Opinion ID: 4422273
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Mid-Stream Miranda Warnings and Waiver

Text: In his second claim for relief, Mitchell argues that his post-warning admissions should have been excluded under Seibert, because Collins interrogated him on three different occasions and only advised Mitchell of his Miranda rights “mid-stream.” See Seibert, 542 U.S. at 604 (plurality opinion). As an initial matter, we note that Mitchell appears to challenge not only the Michigan Supreme Court’s application of the law to the facts of his case but also that court’s determination of the facts. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2). However, the Michigan Supreme Court No. 17-2444 Mitchell v. MacLaren Page 13 does not appear to have adopted either Mitchell’s version of the facts or Collins’s version (as discussed above, Collins claimed that he questioned Mitchell only once before giving Miranda warnings). Instead, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals’s decision to remand for an evidentiary hearing on the facts surrounding Mitchell’s interrogations. The Michigan Supreme Court then stated that no violation of Mitchell’s rights had occurred, see Mitchell, 822 N.W.2d at 224, indicating either that it had implicitly accepted one view of the facts and found no violation or that it found no violation had occurred on either version of the facts. Although it is not clear that a factual determination exists for the purposes of AEDPA review, that gap in the record presents no hindrance to our review of Mitchell’s claim. Even assuming Mitchell’s version of the interrogation sequence is the accurate one, his claim fails because the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision was not an unreasonable application of the Supreme Court’s case law even on Mitchell’s version of the facts. To understand the applicable Supreme Court case law, we must first consider Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. 298 (1985). In Elstad, the police went to the suspect’s house to take him into custody on a charge of burglary. Id. at 300. Before the arrest, one officer spoke with the suspect’s mother while the other officer joined the suspect in the living room, id. at 300–01, where the officer said he “felt” the suspect was involved in a burglary, id. at 301. The suspect said, “Yes, I was there.” Id.3 Later, at the station house, the suspect was given Miranda warnings, and he made a full confession. Id. at 301–02. The Elstad Court reasoned that “a simple failure to administer the [Miranda] warnings, unaccompanied by any actual coercion or other circumstances calculated to undermine the suspect’s ability to exercise his free will,” does not automatically “taint[] the investigatory process.” Id. at 309. “[T]here is no warrant for presuming coercive effect where the suspect’s initial inculpatory statement, though technically in violation of Miranda, was voluntary. The relevant inquiry is whether, in fact, the second [i.e., the Mirandized] statement was also voluntarily made.” Id. at 318 (footnote omitted). “[A] suspect who has once responded to 3The state conceded for the purposes of the appeal that the suspect was in custody at the time of this exchange. See Elstad, 470 U.S. at 315. No. 17-2444 Mitchell v. MacLaren Page 14 unwarned [i.e., un-Mirandized] yet uncoercive questioning is not thereby disabled from waiving his rights and confessing after he has been given the requisite Miranda warnings.” Id. After Elstad came Seibert, upon which Mitchell relies. There, police questioning led to the defendant’s confession to a crime, after which she was given a 20-minute break. Seibert, 542 U.S. at 604–05 (plurality opinion). Following the break, the officer turned on the tape recorder and only then gave the defendant her Miranda warnings. Id. at 605. When the defendant resisted making a statement, the officer reminded her that she had already admitted involvement in the crime; the defendant then confessed post-warning. Id. In a fractured decision, the Supreme Court held that the post-warning confession was inadmissible. A four-justice plurality distinguished Elstad based on the following factors: “[1] the completeness and detail of the questions and answers in the first round of interrogation, [2] the overlapping content of the two statements, [3] the timing and setting of the first and the second, [4] the continuity of police personnel, and [5] the degree to which the interrogator’s questions treated the second round as continuous with the first.” Id. at 615. On the facts of Seibert, the plurality determined, these factors dictated reversal “[b]ecause the question-first tactic effectively threatens to thwart Miranda’s purpose of reducing the risk that a coerced confession would be admitted, and because the facts here do not reasonably support a conclusion that the warnings given could have served their purpose.” Id. at 617. Justice Kennedy provided the fifth vote for reversal, writing separately to propose an alternative analysis: The admissibility of postwarning statements should continue to be governed by the principles of Elstad unless the deliberate two-step strategy was employed. If the deliberate two-step strategy has been used, postwarning statements that are related to the substance of prewarning statements must be excluded unless curative measures are taken before the postwarning statement is made. Curative measures should be designed to ensure that a reasonable person in the suspect’s situation would understand the import and effect of the Miranda warning and of the Miranda waiver. For example, a substantial break in time and circumstances between the prewarning statement and the Miranda warning may suffice in most circumstances, as it allows the accused to distinguish the two contexts and appreciate that the interrogation has taken a new turn. Alternatively, No. 17-2444 Mitchell v. MacLaren Page 15 an additional warning that explains the likely inadmissibility of the prewarning custodial statement may be sufficient. Id. at 622 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (emphases added). Four justices dissented, arguing that the post-warning confession was admissible. See id. Thus, based on Seibert, there are two competing tests regarding how to evaluate the constitutionality of interrogations employing mid-stream Miranda warnings. As we noted in United States v. Ray, 803 F.3d 244, 272 (6th Cir. 2015), “[b]ecause . . . the plurality and dissent [in Seibert] each received only four votes, . . . Seibert did not [itself] announce a binding rule of law.” Therefore, reasonable jurists could read Seibert as having established only that on the facts of that case, the post-warning confession was inadmissible. See Dixon, 565 U.S. at 30–32 (citing both the plurality opinion and Justice Kennedy’s opinion but not exclusively adopting the approach of either). As mentioned above, the Michigan Supreme Court found no constitutional violation because Mitchell’s pre-warning statement had denied involvement in the killing; thus, “[u]nlike in [Seibert], there is no concern here that police gave [defendant] Miranda warnings and then led him to repeat an earlier murder confession, because there was no earlier confession to repeat.” Mitchell, 822 N.W.2d at 224 (third alteration in original) (quoting Dixon, 565 U.S. at 31). Mitchell argues that the Michigan Supreme Court took this quote from Dixon—a Supreme Court opinion discussing both Elstad and Seibert—out of context. Indeed, Mitchell relies heavily on Dixon to argue that (1) Dixon made clear that the absence of a pre-warning confession is not the end of the analysis and (2) the application of either the plurality’s or the Kennedy concurrence’s approach from Seibert, which led to the Dixon Court’s finding a confession admissible, would produce the opposite result in Mitchell’s case because his facts are much more like Seibert. An examination of Dixon, however, reveals that the Michigan Supreme Court was not unreasonable in determining that Mitchell’s case was comparable in pertinent respects to Dixon. In Dixon, both Dixon and another man murdered the victim. 565 U.S. at 24–25. Dixon then used the victim’s social security card and birth certificate to obtain a state identification card in the victim’s name so Dixon could sell the victim’s car. Id. at 25. Police arrested Dixon on a forgery charge and then questioned him intermittently over several hours but intentionally No. 17-2444 Mitchell v. MacLaren Page 16 declined to provide Dixon with Miranda warnings. Id. Dixon admitted to forging the victim’s signature, but he denied having any involvement in the victim’s disappearance. Id. After Dixon’s accomplice spoke to police officers and led them to where the two had buried the body, officers again brought Dixon to the station, about four hours after the initial intermittent questioning had concluded. Id. at 26. “Dixon stated that he had heard the police had found a body and asked whether [his accomplice] was in custody. The police told Dixon that [the accomplice] was not, at which point Dixon said, ‘I talked to my attorney, and I want to tell you what happened.’” Id. After the officers advised him of his Miranda rights, Dixon admitted to murdering the victim. Id. Ultimately, Dixon’s case reached the Supreme Court in the form of an appeal from the denial of his § 2254 petition. The Court, citing both Elstad and Seibert, held: In this case, no two-step interrogation technique of the type that concerned the Court in Seibert undermined the Miranda warnings Dixon received. In Seibert, the suspect’s first, unwarned interrogation left “little, if anything, of incriminating potential left unsaid,” making it “unnatural” not to “repeat at the second stage what had been said before.” Id. at 31 (quoting Seibert, 542 U.S. at 616–17 (plurality opinion)). Accordingly, the Court continued: [A]dmission of Dixon’s murder confession was consistent with this Court’s precedents: Dixon received Miranda warnings before confessing to [the] murder; the effectiveness of those warnings was not impaired by the sort of “two-step interrogation technique” condemned in Seibert; and there is no evidence that any of Dixon’s statements was the product of actual coercion. Id. at 32. Assuming Mitchell’s version of the facts leading to his post-warning admissions is correct, reasonable jurists could find his case to be more like Dixon and Elstad than Seibert. As in Dixon and Elstad, here, there was no confession during the interrogations that occurred prior to the Miranda warnings. Instead, Mitchell received Miranda warnings before admitting to beating Jorden and taking money and drugs from him. Also, although Collins referenced Mitchell’s pre-warning statements during the post-warning interrogation, there is no evidence No. 17-2444 Mitchell v. MacLaren Page 17 that Collins used Mitchell’s earlier, un-Mirandized statements to coerce a post-warning confession or that Collins otherwise induced Mitchell to waive his rights. It is true that Mitchell was given only a few minutes between his pre- and post-warning interrogations (unlike Dixon, who had four hours) and that Collins himself conducted both interrogations. See Seibert, 542 U.S. at 615 (plurality opinion) (One factor to consider in determining the effectiveness of mid-stream warnings is “the continuity of police personnel.”). Also, during the unwarned interrogation, Mitchell told Collins about a prior incident with Jorden concerning the gun and admitted to being at the location of Jorden’s shooting on the evening of the murder. However, in Dixon, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the holding in Elstad that “there is no warrant for presuming coercive effect where the suspect’s initial inculpatory statement, though technically in violation of Miranda, was voluntary. The relevant inquiry is whether, in fact, the second [warned] statement was also voluntarily made.” Dixon, 565 U.S. at 29 (alteration in original) (quoting Elstad, 470 U.S. at 318); see id. at 30 n.3, 32. Similarly, here, Mitchell does not contend that any pre-warning statements he made, though technically in violation of Miranda, were involuntary. And none of those statements included a confession to the killing or to any crime, unlike in Seibert. To the extent that what Mitchell did say in his unwarned statements could be considered incriminating, indeed, Dixon indicates that incriminating statements falling short of a confession do not necessarily taint a post-warning confession. In Dixon, after all, the defendant readily admitted forgery during the unwarned interrogation, thus establishing a connection between himself and the victim. See Dixon, 565 U.S. at 29. Similarly, here, although Mitchell admitted being near the scene before Jorden’s murder, he did not admit any wrongdoing during the unwarned interrogation. Our task in applying AEDPA is not to consider in the first instance whether we would reach the same result as the state court but to determine whether the state court’s application of clearly established federal law was unreasonable. See Taylor, 529 U.S. at 411. Here, where the Supreme Court has held in Dixon and Elstad that mid-stream warnings do not necessarily make a post-warning confession inadmissible, and Seibert did not establish a clear rule for determining when such confessions are inadmissible, the Michigan Supreme Court’s determination that No. 17-2444 Mitchell v. MacLaren Page 18 Mitchell’s post-warning admissions had not been elicited in violation of Miranda was reasonable.4 V. CONCLUSION For the reasons stated above, we AFFIRM the district court’s denial of Mitchell’s § 2254 petition. 4Mitchell also argues that the cumulative effect of the mid-stream Miranda warnings and Detective Collins’s allegedly misleading statements resulted in Mitchell’s being inadequately informed of his rights. However, because the COA did not include this “cumulative effects” issue, we are not required to entertain it. See Dunham v. United States, 486 F.3d 931, 934 (6th Cir. 2007). Mitchell’s reliance on Gonzalez v. Thaler, 565 U.S. 134 (2012) to argue that there is no bar to reaching this argument is unavailing. Unlike in Gonzalez, where the COA was defective because it failed to comply with 28 U.S.C. § 2252(c)(3), see 565 U.S. at 141, the district court here issued a compliant COA. It precisely identified the two issues certified for appeal and rejected the others. In these circumstances, we address only the issues certified for appeal. See Dunham, 486 F.3d at 934. Moreover, we decline to exercise our “inherent authority to expand sua sponte the scope of the COA to encompass additional issues.” See Howard v. United States, 485 F. App’x 125, 127–28 (6th Cir. 2012).