Opinion ID: 472184
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: inadmissibility claim based upon miranda violation

Text: 28 This Court has previously ruled that the failure of the investigating agents, following Cherry's equivocal request for counsel, to cease all interrogation until they could clarify Cherry's request or provide him with counsel violated his rights under Miranda and Edwards. Cherry I, 733 F.2d at 1132. We held, therefore, that Cherry's subsequent confession had been illegally obtained and could not be used at trial. Id. 29 The Court in Cherry I also held that Cherry's consent to the second search that led to the discovery of the murder weapon was also fatally tainted by this violation. Id. n. 15. Under this analysis, the murder weapon was therefore excludable as a fruit of the Miranda violation. In Cherry II, however, we withdrew our holding regarding the legality of Cherry's consent in light of the Supreme Court's holding in Elstad, which was decided after Cherry I. 759 F.2d at 1210. Upon remand, the district ruled that Cherry's consent was valid notwithstanding the Miranda violation and that the murder weapon was admissible at trial. Upon a review of Elstad and other recent Supreme Court decisions, we agree. 30 Elstad held that a Miranda violation creates a presumption that the suspect's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination has been violated. But the presumption may be overcome by the circumstances of a particular case. The Miranda exclusionary rule serves the Fifth Amendment and sweeps more broadly than Fifth Amendment itself. Elstad, 470 U.S. at ------, 105 S.Ct. at 1292. The Supreme Court concluded that claims based upon Miranda violations are not always Fifth Amendment violations. Therefore, they do not automatically establish the inadmissibility of the evidence obtained. 31 Since Elstad makes clear that failure to give or carry out the obligation of Miranda warnings in and of itself is not a constitutional infringement, the test by which to evaluate whether a defendant's underlying Fifth Amendment right against compelled testimony has been violated is still the  'due process voluntariness test.'  Elstad, 470 U.S. at ----, 105 S.Ct. at 1293, quoting Schulhofer, Confessions and the Court, 79 Mich.L.R. 865, 877 (1981). In Harris v. New York, 401 U.S. 222, 91 S.Ct. 643, 28 L.Ed.2d 1 (1971), for example, the Supreme Court held that a confession obtained in violation of Miranda could nonetheless be used for impeachment purposes on cross-examination so long as it actually had been voluntarily made. Id. at 225 & n. 2, 91 S.Ct. at 645 & n. 2. 32 This due process voluntariness inquiry applies to the case before us since the issue is the use of derivative evidence obtained through the exploitation of statements obtained in violation of Miranda. In Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U.S. 433, 94 S.Ct. 2357, 41 L.Ed.2d 182 (1974), the Supreme Court held that the testimony of a prosecution witness whose identity was discovered as a result of a statement obtained from the defendant in violation of Miranda would not be suppressed. The Supreme Court noted that the statement had been voluntarily given and that Miranda did not protect against such a voluntary naming of a potential witness against an accused. The Supreme Court in Tucker reasoned that neither the Fifth Amendment interest in assuring trustworthy evidence nor the general policy of deterring improper police conduct would be furthered by suppressing the testimony of a witness so identified. The Court thus rejected a fruits doctrine for the Miranda violation under the facts of that case. 33 The policies underlying the rejection of a fruits doctrine in Tucker apply with equal force to the discovery of the murder weapon in this case. As the Supreme Court stated that in Tucker: 34 [T]he introduction of the third-party witness' testimony did not violate Tucker's Fifth Amendment rights ... [T]his reasoning applies with equal force when the alleged 'fruit' of a noncoercive Miranda violation is neither a witness nor an article of evidence but the accused's own voluntary testimony. 35 Elstad, 470 U.S. at ----, 105 S.Ct. at 1293 (emphasis added). Inasmuch as we find that Cherry's statement and consent were voluntarily given, we are bound by the reasoning of Tucker and Elstad. Cherry's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination was not violated in this case. We decline to hold that the murder weapon should be suppressed as a fruit of a Miranda violation. 6