Opinion ID: 2356771
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admissibility of exculpatory statement

Text: Detective Roland Morin of the Lewiston Police Department at the rebuttal stage of the trial was permitted to testify for the State over the appellant's objection that in March of 1974, in the course of a conversation in which the officer was seeking information relating to certain criminal activity in Lewiston as he had obtained from Lewis in the past, the appellant volunteered to the officer the information, that on the night of the Mechanic Falls armed robbery he was on Newbury Street in Auburn and that he didn't do it. The appellant contends that, since Detective Morin had not informed him of his Miranda rights so-called, it was error to admit the reference statement in evidence. Volunteered statements of any kind are not barred by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, made applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. The privilege against self-incrimination is not invidiously infringed for failure to notify the person of his right to silence and to assure him of official scrupulous respect of its exercise, unless he has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom by the authorities in any significant way. Miranda v. Arizona, 1966, 384 U.S. 436, 478, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1630, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, 10 A.L.R.3d 974. The mere fact that the conversation between the appellant and the officer took place in a police vehicle does not per se give rise to the applicability of the Miranda rule. Mere presence of an individual in a police vehicle does not necessarily amount to a custodial detention. See State v. Caha, 1969, 184 Neb. 70, 165 N.W.2d 362. It may be said that a police officer, by reason of the office itself, as the representative of governmental authority does carry some coercive influence, but any such psychological pressure emanating from an officer's authority alone is not sufficient under Miranda to create the inherently coercive environment requiring the several warnings which the Miranda case has established as necessary for the protection of the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination. To trigger the need for the Miranda warnings there must be a setting in which the individual is in police custody, such as under arrest or under some other form of police restraint in some significant way. State v. Inman, 1976, Me., 350 A.2d 582, 597; State v. Travis, 1968, 250 Or. 213, 441 P.2d 597. Thus, Miranda protects an accused against self-incrimination by excluding from the evidence any statement made by him during periods of custodial interrogation unless the warning safeguards as established in Miranda have been complied with. State v. Inman, supra, at 597. Police interrogation can qualify as custodial interrogation within the meaning of the Miranda concept without a formal arrest and where the interrogation takes place in an area other than at a police station. State v. Inman, supra, at 597. But, where there is no formal arrest, the circumstances surrounding the interrogation and the atmosphere in which it takes place must be examined for the purpose of determining whether the person interrogated is in a custodial interrogation situation. Such is essential to test whether the person is being questioned during a period when his freedom of movement is impinged in any significant way, this being the foundational basis requiring the police to give the four-fold Miranda warnings. People v. P., 1967, 21 N.Y.2d 1, 286 N.Y.S.2d 225, 233 N.E.2d 255. The facts of each particular case must be closely scrutinized to appreciate whether the line has been crossed between a general investigation which law enforcement personnel are duty bound to conduct in traditional crime detection work and a custodial interrogation within the Miranda principle. State v. Inman, supra, at 597, 598; United States v. Montos, 1970, 5 Cir., 421 F.2d 215, 223, cert. denied 397 U.S. 1022, 90 S.Ct. 1262, 25 L.Ed.2d 532. In the present case, Detective Morin testified that he met with the appellant in his police cruiser merely to obtain information on local criminal activity, and that he was not concerned with investigating the Mechanic Falls robbery. There is no evidence in the record that the appellant was under any kind of restraint from the police officer, or that he was not free to leave the cruiser at any time. In fact, during their discussion, the appellant asked Detective Morin whether he would be willing to testify in his behalf as a character witness at his robbery trial. [2] This suggests that the appellant's relationship with the police officer was completely amicable and negates that he was under police detention. We hold that the admission of the appellant's statement in evidence was not error, since the presiding Justice on this record was justified in concluding that the appellant was not under custody within the meaning of Miranda v. Arizona, supra. Even if the trial Justice by express finding had determined that the appellant was in police custody at the time of the reference statement, his ruling that the statement was admissible in evidence would still have been correct. Detective Morin testified that the appellant unexpectedly brought up the subject of the Mechanic Falls robbery, while he was inquiring about unrelated matters. After the appellant informed the detective of his alibi for the robbery, the officer resumed talking about the previous subject of the conversation. From such undisputed testimony the presiding Justice could reasonably reach the conclusion that the appellant's statement was purely voluntary on his part and not in response to police interrogation, and, thus, was exempt from Miranda's exclusionary rule. See Miranda v. Arizona, supra; State v. Taylor, 1975, Me., 343 A.2d 11, 19; State v. Lafferty, 1973, Me., 309 A.2d 647, 655.