Court Opinion

ID: 9748148
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 15:53:30.152898+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:32.100693
License: Public Domain

ADKINS, J.,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s holding that Officer Donoway’s questions to Rodriguez did not violate Rodriguez’s Miranda rights. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). I believe that Officer Donoway violated Rodriguez’s Miranda rights the moment that her dialogue with him shifted from general inquiries about his well-being to specific inquiries about his prior arrest record.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 100 S.Ct. 1682, 64 L.Ed.2d 297 (1980), defined the meaning of “interrogation” for Miranda purposes. The rule *232in Innis is clear: “interrogation” includes both “express questioning” by a law enforcement officer and also “words or actions on the part of police officers that they should have known were reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response.” Id. at 301-02, 100 S.Ct. at 1689-90 (emphasis removed). The majority interprets Innis in light of the Court of Appeals’s decision in Prioleau v. State, 411 Md. 629, 984 A.2d 851 (2009), to hold that Donoway’s questioning of Rodriguez did not violate his Miranda rights. In that case, the Court of Appeals held that defendant Maurice Prioleau’s Miranda rights were not violated when a detective asked Prioleau “[w]hat’s up, Maurice?” at the scene of Prioleau’s arrest. Prioleau, 411 Md. at 632, 984 A.2d at 852. The Court stated that it was not reasonably likely that the detective’s greeting in that case would elicit an incriminating response. See id. at 651, 984 A.2d at 864.
In my opinion, the majority construes Prioleau far too broadly. In the present case, Donoway’s comments are by no means as innocuous as those at issue in Prioleau. Had Donoway gone no further than repeated inquiries into whether Rodriguez was “okay,” she would not have run afoul of Miranda. Instead, she chose to question Rodriguez as to his past history with law enforcement and arrests, a topic that had nothing to do with calming him down, as she claimed, and everything to do with evoking a conversation about his problems with the law, including the circumstances of his present arrest.
Donoway’s question to Rodriguez is clearly distinguishable from the question posed in Prioleau, which was permissible in part because it did not involve “a question on anything that [involved] illegal activity.” Prioleau, 411 Md. at 651, 984 A.2d at 864. Regardless of whether Donoway was credible in explaining that she had no intention of eliciting incriminating statements from Rodriguez through her questioning, her remarks do not pass muster under the objective standard imposed by Innis. 446 U.S. at 301-02, 100 S.Ct. at 1689-90.
*233Because Donoway’s questioning of Rodriguez was unconstitutional interrogation under Miranda, Rodriguez’s statements to the officer should be suppressed. I would vacate Rodriguez’s conviction, and remand the case to the trial court for a new trial without this evidence.