Court Opinion

ID: 9786691
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:00:41.278778+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:47.548826
License: Public Domain

Justice COATS,
dissenting.
Precisely what constitutes "custody," entitling someone being questioned by the police to Miranda warnings, is a matter of federal law. Because I think the majority continues to misunderstand, or at least misapply, the governing federal law and does so again today in suppressing the defendant's admission to possessing child pornography, I respectfully dissent.
I have elsewhere detailed this jurisdiction's long history of confounding the seizure of a person, for purposes of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable seizures, with custody, for purposes of the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination. See, e.g., People v. Elmarr, 181 P.3d 1157 (Colo.2008) (Coats, J., dissenting). Although this court has, over the years, largely come to use the appropriate federal terminology, it continues to mechanically apply factors developed to determine whether a reasonable person would feel free to leave-a standard establishing a lesser degree of seizure than would amount to eustody for purposes of "custodial interrogation." Because, however, the ultimate determination of custody, even under the proper federal standard, involves a fact-intensive assessment in each individual case, I see little point in more specifically critiquing the majority's balane-ing and conclusion again in this case, except to note that I believe it fundamentally errs by treating questioning by a single officer, standing outside a van, in a public parking lot, with the defendant sitting on the floor of the open van with his legs dangling outside, as "isolat(ing)" him for interrogation "inside a police vehicle."
Instead, I think it important to expose a more subtle flaw in the majority's analysis, and one far more telling of the majority's apprehensions about accepting confessions as a legitimate tool in law enforcement. While it does not actually use the term, by heavily resting its custody analysis on the defen*1200dant's awareness that he had become the primary suspect and his belief that the police would ultimately find evidence incriminating him, the majority, in effect, reverts to the thoroughly discredited focus-of-the-investigation interpretation of Miranda. Regularly in the now almost half century since it created the prophylactic Miranda warnings, the Supreme Court has been forced to re-emphasize that these added protections against coerced confessions were never intended to bar the use of confessions altogether or even to require special warnings before interrogating anyone who has become a suspect, but merely to provide additional protection from the inherently coercive atmosphere of the stationhouse interrogation, or its equivalent. See, e.g., Stansbury v. California, 511 U.S. 318, 322, 114 S.Ct. 1526, 128 L.Ed.2d 293 (1994); Beckwith v. United States, 425 U.S. 341, 96 S.Ct. 1612, 48 L.Ed.2d 1 (1976).
In People v. Polander, 41 P.3d 698 (Colo.2001), on which the majority relies, we found that a suspect, who had already been seized and in whose (at least joint) possession contraband had already been discovered, had every reason to understand that she would not be released after brief interrogation and that she was already effectively under arrest. In that situation, the suspect was not only aware that she had been seized and was no longer free to leave but also that the police had already discovered evidence virtually precluding the possibility of her release from custody short of formal arrest. By contrast, the majority requires Miranda warnings not only when a suspect would reasonably understand that he has effectively been placed under arrest but even when a seized suspect merely has reason to believe the police will acquire probable cause justifying his arrest at some point in the future. I consider it apparent that the majority prefers the focus-of-the-interrogation approach to Miranda and partially reintroduces that standard through the back door by treating a suspect's awareness that he has become the focus of the investigation as a key factor in the determination whether he is already in custody. Whether a suspect is motivated by a desire to deceive the police, or by hopes of lenient treatment, or even by a belief that he has, for all intents and purposes, been found out and there is no longer any point in continuing his deception, he is not entitled to the protections of Miranda unless he is being interrogated in the inherently coercive atmosphere that accompanies an arrest, increasing the danger that any unadvised statement would be the product of coercion.
Because I believe the meaning of "custody" is a matter for the United States Supreme Court, and the approach of the majority reflects a choice the Supreme Court has expressly and firmly rejected, I respectfully dissent.
I am authorized to state that Justice EID joins in this dissent.