Opinion ID: 2621362
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: On The Facts In The Record, Rodrigues Invoked His Right To Remain Silent.

Text: Only two published cases in the nation have dealt with the question whether refusing to be audiotaped during a police interview is tantamount to an invocation of a defendant's right to remain silent, such that evidence, proffered by the prosecution, of the refusal is inadmissible at trial. Rodrigues cites to State v. Woods, 249 Neb. 138, 542 N.W.2d 410 (1996), wherein the Nebraska Supreme Court concluded that [a] defendant's refusal to give a statement constitutes `silence,' regardless of whether the defendant has previously given a statement to police. As a result, use of the police officer's statement about [the defendant's] refusal to give a tape-recorded statement was fundamentally unfair and constitutes a violation of due process. Id. at 415 (declaring it erroneous for the intermediate court of appeals to deem harmless the prosecution's inquiry on direct examination into whether the defendant had agreed to follow her voluntary oral statement to police with a taped statement). In Ball v. State, 347 Md. 156, 699 A.2d 1170 (1997), however, Maryland's highest court perceived no error in a lower court's conclusion that, by giving a voluntary statement to police but refusing to allow it to be audiotaped, the defendant had not invoked his right to remain silent. Id. at 1182 (noting that the defendant indicated at the outset that he did not want to talk on tape but was otherwise willing to continue the interview with police). Following his refusal to be audiotaped, Rodrigues did not retract any part of his statement, nor did he request an attorney. He gave no indication that he would no longer speak with Detective Kanemitsu, but only that he would not repeat what he had said on tape. Nevertheless, it is equally true that, having given a full and voluntary statement to Detective Kanemitsu, Rodrigues declined to repeat the statement on tape. As far as can be determined from the record, the interview then ended, and, from that point on, Rodrigues did not speak again with police until he invoked his right to counsel the following January. The record is not clear as to whether Rodrigues, following his refusal to be audiotaped, would have willingly continued to respond to Detective Kanemitsu's questions had he been asked any. Nevertheless, the record before us is more closely analogous to that in Woods, wherein the defendant refused to follow her voluntary oral statement to police with a taped reiteration of that confession, 542 N.W.2d at 413-14, than to Ball, wherein the defendant voluntarily continued his conversation with police following his refusal, articulated at the outset of the interview, to be taped, 699 A.2d at 1182. This court has noted that `[t]he mere fact that [a defendant] may have answered some questions or volunteered some statements on his own does not deprive him of the right to refrain from answering any further inquiries until he has consulted with an attorney and thereafter consents to be questioned,' State v. Hoey, 77 Hawai`i 17, 33, 881 P.2d 504, 520 (1994) (quoting Miranda, 384 U.S. at 445, 86 S.Ct. 1602). It therefore follows from the reasoning of Woods that when the questioning of a suspect is otherwise complete, and the police request that the suspect reiterate his or her statement in order to memorialize it electronically, the suspect's refusal to do so amounts to an invocation of the right to remain silent precisely because the suspect is refusing to speak further on the matter. [10] As such, the prosecution may not adduce evidence at trial, through the direct examination of the defendant or the police interrogator, of the defendant's refusal to make what amounts to a second statement in order to generate an inference of the defendant's guilt or to impeach the defendant's credibility. On the other hand, and pursuant to Ball, the mere refusal at the outset to allow an interview, conducted in accordance with the requirements of Miranda, to be electronically recorded does not render any part of the suspect's statement inadmissible. If the refusal to permit the interview to be electronically recorded is incidental to the suspect's general willingness to speak with police and answer questions, there is no invocation of a right to remain silent. We therefore conclude that Rodrigues did invoke his right to remain silent, not because he refused to make a statement on tape, but because that refusal appears to have caused a termination of all questioning by the police and acted as a de facto invocation of his right to refrain from answering further inquiries.