Court Opinion

ID: 9730997
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:30:13.826726+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:12.081313
License: Public Domain

SNELL, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The facts show a violation of defendant’s constitutional right to not be a witness against himself established by the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The critical issue in this case centers around the events following Evans’ stopping the interview conducted by Agent Hedlund at 12:22 p.m. There is no question that Miranda warnings had been given when the agents arrived and that Evans had signed a written waiver. But the incriminating statements were made by Evans after 12:22 p.m. when Agent Hedlund testified Evans asked that the questioning stop. Hedlund testified that Evans said he was scared before the interview stopped; he was also alone with Hedlund in the house.
For the next half hour Hedlund and Evans sat silently. The two watched television and Evans offered to fix lunch for Hedlund. Evans asked if he could use the phone. Hedlund said yes, but Evans did not make a call. Evans used the bathroom; Hedlund asked him to keep the door open. When Evans left the residence to go out to check his mailbox, Hedlund accompanied him. Then, around 1:33 p.m., Evans asked Hedlund if he could ask some questions. Hedlund reminded Evans that he had been advised of his rights and that he had said he did not want to answer any more questions. Hedlund testified that he said he could not renew a conversation with Evans but would be willing to talk and answer questions if Evans wanted to talk. Evans began to make small talk with Hedlund about Hedlund's life as a DCI agent. Dur*766ing this conversation the small talk was turned to a discussion of the Forbes murder. Evans alleges that Hedlund reinitiat-ed the interrogation about the death of Forbes. Hedlund testified that the discussion merely progressed back to the investigation.
Agent Mower returned to the Evans home and served the search warrant on Evans at 2:35 p.m. Mower and other officers began searching the residence while Hedlund continued talking to Evans. The search sought clothing, blood stains and casings. Nothing retrieved from the search was offered into evidence.
Hedlund continued to question Evans. During this portion of the second conversation, Hedlund told Evans, “It is time to be a man and take responsibility for what you did.” Hedlund asked Evans if he was sorry for what he had done to Forbes. Evans responded “yes.” Hedlund said Evans became visibly upset and said he wanted to go outside. Hedlund followed him; Evans then told him he was frightened about going to jail and about going to prison. He indicated his fear was related to his physical safety in prison. Evans was asked by Hedlund if he was drunk or sober when he did this to Della Forbes. Evans hesitated a few seconds and then indicated that he was “sort of both.” Evans then stated that he wanted to talk to his attorney; Hedlund got up and walked into the house. Sheriff Hardin arrived at the Evans residence and arrested Evans for the Forbes murder sometime between 3:00 and 3:15 p.m.
The majority finds that Evans was never in custody during this entire interrogation so Evans’ Fifth Amendment rights could not be violated. Or if he was, the majority concludes, he voluntarily waived them. Ignored is the fact that Evans asked that the questioning be stopped at 12:22 p.m. When it continued, the legal consequences changed.
The majority’s view that the interrogation was just a relaxing home visit by the DCI agent allows the concept of “home” to sweep away all custodial factors surrounding the agent’s presence. Hedlund was in the home from 11:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. and would not let Evans out of his sight. He watched him in the bathroom, accompanied him to the mailbox, followed him outside to ask more incriminating questions, and told him his house was going to be searched. At no time was Evans accompanied by a family member or friend. The picture as a whole shows a custodial situation and an invoking by Evans of his constitutional rights under the Fifth Amendment.
If Evans was not legally in custody, what was he legally free to do? He could not go anyplace without Agent Hedlund dogging his heels. Hedlund said he was there to make sure no evidence was destroyed. But no search warrant had been served giving Agent Hedlund authority to seize evidence. From whence comes his authority to watch and preserve, short of search and seize, while denying that a suspect is in custody? This holding pattern condition precedent to a search or seizure or arrest was in reality a custodial status during which constitutional protections are not shelved as premature.
The protections afforded by Miranda are not limited to custodial situations alone but also apply when the defendant is “otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way.” Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1612, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, 706 (1966). This corollary doctrine also describes Evans’ status during the interrogation.
Reliance by the majority on Beckwith v. United States, 425 U.S. 341, 96 S.Ct. 1612, 48 L.Ed.2d 1 (1976), to show that Evans was not in custody is appropriate to show that both cases involved home interviews but little else matches. The question in Beckwith was whether a proper Miranda warning had been given; Beckwith never asserted his Fifth Amendment rights during the interview. Beckwith was not restrained in any way, made no incriminating statements, but did turn over records that were used to convict him of tax fraud. All of these custodial markers are different from the case at bar.
The Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination requires police to notify *767the accused of his right to silence and to cut off interrogation when the accused invokes that right. Miranda, 384 U.S. at 468-74, 86 S.Ct. at 1624-27, 16 L.Ed.2d at 720-23. Once the right is invoked, all questioning must cease, and the accused’s invocation must be “scrupulously honored” by the interrogating officers. Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 484-85, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 1884-85, 68 L.Ed.2d 378, 386 (1981); Michigan v. Mosley, 423 U.S. 96, 103-04, 96 S.Ct. 321, 326, 46 L.Ed.2d 313, 321 (1975).
Once the right to silence has been invoked, a valid waiver of that right cannot be established by showing only that the accused has responded to further police-initiated interrogation, even if the accused has been advised of his rights. Edwards, 451 U.S. at 484, 101 S.Ct. at 1884-85, 68 L.Ed.2d at 386; State v. Newsom, 414 N.W.2d 354, 357 (Iowa 1987). However, if the accused himself reinitiates conversation by showing “a willingness and a desire for a generalized discussion about the investigation,” the reinitiation is a valid waiver of the previously invoked right. Oregon v. Bradshaw, 462 U.S. 1039, 1045-46, 103 S.Ct. 2830, 2835, 77 L.Ed.2d 405, 412 (1983); Newsom, 414 N.W.2d at 357. The State has a heavy burden of proving Evans initiated further conversations and therefore knowingly and voluntarily waived his Fifth Amendment rights. See id., 414 N.W.2d at 358.
The State is unable to point to any specific statement Evans made that showed a willingness to enter a discussion about the Forbes murder. Evans testified that he wanted just a regular conversation about Hedlund’s life and career in the DCI. Hed-lund himself testified that Evans’ questions regarded his family and his profession. The State failed to demonstrate that Evans’ conversation about Hedlund’s life indicated a “willingness and desire for a generalized discussion about the investigation” required to prove a waiver of the asserted right of silence.
Interrogation is not limited to asking questions; it includes “police conduct which is calculated to, expected to, or likely to evoke admissions.” See State v. Snethen, 245 N.W.2d 308, 313 (Iowa 1976); In re A.T.S., 451 N.W.2d 37, 40 (Iowa App.1989). Hedlund made statements to Evans such as “it is quite ironic that you would ask [if I’d ever been shot at],” “it is time to be a man and take responsibility for what you did,” and was Evans “sorry or remorseful about what you did to Della Forbes.” Each statement was calculated to evoke an admission from Evans. Hedlund turned the discussion to the Forbes murder and interrogated Evans during the course of the conversation.
This case is similar to Newsom, in which we found that incriminating statements were taken in violation of the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Newsom, 414 N.W.2d at 358. The investigating officer told the defendant that “the ultimate decision to talk is up to you” after the defendant’s counsel advised him to remain silent and counsel had left. The defendant then stated he wanted to talk about “some things.” The following discussion led to inculpatory statements. Applying a Fifth Amendment analysis, the State failed to meet its burden of proving that the defendant initiated further interrogation after he had asserted his right to silence and assistance of counsel. Id.
In the present case, after invoking his right to silence, Evans expressed an interest in a general discussion about Hedlund’s life as a DCI agent. As in Newsom, the State’s burden of proving that the defendant initiated an interrogation about the crime simply is not met.
I believe the State fails to carry its heavy burden of proving that Evans initiated the second conversation about the murder and waived his right to silence. Statements made during this interrogation should have been suppressed. When they were admitted into evidence, Evans’ constitutional right protected by the Fifth Amendment to not be a witness against himself was violated. I would reverse on this issue and order a new trial.
I dissent also from the majority’s Sixth Amendment analysis that overrules, sub *768silentio, our case of State v. Johnson, 318 N.W.2d 417 (Iowa 1982).