Opinion ID: 1379546
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Police questions about Tolliver's wire phone.

Text: Tolliver points first to two police questions (regarding his home phone and number), asked early in the interview, that he argues were express inquiries violating Miranda. While the two questions were clearly express in the sense that the police explicitly asked Tolliver what his home phone number was and whether he had a wire phone in his apartment, however, the transcript and the video of the interview both make clear that the police here were simply trying to follow up on Tolliver's request that the police contact Schneider's parents to tell them about Schneider's death. After Tolliver made this request, the police asked whether Tolliver knew Walter Schneider's number. When Tolliver replied that the number was in the cell phone that [police] took from me at the scene, the police observed that they thought the cell phone was still at Tolliver's apartment. It was only then that they asked Tolliver what his telephone number at home was, and whether he had a wire phone in the apartment. Despite the importance to this case of whether Tolliver could find a phone in the apartment, the police were in fact following up on Tolliver's voluntary statement and were seeking an easy way to call over to the apartment to have the police there check on the phone number. See Tolliver, 2004 WL 625683, at . We therefore find that by asking these questions the police were not interrogating Tolliver within the meaning of Miranda.