Opinion ID: 2632907
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Defendant's conversation with his father: alleged Miranda violation

Text: Defendant contends the trial court should have suppressed his videotaped conversation with his father, held in an interrogation room at the sheriffs' department, because Miranda warnings did not precede that conversation. (See Miranda v. Arizona, supra, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602.) Unlike defendant's initial conversation with Lieutenant Biondi and Detective Reed, there is no dispute that defendant was in custody when the conversation with his father occurred, because it came after his arrest for the murders. But the trial court, noting that Miranda warnings are required only before a custodial interrogation, ruled that no Miranda warnings were required because defendant's conversation with his father was not an interrogation. Defendant challenges that ruling. He relies on Rhode Island v. Innis (1980) 446 U.S. 291, 301, 100 S.Ct. 1682, 64 L.Ed.2d 297, which states that interrogation includes a practice that the police should know is reasonably likely to evoke an incriminating response from a suspect. According to defendant, allowing his father to have a recorded conversation with him in an interrogation room was a form of interrogation because the deputies knew the conversation was reasonably likely to invoke an incriminating response. The United States Supreme Court rejected a similar claim in Arizona v. Mauro (1987) 481 U.S. 520, 107 S.Ct. 1931, 95 L.Ed.2d 458 ( Mauro) . There, the high court held that police officers did not violate the defendant's Miranda rights by granting the defendant's wife's request to talk to him in the presence of an officer, after the defendant had invoked his right to counsel. The court stressed that the purpose of Miranda is to prevent[ ] government officials from using the coercive nature of confinement to extract confessions that would not be given in an unrestrained environment ( id. at pp. 529-530, 107 S.Ct. 1931) and that in Mauro the officers did not implicate this purpose ( id. at p. 530, 107 S.Ct. 1931) by allowing the defendant's wife to talk to him. Defendant claims this case is distinguishable from Mauro because Lieutenant Biondi and Detective Reed, unlike the officers in Mauro, allowed defendant's videotaped conversation with his father for the sole purpose of obtaining incriminating evidence; and Biondi and Reed, unlike the officers in Mauro, had good reason to believe the conversation would elicit such evidence. These distinctions, however, are not significant. Officers do not interrogate a suspect simply by hoping that he will incriminate himself. ( Mauro, supra, 481 U.S. at p. 529, 107 S.Ct. 1931.) A defendant's conversations with his own visitors are not the constitutional equivalent of police interrogation. ( People v. Gallego (1990) 52 Cal.3d 115, 170, 276 Cal. Rptr. 679, 802 P.2d 169; see also People v. Mayfield, supra, 14 Cal.4th at p. 758, 60 Cal.Rptr.2d 1, 928 P.2d 485.) In short, [p]loys ... that do not rise to the level of compulsion or coercion to speak are not within Miranda's concerns. ( Illinois v. Perkins (1990) 496 U.S. 292, 297, 110 S.Ct. 2394, 110 L.Ed.2d 243.) Here, Lieutenant Biondi and Detective Reed did not compel or coerce defendant to talk to his father. Thus there was no need for Miranda warnings before the conversation.