Opinion ID: 2620316
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Elstad

Text: In December 1981, $150,000 worth of art and furnishings were stolen from an Oregon home. Elstad, 470 U.S. at 300. A witness implicated an eighteen-year-old neighbor of the victims, Michael Elstad. Id. Responding to the neighbor’s tip, two officers went to Elstad’s home with a warrant for his arrest. Id. While Officer McAllister spoke with Elstad’s mother in another room, Officer Burke asked Elstad if he knew why the officers were there. Id. at 301. Elstad said he did not. The officer then asked Elstad if he knew a person by the name of Gross. Id. Elstad said he did, and also that, “he heard that there was a robbery at the Gross house.” Id. Officer Burke told Elstad he “felt he was involved in that[.]” Elstad looked at the officer and said, “Yes, I was there.” Id. Elstad was transported to the Sheriff’s headquarters. One hour later, Officer McAllister advised him of his Miranda rights, reading from a standard card. Id. Elstad stated he understood his rights, and, with them in mind, wished to speak with the officers. Id. Elstad gave a full confession. Id. The statement was typed, reviewed by Elstad, read back to him for correction, and initialed and signed by Elstad and both officers. Id. At trial for first-degree burglary, Elstad’s counsel moved to suppress his oral statement and signed confession, arguing that the statement at his house “let the cat out of the bag,” citing United States v. Bayer, 331 U.S. 532 (1947), and tainted the subsequent confession as “fruit of the poisonous LUJAN V. GARCIA 23 tree,” citing Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963). Id. at 302. The trial judge excluded Elstad’s in-home statement because he had not been advised of his Miranda rights, but allowed the written confession. Id. The court concluded Elstad’s statement was “given freely, voluntarily and knowingly” after he had waived his properly administered rights. “[The written statement] was not tainted in any way by the previous brief statement between [Elstad] and the [officers] that had arrested him.” Id. Elstad was found guilty and received a five year sentence. Id. Elstad appealed to the Oregon Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals reversed his conviction, concluding that the crucial constitutional inquiry was “whether there was a sufficient break in the stream of events between [the] inadmissible statement and the written confession to insulate the latter statement from the effect of what went before.” State v. Elstad, 658 P.2d 552, 554 (Or. Ct. App. 1983), rev’d, 470 U.S. 298 (1985). The Court of Appeals concluded that “the coercive impact of the unconstitutionally obtained statement remains, because in a defendant’s mind it has sealed his fate. It is this impact that must be dissipated in order to make a subsequent confession admissible.” Id. The Court of Appeals identified lapse of time and change of place from the original surroundings as the two most important considerations as to whether the impact had been sufficiently dissipated, and concluded that in Elstad’s case, exclusion of the subsequent written confession was required. Id. at 554–55. The Oregon Supreme Court declined review and the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider 24 LUJAN V. GARCIA whether “the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment requires the suppression of a confession, made after proper Miranda warnings and a valid waiver of rights, solely because the police had obtained an earlier voluntary but unwarned admission from the defendant.” Elstad, 470 U.S. at 303. Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court held that “a suspect who has once responded to unwarned yet uncoercive questioning is not thereby disabled from waiving his rights and confessing after he has been given the requisite Miranda warnings.” Id. at 318.