Court Opinion

ID: 9517386
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:15:43.643308+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:44:01.628178
License: Public Domain

RENTTO, Presiding Judge
(dissenting).
Whether the trial court erred in denying the defendants’ motions to suppress must, I think, be decided on the record made at the pretrial hearing on the motions. The defendants, as was their right, did not testify on that occasion. Their subsequent testimony at the trial is irrelevant so far as the determination of their motions is concerned.
The evidence at that hearing was that Hale and Tisdale and a friend were stopped while driving their car in Spearfish Canyon by two deputy sheriffs who ordered them to proceed to the polic'e station in Spearfish to be questioned by the sheriff. This was their direction from the sheriff. Apparent*442ly the deputies drove behind them to Spearfish. When Long appeared on the scene he was taken in tow by a deputy sheriff. They were there interrogated without benefit of the Miranda warning although at that time the sheriff said “they were more than suspects.”
If the warning should have been given any confessions or admissions that they made could not be received in evidence at their trial. SDCL 23-44-2. The only exceptions to this are admissions or confessions made “by any person without interrogation or at any time at which the person who made or gave such confession was not under arrest or other detention.” SDCL 23-44-3. Their statements do not fall into either of these categories.
The majority hold that this was not an in-custody interrogation. With this conclusion I am unable to agree. In Miranda the United States Supreme Court said that “By custodial interrogation, we mean questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way.” (emphasis added) It seems to me that these defendants in the described circumstances were deprived of their freedom of action in a significant way. See Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Sites, 427 Pa. 486, 235 A.2d 387, 31 A.L.R.3d 559 and the lengthy annotation “What Constitutes Custodial Interrogation Within The Rule of Miranda v. Arizona” beginning at page 565.
It is our constitutional duty to give effect to the Miranda rule. The burden is on the state to establish compliance with it. In Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 84 S.Ct. 1489, 12 L.Ed.2d 653, it was extended against the States by the United States Supreme Court, and I have not found any case where that court has eroded the plain import of this portion of its holding. Consequently, I am compelled to dissent.