed defendant, announcing there had been a mistake: they were there only to talk to defendant, not to arrest him. [7] The detectives then asked defendant if he knew why they wanted to talk to him; defendant said he thought it was about the death of his friend Debbie, which he had heard about that afternoon. They said they would like him to come to the station for an interview; he could drive himself over or ride with them. Defendant said the friend who had driven him to the parole office could take him to the police station, but the friend, who was waiting in the lobby, said he had somewhere else to be. The detectives then assured defendant he could ride with them and they would get him a ride home when the interview was completed. Defendant agreed. Defendant was, according to Hash, patted down before entering the detectives' unmarked car. Defendant sat in the backseat, which had no cage or other divider from the front seat area; the backseat's doors and windows could be operated by the occupant in the ordinary way. At the station the detectives took defendant to an interview room, offering him coffee and the use of a restroom before the interview began. In the ensuing taped interview, a detective told defendant they were looking for the person responsible for the deaths of Debbie and Diane and were collecting as much information as they could about the victims and their associates. The officer stated defendant was not under arrest, that he had volunteered to come down to the station, and he was not handcuffed. Asked if that was correct, defendant responded, Yeah. The detective further explained defendant was not per se, the person we feel [is] responsible for the murder, that in talking to him they hoped to eliminate you as a possible suspect, and that if at some point they believed he was definitely a suspect, that you are the person we should be focusing on, they would then advise him of his rights. In his suppression hearing testimony, Detective Hash confirmed that at this point in their investigation the police had no idea who the perpetrator or perpetrators were, that they treated everyone as a possible suspect, and that their investigation was not focused on defendant. The detectives questioned defendant, among other things, about his prior offenses, about whether Cruz would confirm his alibi, and about whether he had told Debbie she should have sex with him to let a real man show her what it's like. The interview ended about 9:00 p.m., after which defendant, at the detectives' request, took a polygraph examination, was photographed, and gave a set of fingerprint exemplars. Another officer drove defendant home about 1:00 a.m. The trial court, denying defendant's motion to suppress the March 21 statement, found defendant was not in custody, was not illegally detained, was not otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way, and his statements on that date were made voluntarily. A Miranda warning was not required. The court specifically found that the sheriff officers did not direct or otherwise request that [defendant] be handcuffed by the parole officer and that when the sheriff officers saw the handcuffs they immediately had them removed. Further, the objective indicia of an arrest were not present . . . [as] defendant could have been driven to the police station by his friend, if his friend had been willing to take him, and defendant was assured of, and actually given, a ride home after the interview. Finally, the officers had not focused on defendant as a suspect . . . [and] were merely gathering information and making an investigation, and [t]he tape shows that the interview was not confrontational. The court concluded that defendant accompanied the detectives to the station and gave them a self-exculpatory statement not because he felt compelled to do so, but because he thought it was in his best interest to do so. On both the questions of custody and voluntariness of the statement, we review the trial court's findings of historical fact under the deferential substantial evidence standard, but decide the ultimate constitutional question independently. ( People v. Ochoa, supra, 19 Cal.4th at pp. 401-402, 79 Cal.Rptr.2d 408, 966 P.2d 442; People v. Massie, supra, 19 Cal.4th at p. 576, 79 Cal.Rptr.2d 816, 967 P.2d 29.) Taking the custody question first, we conclude the circumstances of the March 21 interview did not create any restraint on defendant's movement of the degree associated with a formal arrest; a reasonable person in defendant's circumstances would not have felt compelled to accompany the detectives to the station for an interview or to remain there once the interview began. ( People v. Ochoa, supra, at p. 402, 79 Cal.Rptr.2d 408, 966 P.2d 442.) The undisputed facts are that the detectives did not themselves arrest or physically restrain defendant, that they requested he come to the station for an interview but did not demand that he accompany them, and that at the interview's outset they confirmed with him that he was being interviewed voluntarily and told him he was not under arrest or the focus of their suspicion. Substantial evidence, in the testimony of the detectives and the parole officer, supports the trial court's findings that the detectives did not ask for defendant to be handcuffed and did have him released as soon as they arrived, as well as the findings that defendant was told he could have his friend drive him to the station if he liked and that he was promised, and given, a ride home after the interview. This set of facts is objectively inconsistent with a degree of restraint equivalent to arrest; no reasonable person would believe under these circumstances that he was compelled to accompany the officers or to remain with them during the interview. Defendant argues that as a parolee he would reasonably consider himself a target for suspicion in the deaths of his acquaintances Debbie Cimmino and Diane Pencin and would understand his handcuffing by the parole officer as motivated by police suspicion of him and therefore reasonably believe himself compelled to accompany the detectives and give them an interview. He further argues the detectives' assurance that he was not per se a suspect in the killings, and that if he became such they would advise him of his rights, was reasonably calculated only to reinforce the sense of compulsion. In these circumstances, he maintains, any reasonable person, but especially a parolee, would believe that his rights were suspended until he could prove his innocence to the detectives' satisfaction. We disagree that a reasonable person in defendant's circumstances, whether or not a parolee, would believe, once he had been uncuffed and the detectives had made their request for a station house interview, he was not free to go his own way. If the detectives intended to keep him in custody until he answered their questions satisfactorily, a reasonable person would assume, they would have left him handcuffed and demanded he ride to the station in their car. Nor was the advisement that defendant was not per se a focus of suspicion, that police hoped to rule him out, and that he would be told if he became a suspect, calculated to make a reasonable person think he was not free to leave. Rather, a reasonable person would understand the advisement as indicating an opportunity to be cleared, at the early stages of an investigation, as a possible perpetrator. Defendant apparently so understood it, for he cooperated fully and, without hesitation, proffered the alibi he had fabricated. (See Oregon v. Mathiason (1977) 429 U.S. 492, 493-495, 97 S.Ct. 711, 50 L.Ed.2d 714 [where defendant voluntarily came to station house for interview, he was not in custody even though interview took place alone in closed room and officer told defendant he was suspected of crime]; In re Joseph R. (1998) 65 Cal.App.4th 954, 956-961, 76 Cal.Rptr.2d 887 [minor suspected of crime, who was advised he did not have to speak with officer, then briefly handcuffed and placed in patrol car while officer conducted another part of investigation, then released from handcuffs and removed from car before being questioned, was not in custody].) Nor, turning to the voluntariness question, does the combination of temporary restraint by the parole officer and the content of the later questioning support a conclusion that defendant's will was overborne and his exculpatory statement coerced. ( People v. Massie, supra, 19 Cal.4th at p. 576, 79 Cal.Rptr.2d 816, 967 P.2d 29.) Defendant's words and behavior both indicate he voluntarily accompanied the officers to the station house for an interview, and the detectives' questions regarding his past offenses and his supposed sexual remark to Debbie, even coupled with the acknowledgement he might at some point become a focus of the detectives' suspicions, were not so accusatory or definitive as to convey a threat of arrest if defendant declined to give a statement.