Opinion ID: 2453894
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The court of appeals correctly looked to the factors articulated in Halberg v. State to determine whether Kalmakoff's third and fourth interviews were tainted by prior illegalities.

Text: Alaska courts have historically used a single legal test to determine whether a previous violation of a criminal defendant's Fifth Amendment rightseither an involuntary statement or a statement taken in violation of Miranda tainted the defendant's subsequent statement. [74] The court of appeals explained this test in its leading opinion on this subject, Halberg v. State : As a preliminary matter, the government had to show that the defendant's subsequent statement was voluntary and, if the defendant was in custody during the subsequent interrogation, that the defendant received proper Miranda warnings and waived his or her rights. Assuming these foundational matters were proved, courts then analyzed the totality of the circumstances to assess whether the defendant's decision to give a subsequent statement was sufficiently an act of free will to purge the primary taint.[ [75] ] The totality of the circumstances analysis has also been described as whether there was a break in the stream of events ... sufficient to insulate the [subsequent] statement from the effect of all that went before [76] and as whether the connection between the illegal conduct of the police and the challenged evidence has become so attenuated as to dissipate the taint. [77] The Halberg test is based on the United States Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Illinois . [78] In Brown, the United States Supreme Court clarified that whether the taint had dissipated was not a but for inquiry, rejecting the argument that suppression was always required when a defendant's subsequent statement was the result of prior illegality and instead held that [t]he question whether a [subsequent] confession is the product of a free will under Wong Sun must be answered on the facts of each case. No single fact is dispositive. [79] The Court further explained that [t]he temporal proximity of the [initial illegality] and the confession, the presence of intervening circumstances, and, particularly, the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct are all relevant circumstances to consider. [80] The Alaska Court of Appeals agreed with this approach in Halberg: The question is not whether the content of the second and subsequent interviews would have been the same if the initial interview had not taken place. Instead, the question is whether [a defendant's] decision to submit to the [subsequent interview] was sufficiently an act of free will to purge the ... taint of the Miranda violation at the first interview.[ [81] ] To answer this question, the court of appeals in Halberg instructed courts to consider a number of relevant factors: [T]he purpose and flagrancy of the initial illegal act, the amount of time between the illegal act and the defendant's subsequent statement, the defendant's physical and mental condition at the time of the subsequent statement, whether the defendant remained in custody or was at liberty during this interval, whether the defendant had the opportunity to contact legal counsel or friends during this interval, whether the subsequent interview took place at a different location, whether the defendant's interrogators were the same officers who committed the prior illegal act, whether the evidence obtained from the prior illegal act affected the defendant's decision to submit to a subsequent interview, whether the police used lies or trickery to influence the defendant's decision, and whether there were other intervening events that affected the defendant's decision.[ [82] ] As we noted in our June 2010 order, the court of appeals correctly looked to the factors articulated in Halberg to determine whether Kalmakoff's statements from the third and fourth interviews were tainted by the prior illegalities. [83] In its initial briefing to this court, the State urged us to apply the test outlined by the United States Supreme Court in Oregon v. Elstad [84] rather than the Halberg factors. The Elstad Court held that when the only prior illegality is a simple failure to administer the [ Miranda ] warnings, [85] a careful and thorough administration of the Miranda warnings prior to the subsequent statement serves to cure the condition that rendered the unwarned statement inadmissible. [86] Neither our court nor the court of appeals has ever decided whether to adopt Elstad as a matter of state constitutional law. [87] But we do not need to decide that question in this case because the facts here fall well outside of Elstad 's purview. Elstad involved only a failure to administer Miranda warnings, and the Elstad Court made clear that its decision did not apply to at least two scenarios: first, cases where the initial unwarned statement [was] obtained through overtly or inherently coercive methods which raise serious Fifth Amendment and due process concerns and second, cases concerning suspects whose invocation of their rights to remain silent and to have counsel present were flatly ignored while police subjected them to continued interrogation. [88] This case falls squarely within the second exception. The troopers did commit two procedural violations of Miranda when they failed to administer the warnings to Kalmakoff prior to the first and second interviews. But they also flatly ignored Kalmakoff's repeated invocations of his right to remain silent after they finally administered Miranda warnings midway through the second interview. This violation rises above the prophylactic concerns of Miranda and intrudes upon the constitutional right to remain silent in the face of police interrogation, a right that we have recognized as one of the most fundamental aspects of our constitutional jurisprudence. [89] When the police fail to properly administer Miranda warnings, we presume that a suspect's statements are compelled in order to safeguard the privilege against self-incrimination. [90] But when the police refuse to honor a suspect's invocation of his right to silence, any statement taken after the person invokes his privilege cannot be other than the product of compulsion, subtle or otherwise. [91] Because the troopers in this case not only failed to administer Miranda warnings but also violated Kalmakoff's constitutional right to silence, we look to the factors articulated in Halberg v. State to determine whether Kalmakoff's decision to speak with the troopers in the third and fourth interviews was sufficiently insulated from the prior illegalities to escape their taint.