Opinion ID: 2633881
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Total Length of Interrogations

Text: Defendant makes an additional claim on appeal that was not raised below: he asserts his statements to the officers concerning the Lactawen murder and to Dr. Lyons were involuntary because of the extensiveness of the interrogations. Defendant stresses the total amount of time he was interrogated on the day he was transferred from Nevada to California. (See Mincey, supra, 437 U.S. 385, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 57 L.Ed.2d 290; Spano v. New York (1959) 360 U.S. 315, 322, 79 S.Ct. 1202, 3 L.Ed.2d 1265.) Again, this claim was not raised or addressed in the trial court and therefore is forfeited. ( Demetrulias, supra, 39 Cal.4th at p. 22, 45 Cal.Rptr.3d 407, 137 P.3d 229.) Additionally, even if not forfeited, this claim is without merit. Unlike the situations in Mincey and Spano, here there was no single interview that lasted many hours, ultimately resulting in a confession after the defendant earlier had refused to speak. (See Mincey, supra, 437 U.S. at p. 401, 98 S.Ct. 2408 [four-hour interrogation of a seriously and painfully wounded man on the edge of consciousness that stopped only during those periods when he was unconscious]; Spano, supra, 360 U.S. at p. 322, 79 S.Ct. 1202 [eight-hour interrogation at night with only one break while defendant was moved to a new location for further questioning].) Rather, there was a series of relatively short interviews by various officers about different crimes, often with significant breaks in between, including the first night after his arrest and a dinner break the next day when he arrived at the Placer County jail. Even during the first two interviews with officers from the Sacramento County Sheriffs Department, which were separated by only a few minutes, defendant admitted to the Lactawen killing after less than one hour of questioning in total. There simply is no evidence in the record, including the tape-recorded statements and defendant's testimony at the suppression hearing, suggesting that the authorities exploited the slowly mounting fatigue resulting from prolonged questioning, or that such fatigue occurred or played any role in defendant's decision to confess. (Compare Spano, supra, 360 U.S. at p. 322, 79 S.Ct. 1202.)