Opinion ID: 2299910
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the interrogation of thomas regarding his identity

Text: Thomas argued in the trial court, and continues to maintain on appeal, that the police engaged in impermissible custodial interrogation by questioning Thomas for approximately two hours regarding his true identity without having first advised him of his Miranda rights. The motions judge rejected this contention, holding that the police were not under an obligation to give Miranda warnings at that point. It's a normal booking procedure for the police to make sure [of] the identity of the person and to identify  that they couldn't have gone on and questioned him if they hadn't known his true identity. Therefore, I don't find any obligation at that point  no custodial interrogation of the type that would trigger an obligation on the part of the police to give Miranda warnings at that juncture. Thomas challenges this ruling on two grounds. First, he asserts that the District of Columbia does not recognize a routine booking question exception to Miranda's proscription of custodial interrogation of a suspect who has not been advised of his rights. Second, Thomas argues that even if such a routine booking question exception is recognized, it does not apply to the present case because the police, rather than asking booking questions, were attempting to elicit an incriminating response. We consider each of these contentions in turn.
Prior to the Supreme Court's decision in Pennsylvania v. Muniz, 496 U.S. 582, 110 S.Ct. 2638, 110 L.Ed.2d 528 (1990), it was the law in this jurisdiction that even routine questions to an accused in custody must be preceded by a Miranda warning. See Proctor v. United States, 131 U.S.App. D.C. 241, 242-43, 404 F.2d 819, 820-21 (1968); Brewster v. United States, 271 A.2d 409, 412 n. 6 (D.C. 1970). This court stated in Brewster that whether it is routine is not a relevant consideration. Miranda applies to custodial interrogation. Routine questions, no matter how innocuous they may seem, are part of an interrogation. The fact that an interrogation contains nothing but routine questions does not make it any less interrogation; nor, more emphatically, does the quality of routineness suspend fifth amendment rights. Id. The rule is fundamental in our jurisprudence that no division of this court will overrule a prior decision of this court. Washington v. Guest Servs., 718 A.2d 1071, 1075 (D.C.1998) (quoting M.A.P. v. Ryan, 285 A.2d 310, 312 (D.C.1971)) (internal quotation marks omitted). This court will not lightly deem one of its decisions to have been implicitly overruled [5] and thus stripped of its precedential authority. Lee v. United States, 668 A.2d 822, 828 (D.C.1995). [6] Nevertheless, [w]e do not believe ... that M.A.P. v. Ryan ... obliges us to follow, inflexibly, a ruling whose philosophical basis has been substantially undermined by subsequent Supreme Court decisions. Frendak v. United States, 408 A.2d 364, 379 n. 27 (D.C. 1979); accord, Washington, supra, 718 A.2d at 1075 (quoting Frendak ). In this instance, we conclude that the philosophical basis of Proctor and Brewster has been substantially undermined by Muniz and its progeny. In Muniz, Justice Brennan, writing for a four-justice plurality, recognized a routine booking question exception which exempts from Miranda's coverage questions [designed] to secure the biographical data necessary to complete booking or pretrial services. 496 U.S. at 601, 110 S.Ct. 2638 (internal quotation marks omitted). [7] The plurality specified that questions posed by the police to the defendant regarding his name, address, height, weight, eye color, date of birth and current age did not qualify as custodial interrogation. Id. Four justices concurred on other grounds without explicitly addressing the existence vel non of a pedigree exception. See id. at 608, 110 S.Ct. 2638 (Rehnquist, C.J., concurring) (it is unnecessary to determine whether the questions fall within the `routine booking question' exception to Miranda Justice Brennan recognizes). Only a single justice disagreed with the plurality's recognition of the exception. See id. at 608, 110 S.Ct. 2638 (opinion of Marshall, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Notwithstanding the fact that Justice Brennan's plurality opinion was not technically an opinion of the Court, the routine booking question exception has been uniformly recognized since Muniz by the federal and state courts. See, e.g., United States v. Duarte, 160 F.3d 80, 81 (1st Cir.1998) (per curiam); United States v. Montana, 958 F.2d 516, 518 (2d Cir.1992); United States v. D'Anjou, 16 F.3d 604, 608 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 512 U.S. 1242, 114 S.Ct. 2754, 129 L.Ed.2d 871 (1994); United States v. Clark, 982 F.2d 965, 968 (6th Cir.1993); United States v. Leung, 929 F.2d 1204, 1209 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 906, 112 S.Ct. 297, 116 L.Ed.2d 241 (1991); United States v. Brown, 101 F.3d 1272, 1274 (8th Cir.1996); United States v. Henley, 984 F.2d 1040, 1042 (9th Cir.1993); United States v. Parra, 2 F.3d 1058, 1067-68 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 1026, 114 S.Ct. 639, 126 L.Ed.2d 597 (1993); Franks v. State, 268 Ga. 238, 486 S.E.2d 594, 597 (1997); Hughes v. State, 346 Md. 80, 695 A.2d 132, 140(Md.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 118 S.Ct. 459, 139 L.Ed.2d 393 (1997); Commonwealth v. White, 422 Mass. 487, 663 N.E.2d 834, 844 (1996); People v. Rodney, supra note 7, at 473; State v. Stevens, 181 Wis.2d 410, 511 N.W.2d 591, 599 (1994), cert. denied, 515 U.S. 1102, 115 S.Ct. 2245, 132 L.Ed.2d 254 (1995). [8] Thomas has not directed our attention to any contrary post- Muniz authority, and we are aware of none. Under these circumstances, we consider it appropriate to recognize a routine booking question exception to Miranda's restrictions on custodial interrogation.
The more difficult issue is whether, under the circumstances of this case, this exception justified Detective Corbett's failure to advise Thomas of his rights prior to questioning him at length regarding his identity. According to Thomas, the government's evidence at the motions hearing established, as a matter of law, that the protracted interrogation of Thomas which preceded the advice of rights was not a booking procedure, and that, on the contrary, the police, in interrogating their prisoner, were seeking to elicit from him an incriminating acknowledgment that his name was Tony  the first name of the man whom they had followed from Suitland, who apparently matched the description of the suspect, and who was believed by police to be the murderer of Gerald Harris. [9] Detective Corbett's testimony at the motions hearing provides substantial support for Thomas' position. The detectives' encounter with Thomas was indisputably precipitated by their interest in exploring the murder of Gerald Harris and Thomas' role in it. Detective Corbett, a homicide detective, set up surveillance in Maryland to identify a suspect for whom he had a description and the name Tony Tompkins, or something like Tompkins. Corbett followed a man whom he believed to be Tony into the District and, after arresting him for a marijuana offense, transported him to the Homicide Division for questioning. At the arrest scene, Thomas had given an alias and had denied that his name was Tony. As a result, the police now had a suspect who apparently fit the description of Harris' murderer. Indeed, they had just arrested this suspect in the very block where Harris was killed. What the police lacked, however, was confirmation of the other significant part of their information, i.e., that the suspect's first name was Tony. If it turned out that the name of the man who called himself David Phifer was really Tony, and especially if his last name was something like Tompkins, then this would provide the police with important corroboration of their lead, and thus a link in the chain of evidence against the suspect. Hoffman, supra note 9, 341 U.S. at 486, 71 S.Ct. 814. It was therefore entirely logical for Detective Corbett and his colleagues to focus their attention on David Phifer's true identity. Nothing that Detective Corbett did after Thomas' arrival at the Homicide Division reflected any interest in booking Thomas for the marijuana offense which he had fortuitously and improvidently committed in the presence of the police. Corbett did not claim in his testimony that he was completing any standard booking form during the interrogation regarding Thomas' identity. There was no evidence that Thomas was being fingerprinted or photographed. On the contrary, the entire two hours of questioning were devoted to breaking down Thomas' insistence that his name was not Tony. In addition, Sergeant Lyons employed an apparent ruse to induce Thomas to admit that he was Tony. Finally, after Thomas abandoned the last of his three aliases and acknowledged that his name was Tony Thomas, the interrogation turned to the Harris murder (for which Thomas had not been arrested and could not have been booked) rather than to the marijuana offense to which any routine booking procedure would logically have applied. The foregoing facts being essentially undisputed, [t]he question whether [Thomas'] rights were scrupulously honored, including whether police conduct constitutes interrogation, is a question of law. Stewart v. United States, 668 A.2d 857, 863 & n. 5 (D.C.1995). Accordingly, we review de novo the motions judge's determination that the interrogation of Thomas regarding his identity did not violate the strictures of Miranda. Although we are not prepared to hold that the police must advise a suspect of his Miranda rights before even asking him his name, [10] and although protection of Thomas from the inference of consciousness of guilt generated by two hours of fabricating aliases might reasonably be viewed as providing him with an undeserved windfall, [11] we are unable to conclude that the extended interrogation of Thomas in this case falls within the rubric of the exception from Miranda for routine booking questions. Indeed, the relevant authorities are overwhelmingly to the contrary. In Muniz, the case in which a plurality of the Supreme Court recognized the routine booking question exception, Justice Brennan sounded an important caveat: As amicus United States explains, [r]ecognizing a `booking exception' to Miranda does not mean, of course, that any question asked during the booking process falls within that exception. Without obtaining a waiver of the suspect's Miranda rights, the police may not ask questions, even during booking, that are designed to elicit incriminatory admissions. 496 U.S. at 602 n. 14, 110 S.Ct. 2638 (citations omitted). Consistently with Muniz, the Maryland Court of Appeals has explained that, [e]ven if a question appears innocuous on its face, ... it may be beyond the scope of the routine booking question exception if the officer knows or should know that the question is reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response. Hughes, supra, 695 A.2d at 140; accord, White, supra, 663 N.E.2d at 845. [T]he People may not rely on the pedigree exception if the questions, though facially appropriate, are likely to elicit incriminating admissions because of the circumstances of the particular case. Rodney, supra, 624 N.Y.S.2d 95, 648 N.E.2d at 474. [12] The determination whether the exception applies in any given factual context requires an inquiry into the totality of circumstances. Franks, supra, 486 S.E.2d at 597. In United States v. Parra, 2 F.3d 1058 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 1026, 114 S.Ct. 639, 126 L.Ed.2d 597 (1993), Jose Alfredo Sotelo, who was in state custody on a narcotics charge, told Godshall, an agent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), that his name was Duarte. Godshall subsequently encountered Sotelo in a booking area and, without advising Sotelo of his rights, asked him: How is it going, Jose? [13] Sotelo responded affirmatively. Godshall pressed him: So that's your name, Jose. It's not Ricardo Duarte? Id. at 1067. Sotelo then admitted his true name. Sotelo was subsequently convicted, inter alia, of charges of being an illegal alien in possession of firearms. The Court of Appeals held that the INS agent's interrogation of Sotelo was in violation of Miranda. The court explicitly rejected the government's reliance on the routine booking question exception: The underlying rationale for the exception is that routine booking questions do not constitute interrogation because they do not normally elicit incriminating responses. As the Muniz plurality itself recognized, the police may not ask questions, even during booking, that are designed to elicit incriminatory admissions. 496 U.S. at 602 n. 14, 110 S.Ct. 2638.... Thus, where questions regarding normally routine biographical information are designed to elicit incriminating information, the questioning constitutes interrogation subject to the strictures of Miranda. See United States v. Henley, 984 F.2d 1040, 1042 (9th Cir.1993). In this case, Agent Godshall did not question Sotelo to obtain general booking information. Rather, he questioned Sotelo about his true name for the direct and admitted purpose of linking Sotelo to his incriminating immigration file. Under these circumstances, the questioning was reasonably likely to elicit incriminating information relevant to establishing an essential element necessary for a conviction of being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm. 2 F.3d at 1068 (citations omitted). [14] In Timbers v. Commonwealth, 28 Va. App. 187, 503 S.E.2d 233 (1998), the defendant, Kelly Yvette Timbers, who had been arrested for unlawful possession of cocaine and was being fingerprinted, gave her name as Gwendolyn Ann Timbers. She signed the fingerprint card, as well as another official form, with the name Gwendy Timbers. A woman later came to the station to deliver a change of clothes for Kelly Timbers. A deputy sheriff, MacFall, went to the holding cell where the defendant was being held and called her Kelly. [15] When the defendant responded to this name, MacFall asked her to tell him her true name. The defendant acknowledged that her name was really Kelly Timbers, and she was subsequently charged with forgery for providing a false name in relation to her fingerprint records. The court held that MacFall's actions constituted custodial interrogation in violation of Miranda, and rejected the prosecution's contention that the pedigree exception applied: Assuming without deciding that a routine booking question exception exists in Virginia, MacFall's interrogation of appellant does not fall within the exception. Most importantly, MacFall did not confront appellant in the holding cell to clarify an ambiguity in her statements made during booking; rather, he sought to investigate what he believed to be false information. In addition, MacFall's statement that if appellant had given a false name, she needed to come forward with that information, can hardly be considered a routine booking question. Finally, MacFall's interrogation of appellant does not fall under a routine booking question because a reasonable observer would view MacFall's statements as designed to elicit appellant's incriminating statement that she was, in fact, Kelly Timbers. Id. at 238 (citation omitted). [16] In State v. Stevens, supra , the defendant was taken into custody at his home during the execution of a search warrant. Narcotics and weapons were recovered in the house. On the scene, officers asked the defendant his name and whether he lived on the premises. The defendant initially gave his name as Zeke, but then stated (accurately) that he was Bruce Stevens. He admitted that he lived in the house. The Supreme Court of Wisconsin held that the interrogation of the defendant regarding his name and residence was prohibited by Miranda, and that the defendant's responses to these questions must be suppressed. The court adopted the routine booking question exception, but held that it did not apply under the circumstances presented: The defendant made the statements regarding his name and residence during the arrest, not during the booking process. Although at least one court has applied the exception to statements made by a defendant while he was in a police car on his way to the police station, [ United States ex rel Hines v. ] LaVallee, 521 F.2d [1109], 1113 [(2d Cir. 1975), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 1090, 96 S.Ct. 884, 47 L.Ed.2d 101 (1976)], this court will not extend the exception to incriminating questions asked at the time of the arrest. Furthermore, while it is impossible to determine the officer's intent from the record, it appears that the questions at issue may have been intended to elicit incriminating responses.[ [17] ] Although the question concerning the defendant's name seems innocuous, it may actually have been incriminating. The affidavit submitted in support of the search warrant referred to one of the suspected drug dealers only as Zeke. As a result, the defendant's answer to the question about his name, Zeke and then Bruce Stevens, identified the defendant as the alleged drug dealer discussed in the affidavit. 511 N.W.2d at 599. The court also held that the question whether Stevens lived in the house was potentially incriminating, as contraband had been found inside, and concluded that the defendant's statements about his name and residence, made before he received his Miranda warnings, are inadmissible. Id. (footnote omitted). In United States v. Brown, supra , on the other hand, the court held that the interrogation of the defendant, Jimmy Brown, regarding his identity did not run afoul of Miranda. When police asked Brown his name following his arrest on a narcotics charge, Brown falsely claimed that he was Marlus Singleton. Brown subsequently moved to suppress evidence that he had used an alias, asserting that he had been interrogated without first having been advised of his Miranda rights. In sustaining the trial judge's denial of Brown's motion, the court stated: [Brown's] name was not directly relevant to the substantive offense charged, but wholly incidental. His name was necessary to the booking process, and the question was not investigative in nature. If Brown had merely provided his true name, the information would not have been incriminating. Clearly, this falls within the routine booking question exception. 101 F.3d at 1274 (emphasis added). [18] In our view, the present case is similar to Parra, Timbers and Stevens, but distinguishable from Brown and D'Anjou. In this case, as in Parra and Timbers (and, to some extent, in Stevens ) the police, seeking an incriminatory statement, continued to interrogate the defendant about his identity after he had provided them with a false (or, in Stevens, incomplete) name. This case differs from Brown and D'Anjou, on the other hand, because in those cases the defendants were being asked about their names or other personal data for the first time. [19] We conclude that the extensive questioning of Thomas at the Homicide Division regarding his identity constituted custodial interrogation conducted in violation of Miranda. Evidence of Thomas' use of aliases during that interrogation therefore should have been suppressed. [20]