Opinion ID: 2272453
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: J.F. Confesses to Sexually Assaulting A.F.

Text: Despite telling J.F. that he would be taken home, the officers resumed the interrogation and informed J.F. for the first time that the medical examiner had determined that A.F. had been sexually assaulted shortly before she was brought to the hospital. Sgt. Parker asked J.F. if he knew what sexually assaulted meant, and J.F. confirmed that he did. He then asked J.F. if he had sexually assaulted A.F. and J.F. said he had not. At this point, the tone of the conversation changed dramatically. Sgt. Parker moved much closer to J.F., and at times hovered over him. His voice was louder and more confrontational than at any point during the first half of the interrogation. In stark contrast to the first half, Sgt. Parker made clear that J.F. would not be going home until he confessed to sexually assaulting A.F., stating, We can't figure out how she got the sexual assault injuries, so that's where we at now, before we let you go, you need to sit here and tell us how that occurred.  (emphasis added) [11] Sgt. Parker and Detective Duvall then utilized a combination of strategies to encourage J.F. to confess. They began by establishing that they were certain that J.F. had raped his sister, since only J.F.'s younger brother and other sister were home at the time of the alleged assault, and that J.F. was not going to be able to convince them otherwise. They repeatedly accused him of lying, saying You did it. We think you did it, Don't sit here and B.S. me, You know and I both know that this occurred, and You're telling a lie [J.F.], you're telling a lie. You tryna' ( sic ) f   your sister. The officers suggested that their only goal was to help J.F. show it was an accident so that he would not be prosecuted: Maybe I'm using the wrong word.... You're fourteen years old. You're becoming a teenager, right? You got hormones. Maybe, while y'all was playing, your penis accidentally bumped up against her. Accident, okay? ... If it was an accident, tell me it was an accident, okay? But don't sit here and try to make me think that what the doctors and medical examiner are telling me didn't exist, when I know for a fact it did. Sgt. Parker implied that J.F. would not be prosecuted if he confessed, saying we ain't gonna lock you up when you tell us.... You need to sit here and work with me, so we can look at it and see if it was an accident and you can walk away from it. On the other hand, Sgt. Parker warned that J.F. would be known as a sexual predator if he continued to refuse to confess. Sgt. Parker further implied that any confession J.F. provided would be confidential, stating Get it off your chest.... I'ma ( sic ) work with you, okay, ain't nobody going to say a word. During the course of this two-hour interrogation, J.F. denied that he sexually assaulted his sister no less than sixty-three times. The more Sgt. Parker accused J.F. of lying, the more J.F. raised his voice and asserted himself against the officers, at one point yelling, I DON'T KNOW! I DIDN'T DO IT! When Sgt. Parker adopted a gentler, more encouraging approach, J.F. retorted, Nah, it ain't gonna be all right you blaming me for something that I ain't do. When J.F. first conceded that an accident could have occurred, he adopted Sgt. Parker's words and prefaced all his statements with probably. Sgt. Parker interrupted these equivocations to order J.F. to use his own words rather than using the officers' words, but when pushed to tell what actually happened, J.F. exclaimed [h]ow I'm gonna tell you something I don't know? Finally, after varied and repeated attempts to coax J.F. into confessing, and J.F.'s many denials, J.F. confessed that his medium hard penis accidentally went in A.F.'s anus while they were wrestling on the bed. According to this version of the story, J.F. stumbled due to a spring in the mattress and fell on top of A.F. At that point, J.F. claimed, his penis accidently fell out of his pajama pants and penetrated A.F.'s anus, which was exposed because her nightgown had lifted up and the underwear she was wearing had moved out of the way. Notably, many of the details in this version of the story had initially been provided by Sgt. Parker.
J.F. alleges that the entirety of his confession was custodial. The determination whether a suspect was in police custody presents a mixed question of fact and law. In re I.J., 906 A.2d 249, 261 (D.C.2005). [W]e will not disturb the trial court's factual findings unless they are clearly erroneous, In re J.H., supra, 928 A.2d at 648 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted), but the trial court's determination that [J.F.] was not in custody for purposes of Miranda is ultimately a [question] of law that we review de novo.  Id. Custody, for Miranda purposes, is present when there has been a formal arrest or restraint on freedom of movement of the degree associated with a formal arrest.... Thus, custody requires an inquiry into whether given [the] circumstances, [] a reasonable person [would] have felt he or she was not at liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave. In re I.J., supra, 906 A.2d at 255-56 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Indeed, because [t]he Miranda custody inquiry is an objective test, Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652, 667, 124 S.Ct. 2140, 158 L.Ed.2d 938 (2004), the Supreme Court has not held that a suspect's age or experience is relevant to the Miranda custody analysis, much less mandated its consideration. [12] Id. at 666, 124 S.Ct. 2140. In fact, [t]he only indications in the Court's opinions relevant to a suspect's experience with law enforcement have rejected reliance on such factors. Id. at 666-67, 124 S.Ct. 2140. [13] Importantly, [a] noncustodial situation is not converted to one in which Miranda applies simply because a reviewing court concludes that ... the questioning took place in a `coercive environment,' McFadden v. United States, 945 A.2d 1203, 1205 (D.C.2008) (quoting Oregon v. Mathiason, 429 U.S. 492, 495, 97 S.Ct. 711, 50 L.Ed.2d 714 (1977)), or simply because the questioning takes place in the station house, or because the questioned person is one whom the police suspect. Graham v. United States, 950 A.2d 717, 730 (D.C.2008) (quoting Mathiason, supra, 429 U.S. at 495, 97 S.Ct. 711). We agree with the trial court's determination that J.F. was not in custody during the first portion of the interrogation because a reasonable person would have felt free to leave. In re I.J., supra, 906 A.2d at 256. J.F. was not treated as if he were being arrested  he was never told that he was required to speak with the officers, he was not handcuffed, and he traveled to the station in an unmarked car with plainclothes officers. Mathiason, supra, 429 U.S. at 495, 97 S.Ct. 711; Graham, supra, 950 A.2d at 729; McFadden, supra, 945 A.2d at 1206. Prior to the interview, J.F. waited in the station lobby and was offered food and drink. McFadden, supra, 945 A.2d at 1206-07. Moreover, the officers explicitly told J.F. that he was not under arrest and that he was free to leave and they spent considerable time ensuring that he understood his rights before beginning questioning. Graham, supra, 950 A.2d at 729; McFadden, supra, 945 A.2d at 1206. Because a reasonable person in that situation would have felt free to leave, we affirm the trial court's determination that J.F. was not in custody during the first part of the interrogation. We hold, however, that the second part of the interrogation was custodial. While admissions of culpability ... do not establish the beginning of custody if the police never altered the circumstances of their interviews of the defendant in such a way that his initial noncustodial status became custodial, Graham, supra, 950 A.2d at 730 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted), here the police did alter the circumstances of the interrogation by telling J.F., within a minute of resuming questioning, [b]efore we let you go, you need to sit here and tell us how [A.F.'s sexual assault] occurred. The officers made it perfectly clear that J.F. was not free to leave, [14] a point underscored by the fact that J.F. was dependent on the officers for a ride back to his foster home in an unfamiliar part of the city. [15] Contrary to the previous session with J.F., in the second part of the interview the officers provided no assurances that J.F.'s presence was voluntary. Indeed, the officers' demeanor and tone distinctly shifted and became more confrontational and aggressive. Given the officers' change in attitude and language and the approximately fifteen minute lapse between the first portion of the interview and the second, a reasonable person would feel that he was no longer free to leave. Thus, the trial court erred in holding that the entirety of the interview was noncustodial. See Graham, supra, 950 A.2d at 730.
J.F. also argues that his confession to sexual assault during the second portion of the interrogation was involuntary. We agree. Our finding that this portion of the interrogation was custodial, while not required for a finding of coercion, informs our determination. [A]n involuntary statement is inadmissible at trial for any purpose. Graham, supra, 950 A.2d at 735 (internal quotation marks omitted). The test for determining the voluntariness of specific statements is whether, under the totality of the circumstances, the will of the [suspect] was overborne in such a way as to render his confession the product of coercion. Graham, supra, 950 A.2d at 735-36 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). In determining whether a defendant's will was overborne, we assess both the characteristics of the accused, specifically the suspect's age, education, prior experience with the law, and physical and mental condition, and the details of the interrogation, specifically its duration and intensity, the use of physical punishment, threats or trickery, and whether the suspect was advised of his rights. Id. at 736. In the case of juvenile confessions, the Supreme Court has instructed that courts should pay particular attention to [t]he age of petitioner, the hours when he was grilled, the duration of his quizzing, the fact that he had no friend or counsel to advise him, [and] the callous attitude of the police towards his rights. Haley v. Ohio, 332 U.S. 596, 600-01, 68 S.Ct. 302, 92 L.Ed. 224 (1948). Importantly, while we consider the totality of the circumstances, coercive police activity is a necessary predicate to the finding that a confession is not voluntary.... Graham, supra, 950 A.2d at 736 (quoting Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157, 167, 107 S.Ct. 515, 93 L.Ed.2d 473 (1986)). In voluntariness determinations, the burden is on the government to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that a defendant's statements were made freely, voluntarily, and without compulsion or inducement of any sort. Haynes v. Washington, 373 U.S. 503, 513, 83 S.Ct. 1336, 10 L.Ed.2d 513 (1963); see also Graham, supra, 950 A.2d at 735-36. The government has conceded that the questioning [in this portion of the interrogation] was insistent and persistent, but it argues nonetheless that this does not show that the confession was the product of coercion. The trial court agreed that J.F.'s will was not overborne, specifically because the court found that J.F. did not appear to be intimidated by the sergeant. We defer to the trial court's factual findings, but analyze the voluntariness of J.F.'s confession de novo. Graham, supra, 950 A.2d at 735. While the evidence on this issue is far from one-sided, we ultimately hold that J.F.'s confession of sexual assault was involuntary. In reaching this conclusion, four factors are of particular significance: J.F.'s youthful age; the officers' clear indications to J.F. that he would not be leaving the interrogation room until he confessed to sexually assaulting his sister; J.F.'s sixty-three denials; and the fact that the majority of J.F.'s final confession was comprised of details that J.F. had adopted from the officers' suggestions. J.F.'s individual characteristics, which the Supreme Court instructs us to consider, indicate susceptibility to coercion and require us to more carefully scrutinize the police interrogative tactics. At the time of the interrogation, J.F. was fourteen years old. [16] He was not shown to have any prior experience with the criminal justice system. [17] Moreover, he was in a vulnerable mental condition, both because he was informed of his sister's death shortly before the interrogation began and because he had been removed from his family and placed in foster care for the three previous days. [18] J.F.'s vulnerability was exacerbated by the fact that he was questioned for three hours, with only a brief break, in an interrogation that did not end until nearly eleven at night, and because no adult accompanied him to the police station to supervise the questioning or provide him a ride home when he wanted to leave. [19] The government is correct that officers will sometimes need to be aggressive in their investigation of crimes, especially heinous crimes and in maintaining that the fact that they are aggressive does not mean that a suspect's will was actually overborne. But here the officers' aggressive tactics, including repeated accusations, threats of invasive procedures, [20] and false promises of leniency [21] were not determinative. Rather, of more significance were J.F.'s sixty-three denials of committing the sexual assault before the officers were able to obtain a useable confession; the fact that the police clearly conditioned J.F.'s ability to leave on a confession despite the fact that he had not been formally arrested; [22] and the fact that most of the details of J.F.'s confession were initially provided by the officers, rather than J.F. Accordingly, we find that J.F.'s will was overborne and his confession to sexual assault was coerced. [23] Admission of a coerced confession is an error of constitutional magnitude, in violation of the Due Process Clause. Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 288-89, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991). This court has observed that [a] confession is like no other evidence. Indeed, the defendant's own confession is probably the most probative and damaging evidence that can be admitted against him. McCoy v. United States, 890 A.2d 204, 211 (D.C.2006) (quoting Fulminante, supra, 499 U.S. at 296, 111 S.Ct. 1246). [24] [B]efore a federal constitutional error can be held harmless, the court must be able to declare a belief that it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Chapman, supra note 3, 386 U.S. at 24, 87 S.Ct. 824 (1967). Here J.F.'s coerced confession was the only direct evidence of first-degree sexual abuse presented at trial other than medical testimony of sexual abuse, which was sharply disputed, thus we cannot find that this error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Accordingly, we must vacate the adjudication for first-degree sexual abuse and the adjudication for felony murder predicated on that first-degree sexual abuse. [25]