Opinion ID: 1813641
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Totality-of-Circumstances Test Applied to Wyche

Text: In Wyche, law enforcement, for all intents and purposes, promised the suspect that he could clear his name in the fabricated burglary case by submitting a saliva sample (a fact which the majority concedes by quoting the facts from the First District's decision below). See majority op. at 24. [33] This promise induced Wyche to consent to the saliva-swab search, and absent this affirmative fabrication, Wyche would in all probability have refused to consent. In both Wyche and McCord, the police essentially confronted the defendants with the following fabricated state of affairs  you are a suspect in a potentially serious felony investigation, and you have two options: (1) refuse to submit to a saliva-swab search and thereby remain a viable suspect with regard to this felony investigation; or (2) if you are confident in your innocence, submit to the saliva-swab search and exonerate yourself as to this suspected felony as almost any person who knows that he or she is innocent of these allegations would do. Wyche and McCord are thus archetypal extrinsic -fabrication cases. Moreover, the confession cases the majority relies upon are wholly distinguishable. Many of these confession cases involve situations where the police lie to the suspect by falsely claiming that a codefendant has already confessed and implicated the suspect, so the suspect might as well come clean. See, e.g., Frazier, 394 U.S. at 739, 89 S.Ct. 1420; Burch, 343 So.2d at 833 (substantially similar, but involving failed polygraph ruse). Even in those cases that do not involve this precise species of misrepresentation, the misrepresentation is still intrinsic to the case the police are actually investigating. See, e.g., Escobar v. State, 699 So.2d 988, 994 (Fla. 1997) (holding that [p]olice misrepresentation alone does not necessarily render a confession involuntary, in the context of a case where police allegedly misrepresented that they possessed physical evidence of the crime at issue ), abrogated on other grounds by Connor v. State, 803 So.2d 598, 605-07 (Fla.2001); Fitzpatrick v. State, 900 So.2d 495, 511 (Fla.2005) (citing Escobar for the proposition that police misrepresentations alone do not necessarily render a confession involuntary, but rendering this holding in the context of a case in which the police investigator misrepresented the extent of the inculpatory evidence in the case he was actually investigating ); Davis v. State, 859 So.2d 465, 472 (Fla.2003) (confession voluntary despite law enforcement's characterization of the situation confronting the defendant as a missing-person case; the detectives accurately informed the defendant of the identity of the missing person and simply neglected to inform him that they already knew the victim was dead); Nelson v. State, 850 So.2d 514, 521-22 (Fla.2003) (holding confession voluntary despite police misrepresentation of the then-unknown inculpatory nature of the applicable DNA evidence). In short, the common theme linking each of these confession casesa theme conspicuously absent in cases like Wyche and McCord is that the alleged police misrepresentations related to the cases the police were actually investigating, a fact of which the defendants in those cases were well aware. Conversely, in Wyche, Investigator VanBennekom intentionally fabricated an extrinsic burglary offenseof which the defendant knew he was completely innocentfor the purpose of presenting the defendant with the Hobson's choice of either consenting to the search and thereby clearing his name, or refusing to consent and thereby remaining a viable suspect with regard to the ostensive burglary case. The above-referenced confession cases, upon which the majority opinion relies, are thus distinguishable because unlike Wyche they do not involve lies that were based upon extrinsic inducements for the suspect to offer evidence in the false hope that the suspect could clear him- or herself of culpability for a completely fabricated offense. See majority op. at 28 (relying upon this litany of distinguishable intrinsic -fabrication cases). I similarly disagree with the majority's heavy reliance upon Washington v. State, 653 So.2d 362, 364-65 (Fla.1994), because that case assumes the presence of validly obtained DNA samples, which evades the very question at issue in Wyche: Did the police validly obtain Petitioner Wyche's saliva sample? In Washington, this Court merely held that once a suspect's DNA samples are  validly obtained the police are not restrained from using those samples in other cases. 653 So.2d at 364-65 (emphasis supplied). The decisive distinguishing factor is that Washington did not involve any police fabrications; rather, the police suspected the defendant of unrelated murder and sexual-battery offenses and requested that he consent to providing hair and blood samples with regard to the actual, valid sexual-battery case. The police merely decided not to inform Washington of the murder case, which is not a distinction without a difference. The extrinsic fabrication at issue in Wyche renders this difference dispositive because in Washington, the police did not offer the defendant the false hope of exonerating himself with regard to a completely fabricated, yet ostensibly valid felony offense; instead, they were investigating Washington concerning two clearly valid offenses. This distinction is determinative because in addressing the totality-based question of voluntariness, confession-case jurisprudence often relies upon the presence of false police promises and affirmative police misrepresentations. This distinction also exposes the State's doomsday-like premonitions as the paper tigers that they actually arethere is no requirement that the police inform a potential consenter of the purpose of their desire for a consent search, further there is no rule of law that compels the police to disclose every crime for which they are investigating a suspect. See Respondent's Answer Brief at 10-11 (contending that if this Court were to hold that police deception vitiated consent in Wyche, this holding would require police to disclose all actual investigations to a potential consenter); cf. Colorado v. Spring, 479 U.S. 564, 576 & n. 8, 107 S.Ct. 851, 93 L.Ed.2d 954 (1987) (This Court has never held that mere silence by law enforcement officials as to the subject matter of an interrogation is `trickery' sufficient to invalidate a suspect's waiver of Miranda rights, and we expressly decline so to hold today.... [However,] [i]n certain circumstances, the Court has found affirmative misrepresentations by the police sufficient to invalidate a suspect's waiver of the Fifth Amendment privilege. (emphasis supplied) (citing Lynumn v. Illinois, 372 U.S. 528, 83 S.Ct. 917, 9 L.Ed.2d 922 (1963); Spano v. New York, 360 U.S. 315, 79 S.Ct. 1202, 3 L.Ed.2d 1265 (1959))). Recognizing that silence does not necessarily equate with trickery does not lead to a conclusion that this Court must approve the very different situation in which the police intentionally fabricate an offense for the express purpose of engendering the false hope of exoneration in the suspect and thereby obtain his or her consent. In sum, the approach, reasoning, and conclusion of the current majority opinion are suspect for the following reasons: (1) the majority overlooks the importance of false police promises in confession cases and glosses over the fact that police deception remains a relevant factor under a totality-based inquiry; (2) it never explores the potentially dispositive distinction between different types of police deception, which appears to be a necessary exercise given that the relevant test requires consideration of  all the circumstances bearing upon voluntariness; (3) it does not address the fact that in the confession context, the United States Supreme Court has held that affirmative police misrepresentations may vitiate voluntariness; and (4) the majority indicates that it could only find lack of consent in this case based upon the sole fact  of police misrepresentation (this claim overlooks the other multiple voluntariness factors at issue in this case). Additionally, even under the totality analysis presented in the majority opinion, the correct result should be that Wyche's consent was involuntary. The majority's attempted distinction between Wyche and McCord on the ground that McCord involved a fabricated sexual battery rather than a fabricated burglary is, in my opinion, wholly unconvincing. Why should the type or degree of the fabricated felony matter when in fact all felony offenses may cause serious and at times life-altering repercussions for a criminal defendant? Compare majority op. at 31 (McCord's being told that he was a suspect in a serious sex crime for which DNA could clear him is a circumstance relevant to the analysis of whether McCord's consent was voluntary or coerced that distinguishes McCord from the instant case. (emphasis supplied)), with Petitioner's Brief on the Merits at 10 (Wyche received a ten-year sentence for the Pink Magnolia burglary charge, which is hardly a non-serious or trivial crime given the sentence and its related repercussions (e.g., habitual-offender status for Mr. Wyche)). I fail to see that this is a valid basis for distinguishing McCord and Wyche. When a police detective falsely informs an individual who is currently confronted with the inherently coercive atmosphere of custodial interrogation [34] that the individual is suspected of having committed a felony offensewith all its attendant negative stigmas (e.g., potentially lengthy incarceration, large fines, and suspension of civil rights)of which the individual knows he or she is completely innocent, the type of fabricated felony is largely irrelevant. Thus, even the majority analysis should have led to a holding that Wyche's consent was involuntary under the totality of circumstances. McCord and Wyche are not validly distinguishable: each defendant submitted to a saliva test in the misplaced hope that their DNA would clear them as a suspect with regard to an admittedly fabricated yet ostensibly valid felony offense, when in actuality the police intended to use the defendants' DNA to inculpate them with regard to undisclosed, unrelated criminal investigations.