Opinion ID: 400069
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Questioning Here Was an Interrogation

Text: 26 Intertwined with the government's booking analogy, but analytically separable from it, is the argument that although the incident here involved express questions, those questions were not designed to elicit an incriminating response and the interview is thus outside the scope of Miranda's requirement. A core virtue of Miranda, however, is the rigidity and precision of its prophylactic rules. 58 The government's approach would greatly undermine this precision by carving out a massive exception for the far-ranging background interview conducted in this case. We think it ill-advised to depart so sweepingly from Miranda's per se rule. 27 Our conclusion fully accords with Rhode Island v. Innis, 59 in which the Supreme Court adopted a two-pronged standard for defining custodial interrogation: 28 (T)he Miranda safeguards come into play whenever a person in custody is subjected to either express questioning or its functional equivalent. That is to say, the term interrogation under Miranda refers not only to express questioning, but also to any words or actions on the part of the police (other than those normally attendant to arrest and custody) that the police should know are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from the suspect. 60 29 The Court elaborated that by  'incriminating response' we refer to any response-whether inculpatory or exculpatory-that the prosecution may seek to introduce at trial. 61 30 Applying this standard, the district court found it unnecessary to look beyond the first prong of the Innis doctrine since it determined that Hinckley had been subjected to express questioning. 62 The government proposes 63 a different reading of Innis, however, and argues that interrogation does not include even express questioning when it is not reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response. We need not decide the correctness of this interpretation, 64 for even under such an approach we think it clear that the agents here were knowingly attempting to elicit incriminating responses, and reasonably likely to do so. 31 The federal agents who conducted the background interview of Hinckley would naturally have been aware of the likelihood that he would present an insanity defense. 65 Hinckley's psychological condition at the time of the shooting has predictably become the focus of the case. Because most details about an individual's background are relevant to a determination of sanity, 66 a systematic background interview necessarily elicits responses that the prosecution might want to introduce at trial. 67 Even more significantly, the agents' observations about Hinckley's demeanor during the interview are potentially a key ingredient of the government's rebuttal of the accused's insanity defense. Indeed, as the government itself argued to the district court, the agents are prime lay witnesses on the insanity issue; their testimony is critical; the government needs a foundation for the agents' demeanor testimony based on the various statements of the defendant during this period; and medical testimony after the fact may be less persuasive to a jury than immediate, on-the-scene observations by lay witnesses. 68 32 Thus, where the mental state of an arrestee looms as a likely issue, we can only conclude that a systematic, 25-minute background interview was designed to elicit incriminating responses as defined in Innis. As a result, even under the government's view that interrogation covers express questions only when they are designed to elicit an incriminating response-a view that we do not here adopt, but discuss only for the sake of argument-we agree with the district court that Hinckley was subjected to a custodial interrogation in violation of Miranda. 33 The government has argued, as a fallback position, that even if the bulk of the 25-minute interview was contrary to Miranda, a discrete segment at the beginning consisting of only very basic identifying questions should be admissible. 69 Presumably, the government thereby hopes to allow its agents to offer demeanor testimony based on the permissible segment of the interview. We cannot accept the government's view of the divisibility of the interviewing process in this case. First, it is not clear that the record supports recognition of a discrete segment of basic questions at the outset of the interview. 70 More importantly, all of the questioning had an investigatory purpose and, in the circumstances of this case, was likely to elicit responses or at least resulting demeanor testimony that the government could use at trial. We do not see any reason to sort out which questions might otherwise have been permissible under other circumstances, and we can discern no principle for admitting certain background questions but not others. 71 Nor do we see how the demeanor testimony of the agents can be divided into observations of demeanor based on permissible, as opposed to impermissible, questioning. Here, the entire 25-minute interview process violated Miranda, and the taint therefore pervades the whole process. We, of course, do not decide whether in other cases severability might be possible.