Opinion ID: 2502498
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Appellant's Statement

Text: The Appellant also maintains that the circuit court erred in allowing his statement given to the state trooper who took his DNA sample to be admitted into evidence. The statement at issue was the Appellant telling the state police officer that he did not know what was taking so long, they had a pretty solid case, that if he was in Virginia he would have already been to trial and sentenced by now. The Appellant argues that he was not given Miranda warnings prior to making this statement. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). [6] The Appellee argues that the circuit court properly admitted the Appellant's statement at trial. In resolving the issue of the admissibility of the Appellant's statement, the following standard of review governs: On appeal, legal conclusions made with regard to suppression determinations are reviewed de novo. Factual determinations upon which these legal conclusions are based are reviewed under the clearly erroneous standard. In addition, factual findings based, at least in part, on determinations of witness credibility are accorded great deference. Syl. Pt. 3, State v. Stuart, 192 W.Va. 428, 452 S.E.2d 886 (1994); Syl. Pt. 2, State v. Farley, 192 W.Va. 247, 452 S.E.2d 50 (1994)(This Court is constitutionally obligated to give plenary, independent, and de novo review to the ultimate question of whether a particular confession is voluntary and whether the lower court applied the correct legal standard in making its determination. The holdings of prior West Virginia cases suggest deference in this area continue, but that deference is limited to factual findings as opposed to legal conclusions.). In State v. Newcomb, 223 W.Va. 843, 679 S.E.2d 675 (2009), the Court examined whether a statement was subject to Miranda as follows: In Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 300-302, 100 S.Ct. 1682, 1689-1690, 64 L.Ed.2d 297 (1980), the United States Supreme Court held: We conclude that the Miranda safeguards come into play whenever a person in custody is subjected to either express questioning or its functional equivalent. That is to say, the term interrogation under Miranda refers not only to express questioning, but also to any words or actions on the part of the police (other than those normally attendant to arrest and custody) that the police should know are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from the suspect. The latter portion of this definition focuses primarily upon the perceptions of the suspect, rather than the intent of the police. This focus reflects the fact that the Miranda safeguards were designed to vest a suspect in custody with an added measure of protection against coercive police practices, without regard to objective proof of the underlying intent of the police. A practice that the police should know is reasonably likely to evoke an incriminating response from a suspect thus amounts to interrogation. But, since the police surely cannot be held accountable for the unforeseeable results of their words or actions, the definition of interrogation can extend only to words or actions on the part of police officers that they should have known were reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response. Thereafter, in Syllabus Point 8 of Guthrie, supra , this Court explained that: The special safeguards outlined in Miranda are not required where a suspect is simply taken into custody, but rather only where a suspect in custody is subjected to interrogation. To the extent that language in State v. Preece, 181 W.Va. 633, 383 S.E.2d 815 (1989), and its progeny, may be read to hold differently, such language is expressly overruled. Newcomb, 223 W.Va. at 862, 679 S.E.2d at 694 and Syl. Pt. 10. In the instant case, the circuit court did not err in determining that the Appellant's statement was not the result of any interrogation or conduct by the police that was reasonably likely to illicit from the Appellant an incriminating response. The officer, who took the DNA sample from the Appellant pursuant to a court order, testified that he asked no questions of the Appellant and offered no information to the Appellant. Consequently, because there was no interrogation of the Appellant by the officer in taking the DNA sample, there is no violation of Miranda.