Court Opinion

ID: 9774467
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:21:37.147772+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:08.816214
License: Public Domain

Justice ALBIN,
concurring.
I agree with the majority that there was sufficient credible evidence in the record to support the trial court’s conclusion that defendant knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently waived his Miranda1 rights before he gave his confession to the police. I also agree that the Appellate Division exceeded the scope of its reviewing power by substituting its own fact findings for those of the trial court and by reversing the trial court’s denial of defendant’s motion to suppress his confession.
*66However, I do not agree with the majority that both the trial court and Appellate Division, as well as the State and defendant in their briefs to this Court, used the wrong framework—the standard outlined in State v. O’Neill, 193 N.J. 148, 936 A.2d 438 (2007)—in analyzing whether defendant voluntarily confessed. The trial and appellate courts and the parties rightly concluded that O’Neill governed the admissibility of a confession in the context of a two-stage interrogation. In O’Neill, relying on our state-law privilege against self-incrimination, this Court adopted a multi-factor test for courts to consider in determining the voluntariness of a confession when the police engage in a two-step interrogation—first questioning a suspect without adequate Miranda warnings followed by a proper set of warnings, interrogation, and incriminating statements. Id. at 180-81, 936 A.2d 438. The Court inexplicably forsakes a framework that it adopted just three years ago.
In the present case, the State concedes that defendant initially was given deficient Miranda warnings. Because of the defective warnings, the first two-and-one-half hours of questioning of defendant occurred as if no warnings had been given at all. Although the majority places emphasis on the fact that the first interrogation was preceded by imperfect Miranda warnings as opposed to no warnings, under either circumstance, a confession must be suppressed because a defendant cannot exercise his rights unless he is fully informed about those rights. See Miranda, supra, 384 U.S. at 476, 86 S.Ct. at 1629, 16 L.Ed.2d at 725 (“The warnings required and the waiver necessary ... are, in the absence of a fully effective equivalent, prerequisites to the admissibility of any statement made by a defendant.”). Indeed, a defendant is presumptively uninformed of his rights unless the State establishes that he was given his full Miranda warnings. See State v. Carty, 170 N.J. 632, 649, 790 A.2d 903 (2002) (“failure to give [Miranda ] warnings creates an irrebuttable presumption of compulsion as to use of unwarned statements in the State’s case-in-chief’) (citing Miranda, supra, 384 U.S. at 479, 86 S.Ct. at 1630, 16 L.Ed.2d at 726).
*67The State does not dispute that any statements provided by defendant during the first interrogation—the time before he was given a complete set of Miranda warnings—were inadmissible against defendant. Significantly, defendant did not confess until after he received the requisite Miranda warnings. The issue is whether the initial unwarned questioning and any of defendant’s responses undermined his ability to exercise effectively his rights when he was fully advised of his Miranda warnings.
O’Neill placed the focus not on whether the police purposely or inadvertently withheld, at first, the proper warnings in a two-step interrogation case, but rather “on whether a suspect knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently waived his rights before speaking to the police.” O’Neill, supra, 193 N.J. at 180, 936 A.2d 438. We rejected a test that depended on the subjective intent or motive of the police. Indeed, we “avoid[ed] the unworkable standard of delving into a police officer’s state of mind.” Ibid.
Therefore, in addressing the issue of voluntariness, we did not look at whether there was a formal or informal police policy of withholding Miranda warnings before the first interrogation, as the majority does here. Ante at 60-61, 6 A.3d at 973. Rather, from an objective viewpoint, we looked at “whether the defendant properly waived his rights.” O’Neill, supra, 193 N.J. at 180, 936 A.2d 438.
In O’Neill, we were concerned that a police practice of question-first and warn-later “undermined Miranda’s protections and violated our state law privilege [against self-incrimination].” Id. at 185, 936 A.2d 438. We noted in that case that the dueling opinions in Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600, 124 S.Ct. 2601, 159 L.Ed.2d 643 (2004)—three in all—had “sown confusion in federal and state courts, which have attempted to divine the governing standard that applies in successive interrogation cases involving warned and unwarned confessions.” O’Neill, supra, 193 N.J. at 175, 936 A.2d 438. Because “[t]he shifting sands of federal jurisprudence provided no certainty concerning the standard that might apply to the next set of slightly different facts” from Seibert, we turned to *68our state law against self-incrimination to develop “workable standards” for police officers and judges “to apply to the complex, ever-changing fact patterns that play out in the real world.” Ibid. This point is not acknowledged in the majority opinion, which refers to Seibert and Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. 298, 105 S.Ct. 1285, 84 L.Ed.2d 222 (1985) as though we had not decided on a more precise standard in O’Neill under our state law against self-incrimination.2
In the setting of a two-stage interrogation, the admissibility of a defendant’s confession following unwarned and warned interrogations turns on whether the defendant had “a meaningful opportunity to exercise his [Miranda ] rights.” O’Neill, supra, 193 N.J. at 180, 936 A.2d 438. In other words, the admissibility of post-warning statements depends on whether the warnings functioned effectively in providing the defendant the ability to exercise his state law privilege against self-incrimination. In making the determination whether a defendant knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently waived his rights before speaking to the police in a two-stage interrogation, courts must take into consideration all relevant factors, including:
(1) the extent of questioning and the nature of any admissions made by defendant before being informed of his Miranda rights;
(2) the proximity in time and place between the pre- and post-warning questioning;
(3) whether the same law enforcement officers conducted both the unwarned and warned interrogations;
(4) whether the officers informed defendant that his pre-warning statements could not be used against him; and
(5) the degree to which the post-warning questioning is a continuation of the prewarning questioning.
*69[Id. at 181, 936 A.2d 438 (emphasis added).]
In O’Neill, we eschewed a “bright-line rule,” emphasizing that “[t]he factual circumstances in each case will determine the appropriate weight to be accorded to any factor or group of factors.” Ibid. “In a two-step interrogation case, courts must view the totality of the circumstances in light of the relevant factors and then determine whether the unwarned questioning and admissions rendered the Miranda warnings ineffective in providing a defendant the opportunity to exercise the privilege.” Id. at 181-82, 936 A.2d 438. In the continuum of cases, we understood that not all cases involving an initial failure to give Miranda warnings would lead to suppression of a confession. Ibid. Indeed, in an example at one end of the continuum, we suggested that suppression of a confession would be unlikely when “the officers’ pre-warning questioning is brief and the defendant’s admissions are not incriminating or are barely incriminating and if there is a substantial break in time and circumstances between the pre-and post-warning interrogations.” Id. at 181, 936 A.2d 438.
We never suggested that the O’Neill test would lead to suppression of all statements in a two-stage interrogation process. Id. at 181-82, 936 A.2d 438. We emphasized that the analysis would be fact sensitive. Ibid.
Clearly, as pointed out in the majority opinion, the single most important factor in this case is that during the pre-warning questioning, defendant made no statement incriminating himself in any of the crimes charged in the indictment. Therefore, defendant in this case was not in a position to “have concluded that it would have been futile to keep silent after having made a damning admission.” Id. at 183, 936 A.2d 438.
The facts in O’Neill stand in stark contrast to those in the present case. In O’Neill, detectives interrogated the defendant for one hour and thirty-five minutes without advising him of his Miranda rights. Id. at 182, 936 A.2d 438. Within that time period, unaware of his rights, the defendant provided “the detectives a motive, opportunity, and personal involvement” in a rob*70bery. Ibid. The detectives then read the defendant his Miranda warnings and exploited the information obtained during the unwarned interrogation session to elicit from the defendant statements implicating him in a felony murder related to the robbery. Ibid. In O’Neill, during the pre-warning interrogation, the defendant had “incriminated himself, and in all likelihood crossed a psychological bridge from which there was no turning back.” Id. at 170, 936 A.2d 438.
Here, unlike O’Neill, during the period defendant was not properly advised of his rights, he did not make any statements implicating himself in the crimes charged in the indictment. The detectives did not obtain a confession from defendant without proper warnings and then have him repeat the confession after reading him a complete set of Miranda rights. Defendant did not cross the psychological bridge in O’Neill—confessing during the unwarned interrogation—and therefore did not face the compulsion of incriminating himself again when properly advised of his rights. Thus factor number one in the O’Neill test—“the nature of any admissions made by defendant before being informed of his Miranda rights,” id. at 181, 936 A.2d 438—is the decisive factor outweighing all others. The record supports the trial court’s finding that defendant knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently waived his rights after he was given the proper Miranda warnings.
Under the O’Neill methodology, I come to the same result reached by the majority. I believe that the majority would be faithful to our recent jurisprudence if it followed that methodology-
I therefore respectfully concur.
For reversal and reinstatement—Chief Justice RABNER and Justices LONG, LaVECCHIA, ALBIN, WALLACE, RIVERA-SOTO and HOENS—7.
Opposed—None.

 Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).

 In O’Neill, we relied "on our own developed jurisprudence, infused with persuasive reasoning from [Justice Souter’s] plurality opinion." O'Neill, supra, 193 N.J. at 176, 936 A.2d 438. We therefore rejected the approaches suggested in both the concurrence of Justice Kennedy, who would have looked to the interrogating officer’s state of mind in engaging in the two-step interrogation technique, and the dissent of Justice O'Connor, who would not have considered "the coercive impact of the unconstitutionally obtained statement." Id. at 174, 176, 936 A.2d 438 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).