Opinion ID: 1803153
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Testing the Limits of Interrogation

Text: The question in this case is whether a law enforcement officer's request for a consent to search from, or service of an arrest warrant on, a defendant in custody who has invoked the right to counsel violates the Fifth Amendment. The Supreme Court has distinguished between the Sixth Amendment right to counsel and the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination: The former arises from the fact that the suspect has been formally charged with a particular crime and thus is facing a state apparatus that has been geared up to prosecute him. The latter is protected by the prophylaxis of having an attorney present to counteract the inherent pressures of custodial interrogation, which arise from the fact of such interrogation and exist regardless of the number of crimes under investigation or whether those crimes have resulted in formal charges. Arizona v. Roberson, 486 U.S. 675, 685, 108 S.Ct. 2093, 100 L.Ed.2d 704 (1988). The scope of the right to counsel under Miranda is more limited than under the Sixth Amendment. The invocation of the right to counsel under Miranda does not require the immediate appointment of an attorney because the right extends only to interrogation. Miranda, 384 U.S. at 474, 86 S.Ct. 1602 (If authorities conclude that they will not provide counsel during a reasonable period of time in which investigation in the field is carried out, they may refrain from doing so without violating the person's Fifth Amendment privilege so long as they do not question him during that time.); see also Innis, 446 U.S. at 300 n. 4, 100 S.Ct. 1682 (stating that the definitions of interrogation under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments are not necessarily interchangeable). In Roberson, where the Court held that once a suspect has invoked the right to counsel under Miranda in one crime, the person cannot be interrogated regarding another crime, the Court stated that even if counsel has not been provided, police are free to inform the suspect of the facts of the second investigation as long as such communication does not constitute interrogation. 486 U.S. at 687, 108 S.Ct. 2093. The police are not forbidden all contact with a defendant in custody; in fact, the Court expressly exempted from the definition of interrogation routine police contact normally attendant to arrest and custody. Innis, 446 U.S. at 301, 302, 100 S.Ct. 1682 (stating that interrogation extends only to police officers' words or actions they  should have known were reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response). Service of an arrest warrant is a routine police procedure. It does not require any response from a suspect; nor can it be reasonably expected to elicit an incriminating response. Thus, this action does not constitute interrogation, and we affirm the trial court's denial of the motion to suppress on this claim. The officer's request for appellant's consent to provide DNA biological samples was the same search request the officers made of several other individuals whom they had not otherwise been able to eliminate from a list of potential suspects in this sexual battery/murder case. Such a request for the consent to search is not reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response. The Supreme Court's cases support such a conclusion. In Schmerber, 384 U.S. at 761, 86 S.Ct. 1826, a police officer ordered a doctor to take a blood sample from the injured Schmerber, whom the officer suspected of driving while intoxicated. The Court rejected the defendant's claim that use of this evidence violated his privilege against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment. Acknowledging that the evidence was compelled, the Court cited Justice Holmes's statement in Holt v. United States, 218 U.S. 245, 252-53, 31 S.Ct. 2, 54 L.Ed. 1021 (1910), that the prohibition of compelling a man in a criminal court to be witness against himself is a prohibition of the use of physical or moral compulsion to extort communications from him, not an exclusion of his body as evidence when it may be material. Schmerber, 384 U.S. at 763, 86 S.Ct. 1826. The Court held that the [Fifth Amendment] privilege protects an accused only from being compelled to testify against himself, or otherwise provide the State with evidence of a testimonial or communicative nature, and that the withdrawal of blood and use of the analysis in question in this case did not involve compulsion to these ends. 384 U.S. at 761, 86 S.Ct. 1826. The right to silence only applied to testimonial or communicative acts of a suspect. This Court, too, has noted that [t]he constitutional privilege against self-incrimination in history and principle seems to relate to protecting the accused from the process of extracting from his own lips against his will an admission of guilt. In the better-reasoned cases it does not extend to the exclusion of evidence of his body or of his mental condition as evidence when such evidence is relevant and material, even when such evidence is obtained by compulsion. Parkin v. State, 238 So.2d 817, 820 (Fla.1970). Accordingly, neither the service of the arrest warrant nor the request that Everett consent to providing physical evidence constitutes a word or action that the police should know is reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from the suspect. Innis, 446 U.S. at 301, 100 S.Ct. 1682. We note that most courts that have considered this issue have held similarly. See, e.g., United States v. Shlater, 85 F.3d 1251, 1256 (7th Cir.1996) (holding that a consent to search is not an interrogation within the meaning of Miranda ); United States v. Hidalgo, 7 F.3d 1566, 1568 (11th Cir.1993) (holding that consent to search obtained after defendant invoked right to remain silent is not a self-incriminating statement because it is neither testimonial nor communicative); United States v. Smith, 3 F.3d 1088, 1098 (7th Cir.1993) (We have held that a consent to search is not a self-incriminating statement and, therefore, a request to search does not amount to interrogation. This view comports with the view taken by every court of appeals to have addressed the issue.); United States v. Rodriguez-Garcia, 983 F.2d 1563, 1568 (10th Cir.1993) (stating that a request for consent to search is not custodial interrogation and holding that consent to search is not the type of incriminating statement which the Fifth Amendment was designed to address); Cody v. Solem, 755 F.2d 1323, 1330 (8th Cir.1985) (stating that Fifth Amendment right to counsel stems from privilege against self-incrimination and is not an independent right and that consent to search is not an incriminating statement because it is not testimonial, nor is physical evidence obtained pursuant to search); State v. Morato, 619 N.W.2d 655, 662 (S.D.2000) (stating that [a]n officer's request that a suspect consent to a search, however, is not an interrogation or its functional equivalent and Morato's consent to search does not constitute an incriminating statement); State v. Crannell, 170 Vt. 387, 750 A.2d 1002, 1009 (2000) (concluding that the request for consent to search did not violate defendant's Fifth Amendment rights); contra United States v. Yan, 704 F.Supp. 1207, 1211-12 (S.D.N.Y.1989) (holding that a request for search constitutes an interrogation); State v. Britain, 156 Ariz. 384, 752 P.2d 37, 39 (Ct.App.1988), (view[ing] a request for consent to search, after the [Fifth Amendment] right to counsel has been invoked, as interrogation and the serving of a search warrant as conduct `reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response').