Opinion ID: 1762922
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: defendant's argument as to illegal detention

Text: It is admitted in the defendant's argument that his inculpatory statements of June 13, 1978, were preceded by proper Miranda warnings and waivers with regard to Fifth Amendment purposes. However, defendant contends that, even if statements made during custodial interrogation were preceded by Miranda warnings, nevertheless they may be excluded if the detention was unsupported by probable cause and the statements were obtained by exploitation of the illegal detention. In his brief the defendant relies upon State v. Menne, 380 So.2d 14 (La.1980) and State v. Scott, 355 So.2d 231, (La.1978) to support his attack upon the admission of the confessions. The response of the State contends that the tape-recorded confessions were not obtained through the exploitation of an illegal detention unsupported by probable cause but, to the contrary, are well within the guidelines set forth by the United States Supreme Court in Oregon v. Mathiason, 429 U.S. 492, 97 S.Ct. 711, 714, 50 L.Ed.2d 214 (1977): ... police officers are not required to administer Miranda warnings to everyone whom they question. Nor is the requirement of warnings to be imposed simply because the questioning takes place in the station house, or because the questioned person is one whom the police suspect. Miranda warnings are required only where there has been such a restriction on a person's freedom as to render him `in custody'. It was that sort of coercive environment to which Miranda by its terms was made applicable, and to which it is limited. It is the position of the State here, and this court agrees, that to the extent that one may be in custody under Mathiason this court has enunciated an objective standard of the reasonable interrogee under the totality of the circumstances as articulated by the court in State v. Menne, supra. When the objective standards of Menne are applied to the totality of the events surrounding the instant case it is clear that prior to the defendant's changing his statements from exculpatory to inculpatory statements a reasonable interrogee would not have a reason to feel he had been deprived of his freedom of action in a significant way such as to believe he was in custody. Roxanne Barrilleaux's body was found in the early morning hours of May 20, 1978. The Parish authorities immediately began an intensive and extensive investigation which ultimately led to the formal arrest of the defendant-appellant on the evening of June 13, 1978. During this investigation period a number of individuals, including the defendant, were interviewed by St. Mary Parish investigators. Prior to his interrogation on June 13, 1978, by Agent Gros the defendant had been questioned both at the police station and at the residence of his parents. Each time the defendant was not prevented from walking away from those interviews. In fact, the defendant appears to have willingly cooperated in the efforts by St. Mary Parish authorities to investigate the death of the victim. The defendant relies heavily upon particular arguments in an attempt to change this general investigatory interview situation to an in custody interrogation under the Mathiason and Menne standards. Defendant relies, for example, upon the fact that at trial several members of the St. Mary Parish Sheriff's Office had made statements which indicated that the defendant was a target suspect. However, the Mathiason and Menne standard is not the state of mind of the interviewer but the state of mind of the reasonable interviewee. Menne, supra. The fact that the interviewer made a false statement to the interviewee created an in custody interrogation. Mathiason, supra; State v. Johnson, 363 So.2d 684 (La.1978). The defendant also relies upon the fact that two St. Mary Parish officers affirmed under oath in preparation for a search warrant that the defendant-appellant was picked up in connection with ... the Barrilleaux homicide. This, however, does not go to the issue of whether the reasonable interviewee felt he was in custody at the time. It is merely a common expression used by police to indicate how an individual was transported and in connection with what matter. The fact that defendant signed an official form stating that he was being detained and questioned does not in and of itself create in the interviewee's mind a sense of in custody interrogation. The defendant signed such a form on two different occasions. On the first occasion, he was allowed by the authorities to leave. Nor is there any evidence in the record that the defendant was detained from leaving at any time following his signing of the second form prior to his being turned over to Agent Gros. Nothing in the record indicates that prior to being turned over to Agent Gros at 8:00 p. m. on the evening of June 13, 1978, any in custody interrogation of the defendant had occurred. Under Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed. 824 (1979), an in custody interrogation must have occurred prior to the giving of Miranda warnings. Once an illegal detention has occurred, followed by a post-Miranda confession, the standards provided in Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963), must be considered to determine if the confession has been so tainted that the Fourth Amendment rights of the confession has been violated. Dunaway, supra. This court similarly held in State v. Scott, 355 So.2d 231 (La.1978). The Scott case, however, is based upon the fact that the authorities illegally detained the individual without probable cause to arrest prior to giving the confessor his Miranda warnings. In the instant case no such illegal detainment occurred. The defendant also relies upon the cases of State v. Zielman, 384 So.2d 359 (La.1980); and State v. Giovanni, 375 So.2d 1360 (La. 1979) as precedent for excluding the confession in the instant case. These cases pertain to statements made by defendants preceding Miranda warnings. In the instant case the State made no attempt to introduce at trial statements made by the defendant prior to the Miranda warning. The tape-recorded confession was made after he was given his Miranda warning by the St. Mary Parish authorities. A holding in the instant case that the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights had been violated would create a situation under which police would be unable to conduct face-to-face interviews during their investigation of a crime for fear that an interviewee at a later date might become a defendant. In the case at hand it is apparent that the defendant's rights were not violated under the Fifth Amendment nor was the confession tainted by prior in custody interrogation under the Fourth Amendment. This assignment of error lacks merit.