Opinion ID: 2263096
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Admission of Appellant's Statements at the Homicide Unit

Text: Appellant contends that the trial court committed error when it denied his motion to suppress all of the statements that he gave to police at the Homicide Unit between 3:42 a.m. and 5:10 a.m. on 4 December 2002, which were obtained without giving Appellant a Miranda warning, in violation of his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Appellant cites the following circumstances as evidence that Appellant was in custody at the time of his questioning by police and so should have been issued a Miranda warning: it was the fourth time that he had been questioned in connection with Marciana's disappearance; he was isolated from Marciana's family and neighbor who were also questioned by the detectives; he was questioned in a station house; he had been in a small locked room at the Missing Persons Unit for two and one-half hours before being transported by police car to the Homicide Unit; police made him wait three hours at the Homicide Unit until they questioned him; the record is unclear whether he offered to go to the Homicide Unit; and that, because the detectives told Appellant that there were inconsistencies in his statements, that he was being questioned as a suspect and, as a result, a reasonable person in Appellant's position would have considered himself to be in custody. The law presumes that, absent an appropriate rights warning, statements made during a custodial interrogation are made involuntarily and so are in violation of a defendant's right against self-incrimination. Therefore, when a person is held in custody, police are required to issue the so-called Miranda warning preceding the interrogation. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 478, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1630, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, 726 (1966) (Any statement given freely and voluntarily without any compelling influence is, of course, admissible in evidence. The fundamental import of the privilege while an individual is in custody is not whether he is allowed to talk to the police without the benefit of warnings and counsel, but whether he can be interrogated.). To determine whether Appellant was in custody when he was questioned by detectives at the Homicide Unit between 3:42 and 5:10 a.m. on 4 December 2002, the applicable standard is whether there was a formal arrest or restraint on freedom of movement of the degree associated with a formal arrest. State v. Rucker, 374 Md. 199, 209-210, 821 A.2d 439, 445 (2003) (citing California v. Beheler, 463 U.S. 1121, 1125, 103 S.Ct. 3517, 3520, 77 L.Ed.2d 1275, 1279 (1983)). We apply this standard by considering the circumstances surrounding the interrogation. Beheler, 463 U.S. at 1125, 103 S.Ct. at 3520, 77 L.Ed.2d at 1279. As we said in Whitfield v. State, some actual indication of custody must exist, such that a reasonable person would feel he was not free to leave and break off police questioning. 287 Md. 124, 141, 411 A.2d 415, 425 (1980) (Citation omitted); see also Rucker, 374 Md. at 209, 821 A.2d at 445. [16] After considering the circumstances surrounding Appellant's interrogation at the Homicide Unit, we hold that, while some circumstances hint at restraint or coercive elements, we are not prepared to conclude that they rise to the level that a reasonable person would feel that he or she were under arrest or his or her freedom of movement restrained to the degree associated with a formal arrest. That the questioning occurred in a police station is not determinative of whether a custodial interrogation occurred. In Oregon v. Mathiason, the U.S. Supreme Court held there was no custody and no deprivation of freedom when the defendant, a burglary suspect, came voluntarily to the police station at the request of the police, was told that he was not under arrest, although a suspect, and was permitted to leave at the end of the half-hour interview because the defendant was not deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way. 429 U.S. 492, 495, 97 S.Ct. 711, 714, 50 L.Ed.2d 714, 719 (1977) (per curiam). The Court stated that a non-custodial interrogation is not converted merely because the questioning took place in a coercive environment. Id. Any interview of one suspected of a crime by a police officer will have coercive aspects to it, simply by virtue of the fact that the police officer is part of a law enforcement system which may ultimately cause the suspect to be charged with a crime. But 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. Id. In the present case, at no time during the questioning was Appellant arrested, nor do we believe that a reasonable person would be led to believe to the contrary. He was told that he may become a suspect. Although detectives made him aware of the inconsistencies in his statements and, in fact, obtained an admission from him to a lie about the time he left his workplace on the afternoon of 3 December, the record of the questioning reveals no coercion of the type the federal or Maryland constitutions prohibit. Nor does the record show that Appellant was coerced into being interviewed four times prior to his first interview at the Homicide Unit. Nor was he coerced into staying at the Missing Persons and Homicide Units for a total of 11 hours before the questioning at issue took place. [17] We find no indication from the circumstances of the interrogation that a reasonable person would not think that he or she could break off the police questioning and leave freely. Appellant agreed to go to the Missing Persons Unit. He agreed to answer police questions, and did so, as detectives testified, cooperatively. When answering questions at the first interview at the Homicide Unit, he did so cooperatively. He agreed to wait in the interview room, the door of which stood open throughout Appellant's time there. Appellant was taken to his mother's home the evening of 4 December 2002 after he terminated further questioning. We conclude that Appellant was not in custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way during the relevant questioning by police before his arrest. We hold that the trial court committed no error in admitting Appellant's statements given without a prior Miranda warning. 5.