Court Opinion

ID: 9537030
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:11:35.522096+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:55:46.847540
License: Public Domain

CONCURRING AND DISSENTING OPINION OF
NAKAMURA, J.
I concur in the court’s affirmance of the trial court’s order excluding the handgun as evidence but dissent from the reversal of the order suppressing the defendant’s statements. For I find, as the trial court did, that the defendant’s incriminatory remarks were designedly educed by the police in an inherently coercive setting without proper procedural safeguards.
I.
The precepts governing custodial interrogation are clearly delineated in the court’s opinion, and Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291 (1980), and State v. Melemai, 64 Haw. 479, 643 P.2d 541 (1982), undoubtedly represent the state of the law in the area of present concern. My reluctance to join in the opinion stems not from its statement of the controlling legal principles but from the reading given the factual record made *508below.
A.
In Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), the Supreme Court ruled “that in the context of ‘custodial interrogation’ certain procedural safeguards are necessary to protect a defendant’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination.” Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. at 297. Miranda “rights,” as this court’s opinion emphasizes, accrue when police custody and police interrogation coalesce. “It is this combination of‘custody’ and ‘interrogation’ that creates — and, in the absence of ‘adequate protective devices,’ enables the police to exploit — an ‘interrogation environment’ designed to ‘subjugate the individual to the will of his examiner.’ ” Kamisar, Brewer v. Williams, Massiah, and Miranda: What is “Interrogation”? When Does it Matter?, 67 Geo. L.J. 1, 63 (1978) (emphasis in original) (footnotes omitted). The court, however, finds neither custody nor interrogation was implicated here.
To be sure, the defendant was not being held at the police station — he was at his residence. Still, “custody” under Miranda encompasses the deprivation of a person’s “freedom of action in any significant way.” Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. at 444. See State v. Melemai, 64 Haw. at 481-82, 643 P.2d at 543-44. When three officers converged on the defendant at his residence to investigate a complaint that he threatened someone with harm and brandished a firearm in the process, made the purpose of their presence known, inquired whether he was the object of the investigation, and he acknowledged he was, the defendant could not have realistically assumed he was still “free to go.” Though he may not have been arrested, he definitely had been “deprived of his freedom of action in ... [a] significant way.” Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. at 444.
Like “custody,” “interrogation” for purposes of the Miranda rule is not subject to narrow application. It “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 sus*509pect.” Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. at 301 (footnotes omitted). And “[t]he latter portion of this definition focuses primarily upon the perceptions of the suspect, rather than the intent of the police.” Id.
Here, the defendant’s outburst followed on the heels of an officer’s pointed reference to illegal conduct with respect to the plants abounding in the yard and his act of uprooting them. But for the words and action, I daresay there would have been no outpouring of incriminating statements. Furthermore, the defendant’s emotional response to the situation manipulated by the officer could not have been a totally unexpected reaction. In my view this all occurred “in the context of‘custodial interrogation’ [where] certain procedural safeguards are necessary.” Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. at 297.
B.
Yet the court concludes the situation did not necessarily evoke Miranda protections for the defendant, as it finds “[t]he officers’ questions prior to the defendant’s statements fell within the category of general on-the-scene questioning.” The evidence in the record, I would say, establishes the investigation of the promotion of dangerous drug offense had advanced beyond its preliminary stages and the time for general inquiries by then.
The critical remark and action followed the defendant’s acknowledgment that he was Edward Paahana. Initially, the police officer had been provided with specific information of a terroristic threat and the name and residence of its perpetrator by the alleged victim. When the officer was guided by the victim to the residence of the alleged felon he observed marijuana plants growing in the yard. And when the policeman subsequently learned he was actually speaking to Edward Paahana, the investigation of the drug offense, as well as that of the reported crime, focused directly on the defendant. Any questions put to him thereafter could hardly be deemed general on-the-scene questioning. State v. Melemai, 64 Haw. at 482, 643 P.2d at 544. Miranda warnings were then in order; and in their absence the defendant’s statements should be excluded as evidence at trial. Id.