Opinion ID: 1166483
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The October 3 Airport Statement.

Text: Lt. Paul Houser, a Farmington, New Mexico police officer, testified at the suppression hearing that he, another Farmington officer and a Colorado police officer traveled to Tampa for the purpose of transporting the defendant back to New Mexico following the defendant's waiver of extradition before a Florida judge. Lt. Houser testified that while this party was awaiting a connecting flight to New Mexico in the Kansas City Airport, the defendant asked if he could read the officer's newspaper. While thumbing through the newspaper, the defendant allegedly asked Lt. Houser if a body found in Montrose, Colorado had been identified. When Lt. Houser replied that it had not, the defendant allegedly said: I'll save you the trouble. It's my father. The lieutenant further testified that no questions were asked of defendant either before or after this statement was made. The trial court suppressed the defendant-appellee's remark, and the State contends erroneously so. The basis of the trial court's ruling is not clear from the record, but the remark was apparently viewed by the district judge as the direct result of the continuing violation of defendant-appellee's fifth, sixth and fourteenth amendment rights. We reverse the district judge's ruling that the statement be suppressed. The Farmington officers testified that they gave full Miranda warnings before departing Florida for New Mexico, and that they further instructed him that they did not intend to interrogate him during the trip. The defendant-appellee, although he denies making the statement regarding the identity of the body, acknowledged that he was not interrogated during the trip, either before or after the time of the purported statement. The statement appears clearly to have been a spontaneous and volunteered remark by the defendant, not made in response to interrogation or even suggestion by the police officers. It has long been the law of this jurisdiction that the admission into evidence of volunteered statements is not prohibited by the fifth and fourteenth amendments, where there are no facts to indicate that the statement is made in response to interrogation. State v. Ferrari, 80 N.M. 714, 460 P.2d 244 (1969). Volunteered statements of any type are not barred by the fifth amendment, and their admissibility is not affected by Miranda v. Arizona, supra . State v. Valenzuela, 114 Ariz. 81, 559 P.2d 201 (1977); Grizzle v. State, 559 P.2d 474 (Okl.Cr. 1977). On facts substantially identical to those presented by the instant case, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has held that such volunteered incriminating statements made to officers, not made in response to police questioning, were admissible because the product of choice or the result of conscience, rather than compulsion. Commonwealth v. Powell, 459 Pa. 253, 328 A.2d 507 (1974). A divergent line of cases, of which Clewis v. Texas, 386 U.S. 707, 87 S.Ct. 1338, 18 L.Ed.2d 423 (1967), is the leading case, does not lead us to a contrary conclusion. On this record, it is clear that there is a break in the stream of events ... sufficient to insulate the statement from the effect of all that went before. Clewis v. Texas, supra, at 386 U.S. 710, 87 S.Ct. at 1340. Here, the defendant-appellee had been again advised of his Miranda rights before departing Florida. He had been physically removed from the custodial setting of his earlier interrogation, and has acknowledged on the record that he was not interrogated at any time during the trip from Florida to New Mexico. On these facts, we hold that the October 3 airport statement was erroneously suppressed by the trial court.