Opinion ID: 1225502
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Misrepresentation of Miranda rights as a technicality.

Text: Defendant also argues that his Miranda waiver was invalid because Detectives Bell and Reed misrepresented the rights conferred on criminal suspects by the Supreme Court's Miranda decision, suggesting they were an unimportant technicality. That representation, defendant claims, misled him into devaluing the importance of the rights conferred on criminal suspects by the Supreme Court's Miranda decision. Had he understood the value of remaining silent during police questioning and of requesting the assistance of an attorney, defendant argues, he would not have waived his Miranda rights. We agree with the proposition that evidence of police efforts to trivialize the rights accorded suspects by the Miranda decision  by playing down, for example, or minimizing their legal significance  may under some circumstances suggest a species of prohibited trickery and weighs against a finding that the suspect's waiver was knowing, informed, and intelligent. The evidence here, however  and it is slender  does not approach that standard. The sum and substance of the alleged misrepresentations concerning the importance of defendant's Miranda rights consists of the following single brief statement, made by Detective Bell immediately before advising defendant of his rights: BELL: Well, we don't know what you know and what you don't know and so, what we'd like to do is just go ahead and advise you of your rights before we even get started and that way, that there's no problem with any of it. Is that alright with you? Detective Bell's comment was not only required as a matter of constitutional law, but was an accurate statement of the office of the constitutionally derived Miranda warning, a prophylactic against the danger of inculpatory statements by an uninformed suspect. ( Michigan v. Tucker (1974) 417 U.S. 433, 446 [94 S.Ct. 2357, 2365, 41 L.Ed.2d 182].) Nor was the form Detective Bell's comment took objectionable; the required warning need not be given as a talismanic incantation. ( California v. Prysock (1981) 453 U.S. 355, 359 [101 S.Ct. 2806, 2809, 69 L.Ed.2d 696].) As the trial court found after viewing the videotape of the questioning and hearing the suppression argument of defendant's lawyers, it is obvious that Mr. Musselwhite knew he was there to discuss the incident that occurred in the apartment house ... he's placed into a room where he's ... begun to be questioned by two detectives ... he certainly would have taken it serious.... [¶] ... He seemed to me to be taking it seriously.... [¶] ... [H]e was aware of all the implications of Miranda.  Last, of course, nowhere does Bell actually use the word technicality or words to that effect. We agree. Given the brevity, as well as the accuracy, of Detective Bell's statement, the fact that the officers never described the Miranda warning as a technicality or used similar words, the absence of similar comments during the course of the questioning, defendant's record of police encounters as evidenced by two prior felony convictions, the likelihood he was aware he was a suspect in a murder investigation (an awareness drawn from an unexpected police contact at his apartment and reflected in the several lies he told the officers when he was initially questioned), we conclude the record fails to support defendant's claim that the importance of his Miranda rights was misrepresented by the detectives and that he was thereby tricked into waiving them.