Opinion ID: 2512108
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admission of defendant's statements in police custody.

Text: Defendant urges the trial court erred by declining to suppress his statements made in police custody, both to the investigating officers and to Lisa Henry. As discussed below, he insists his Miranda waivers were not knowing and intelligent waivers of his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination because (1) the officers prejudicially misled him about the scope of their interrogation, and (2) Henry was acting, without his knowledge, as a police agent. These contentions lack merit. The following facts disclosed at the in limine suppression hearing (Evid. Code, § 402) are essentially undisputed: Following his arrest on April 19, 1988, defendant was brought to the Oakland Police Department's homicide division. There he was questioned by Sergeants Paniagua and Medsker. At the outset of an initial, unrecorded, session, the officers stated they were investigating the car defendant had been driving, because the car was stolen and a lady had been hurt, but they did not tell defendant the victim had been killed. They then read defendant his Miranda rights. Defendant waived those rights, both orally and in writing, and agreed to talk. At the beginning of a subsequent, recorded, session, defendant asked if he was in the homicide division. Paniagua replied that he was. Defendant said, So I'm here for a car that was stolen. Paniagua explained again that he was investigating an incident in which a car was stolen and a lady was hurt; and he stated that I'm not here to trick you into anything. Defendant said, I know you ain't, just tell me, you just said a car was stolen. Paniagua repeated that he was investigating the incident [in] which the car was taken. Defendant responded, Whatever you said, okay. Paniagua asked if everything was now clear in defendant's head, and defendant answered, Yeah. Paniagua then re- Mirandized defendant. During these first two sessions, defendant denied all knowledge and involvement in the incident under investigation and maintained he obtained the vehicle from Fred Bush in payment for a debt. Prior to the third, unrecorded, portion of the interview, Paniagua advised defendant the victim in the stolen car incident was dead. Thereafter, during this third session, the officers confronted defendant with the facts that Fred Bush was in jail, that defendant's clothing was bloodstained, and that he had been arrested in possession of the victim's car, television, and VCR. They accused defendant of lying and urged him to tell the truth. He responded, Why should I tell the truth? Well, what's in it for me? I'm going to jail anyway. Early in the morning of April 20, 1988, following this third session, the officers arrested defendant for Sarah LaChapelle's murder. Later in the morning of April 20, the officers executed a search warrant at the home of Lisa Henry, then brought Lisa to the police station and obtained a statement from her. Defendant was in an adjacent interview room at the time. Lisa was allowed to speak with defendant, and, in a recorded interview, she reported her conversation to the officers. The evidence at the suppression hearing was in dispute about who initiated Lisa's meeting with defendant. The officers indicated the following: They told Lisa they had been questioning defendant all night and he was not telling the truth. She asked to speak with him, suggesting that maybe she could get him to tell the truth. The officers agreed. They had not planned to have Lisa talk with defendant, they did not tell her to try to get information from him, they suggested no questions for her to ask, they said nothing about Fred Bush, and they did not consider her a police agent. In her recorded statement concerning her conversation with defendant, Lisa stated, among other things, that defendant said he didn't do it. He said Freddie, Fred did it. According to Lisa's statement, defendant also indicated that he tried to stop Fred and that the victim was a lady. At one point on the recording, Paniagua asked Lisa, Did I tell you to do anything else? Lisa responded, No, you asked me just did I want to talk to him, maybe I can talk to him to convince him to tell the truth or to tell what happened. On the recording, Paniagua reacted by saying, Okay. [¶] Is this a true statement? Lisa responded, Yes. At the hearing, Paniagua explained that Lisa's you asked me statement was not accurate, but it was not appropriate to argue about the matter at that time. The trial court rejected defendant's argument that he was tricked into waiving his Miranda rights when the officers failed to tell him he was suspected of a homicide, but simply indicated they were investigating a car theft in which a lady got hurt. The court noted, among other things, that defendant expressed awareness he was being questioned in the homicide division, and must have inferred a killing was involved. Contrary to the defense's contentions, the court also found that Lisa Henry had spoken to defendant on her own initiative, and thus was not a police agent. Even if she were, the court further concluded, there was no requirement defendant be Mirandized a third time before she spoke to him. Accordingly, the court denied the motion. As below, defendant urges that he was deceived into waiving his Miranda rights when the officers failed to tell him they were investigating a homicide, instead substituting their misrepresentation that the lady who owned the stolen car had merely been hurt. Hence, he argues, his waiver of his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination was not knowing, voluntary, and intelligent. We disagree. At the outset, we agree with the trial court that the evidence indicates defendant was not ignorant, when he twice heard and waived his Miranda rights, about the nature of the officers' investigation. They told him they were investigating the stolen vehicle in which he had been arrested, and they indicated a lady had been hurt in the incident. Thus, he understood the matter was more serious than mere car theft. Nor, it appears, was he misled by any ambiguity in the officers' use of the word hurt rather than killed. Recognizing that he was in the homicide division, he specifically asked the officers if this was so, and they indicated it was. He must certainly have understood that the injury at issue was fatal. [24] Even if this evidence were not present, however, we would not accept defendant's contention. We conclude the officers did nothing to invalidate defendant's two separate waivers of his Miranda rights. (7) As the high court explained in Colorado v. Spring (1987) 479 U.S. 564 [93 L.Ed.2d 954, 107 S.Ct. 851] ( Spring ), the Fifth Amendment simply provides that no person may be compelled to be a witness against himself or herself. ( Spring, at p. 572.) But this right can be waived, if the waiver is knowing, voluntary, and intelligent. ( Ibid. ) The warnings required by Miranda, supra, 384 U.S. 436 for a suspect in custodyi.e., that the suspect has the right to refuse to talk, to talk only with counsel present, and to stop talking at any time, and that criminal use will be made of any statements the suspect does utterare designed fully to protect the knowing, voluntary, and intelligent exercise of the constitutional right against compelled self-incrimination in that custodial context. ( Spring, supra, at p. 572.) Thus, in general, a suspect in custody who, having heard and understood a full explanation of these rights, then makes an uncompelled and uncoerced decision to talk, has thereby knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently waived them. ( Id. at p. 574.) [A] valid waiver does not require that an individual be informed of all information `useful' in making his decision or all information that `might . . . affec[t] his decision to confess.' [Citation.] `[W]e have never read the Constitution to require that the police supply a suspect with a flow of information to help him calibrate his self-interest in deciding whether to speak or stand by his rights.' [Citation.] ( Spring, supra, 479 U.S. 564, 576-577.) (8) In Spring, the defendant argued that, when confronting him in custody about a federal weapons charge, agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) tricked him into waiving his right to silence by failing to warn him they would also ask about a Colorado murder. Hence, he urged, his admissions to the ATF agents about this latter crime tainted his subsequent murder confession to Colorado authorities. The Spring court disagreed, holding that mere failure by law enforcement officers to advise a custodial suspect of all possible topics of interrogation is not trickery sufficient to vitiate the uncoerced waiver of one who heard and understood the warnings required by Miranda. ( Spring, supra, 479 U.S. 564, 576.) Defendant points out that, in Spring, the United States Supreme Court left open whether, and under what circumstances, affirmative misrepresentations by the police about the scope of their investigation might vitiate a Miranda waiver. ( Spring, supra, 479 U.S. 564, 576, fn. 8.) However, as examples of the certain circumstances under which the court had previously invalidated Fifth Amendment waivers procured by affirmative police misrepresentations, Spring cited cases involving falsehoods that were of a coercive nature, and thus reasonably calculated to induce false confessions. ( Ibid. ; see, e.g., Lynumn v. Illinois (1963) 372 U.S. 528 [9 L.Ed.2d 922, 83 S.Ct. 917] [misrepresentation by police officers that suspect would be deprived of state financial aid for her dependent child unless she cooperated]; Spano v. New York (1959) 360 U.S. 315 [3 L.Ed.2d 1265, 79 S.Ct. 1202] [misrepresentation by suspect's friend that friend would lose his job if suspect failed to cooperate].) (9) We have recently confirmed that [t]he use of deceptive statements during an interrogation . . . does not invalidate a confession [as involuntary, unknowing, or unintelligent] unless the deception is ``of a type reasonably likely to procure an untrue statement.'' ( People v. Jones (1998) 17 Cal.4th 279, 299 [70 Cal.Rptr.2d 793, 949 P.2d 890]; see People v. Thompson (1990) 50 Cal.3d 134, 167 [266 Cal.Rptr. 309, 785 P.2d 857].) ( People v. Carrington (2009) 47 Cal.4th 145, 172 [97 Cal.Rptr.3d 117, 211 P.3d 617] ( Carrington ).) [25] Defendant urges that by deceptively minimizing the seriousness of the investigation, the officers induced false statements that were later used against him, but his argument fails to persuade. At all times before he was informed the victim in the car theft incident under investigation was dead, defendant denied all criminal involvement in the incident. The most damaging thing he did during his interrogation by the officers was to state falsely that he had obtained the car from Fred Bush in payment for a debt. To be sure, this lie was later exposed and used against him to show a consciousness of guilt. But it is difficult to see how the Fred Bush falsehood was induced because the police at first told him the victim was hurt, as opposed to advising him she had died. In either case, his motivation to make false exculpatory statements was the same; he sought to avoid criminal responsibility for the crimes under investigation. If anything, the motivation to lie to escape responsibility would have been even greater had he been advised he was a murder suspect. We therefore reject defendant's contention that the officers' statements the victim had been hurt as opposed to killed invalidated his Miranda waiver or rendered his statements involuntary, unknowing, or unintelligent. We also find no merit in defendant's contention that his statements to Lisa Henry at the police station were inadmissible because, without providing Miranda warnings for a third time, the police used her as an agent to obtain incriminating information. The trial court ruled against this argument on two correct grounds. (10) First, [c]onversations between suspects and undercover agents do not implicate the concerns underlying Miranda.  ( Illinois v. Perkins (1990) 496 U.S. 292, 296 [110 L.Ed.2d 243, 110 S.Ct. 2394] ( Perkins ); accord, People v. Mayfield (1997) 14 Cal.4th 668, 758 [60 Cal.Rptr.2d 1, 928 P.2d 485] ( Mayfield ).) As the high court explained in Perkins, Miranda protects the Fifth Amendment rights of a suspect faced with the coercive combination of custodial status and an interrogation the suspect understands as official. On the other hand, even if a suspect happens to be in custody, [t]here is no empirical basis for the assumption that [when] speaking to those whom he assumes are not officers, [he] will feel compelled to speak by the fear of reprisal for remaining silent or in the hope of more lenient treatment should he confess. ( Perkins, supra, at pp. 296-297.) [26] Defendant stresses a factual distinction between this case and Perkins, supra, 496 U.S. 292. There, suspecting the defendant of a crime unrelated to the offense for which he was then incarcerated, the police planted an undercover agent in his cellblock to befriend him and elicit incriminating information about the unrelated crime. By contrast, defendant urges, he was in the throes of a custodial interrogation about the Sarah LaChapelle case at the time Lisa spoke to him about that same incident. Thus, defendant suggests, he, unlike the defendant in Perkins, confronted the coercive combination of circumstances that brings Miranda into play. (11) We disagree. We held in Mayfield that the police did not violate Miranda when, after the defendant in custody had invoked his right to silence, and thus could not be further interrogated, they allowed his father to discuss the case privately with him, then extracted a report of what was said. We so concluded because `defendant's conversations with his own visitors are not the constitutional equivalent of [forbidden] police interrogation.' [Citations.] ( Mayfield, supra, 14 Cal.4th 668, 758; see also Arizona v. Mauro (1987) 481 U.S. 520, 528 [95 L.Ed.2d 458, 107 S.Ct. 1931] [police did not engage in forbidden interrogation, for purposes of Miranda, by mere placement of officer in room to observe and tape-record conversation between suspect in custody, who had invoked right to silence, and suspect's wife].) [27] This conclusion is entirely consistent with Perkins, supra, 496 U.S. 292; one who voluntarily speaks alone to a friend, even during a break in a custodial interrogation, has no reason to assume, during the private conversation, that he or she is subject to the coercive influences of police questioning. Second, the trial court found, on the particular facts, that Lisa was not, in any event, a police agent. Despite Lisa's recorded statement that the officers had asked her to speak with defendant, the court accepted the officers' testimony in court that it was Lisa's idea to speak with him, that they did not order or ask Lisa to act on their behalf, and that they did not provide guidelines for the meeting. Though defendant suggests otherwise, we must defer to these factual and credibility determinations, made after the court observed the officers' demeanor. (E.g., People v. Dykes (2009) 46 Cal.4th 731, 752 [95 Cal.Rptr.3d 78, 209 P.3d 1]; People v. Rundle (2008) 43 Cal.4th 76, 115 [74 Cal.Rptr.3d 454, 180 P.3d 224].) Also, as a legal matter, we independently agree with the trial court that, under these circumstances, Lisa was not a police agent. (12) Defendant urges that, even if Lisa initiated the meeting with him, the police somehow violated Miranda by exploit[ing] her possible status as an accomplice or accessory, and his vulnerability in the coercive atmosphere of custody, to obtain incriminating statements. But again,  Miranda forbids coercion, not mere strategic deception by taking advantage of a suspect's misplaced trust in a supposed friend or ally. ( Perkins, supra, 496 U.S. 292, 297.) Ploys to mislead a suspect or lull him into a false sense of security that do not rise to the level of compulsion or coercion to speak are not within Miranda 's concerns. [Citations.] ( Ibid. ) (13) Rather, Miranda 's aim is to ensure that the suspect's will to remain silent is not overborne by the coercive atmosphere of police questioning in custody. Both custody and police questioning are necessary to invoke Miranda, and both concepts are viewed from the suspect's perspective. ( Perkins, supra, 496 U.S. 292, 296.) Even when the suspect is in the process of a custodial interrogation, voluntary statements to someone the suspect does not believe is a police officer or agent, in a conversation the suspect assumes is private, simply does not involve one of these two critical concerns. Defendant's Miranda rights were not violated, and his statements in police custody were properly admitted.