Court Opinion

ID: 9626742
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:23:05.093811+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:32.947768
License: Public Domain

SEARS, Chief Justice,
concurring specially.
I disagree with the Court’s determination in Division 3 that the trial court properly admitted the statements Jennings made to the police at the hospital before he was advised of his rights under Miranda v. Arizona.1 In my view, a reasonable person in Jennings’s situation would have perceived himself to be “in custody’ when he was questioned at the hospital by the sheriffs homicide detective.2 *683However, because the evidence of Jennings’s guilt was overwhelming, the error was harmless, and I agree with the Court that the conviction should be affirmed.
On the morning in question, Jennings arrived at the hospital wearing bloody clothes with blood on his hands. He was there for treatment of a drug overdose, not an external physical injury. He told anyone who would listen — including hospital personnel — that he thought he had beaten his girlfriend to death and left her body in a wooded area. Naturally, the hospital staff informed the sheriffs department of Jennings’s claims, and shortly thereafter, an armed, uniformed deputy arrived and stood guard over Jennings in his hospital room. When homicide investigator Paul Godden arrived at the hospital, he immediately began questioning Jennings regarding what had happened to his girlfriend, and after eliciting the incriminating statements in question, he bagged Jennings’s bloody clothes as evidence and swabbed the surface of his right and left hands in eight different places to collect blood samples for later forensic analysis. Under these circumstances, a reasonable person would not have believed that he was free to depart and go about his business as he pleased.3
The State’s argument to the contrary rests primarily on the testimony of Godden. However, Godden’s claim that Jennings “was free to leave as far as law enforcement was concerned” strains credulity to the breaking point. No responsible law enforcement officer would allow a man like Jennings — who showed up at the hospital covered in blood, with no physical injuries of his own, and claiming he had just beaten someone to death — to simply get up and leave. If common sense alone were not enough to disprove Godden’s claim, there would still be the directly contradictory testimony of the armed deputy sheriff who actually guarded Jennings that he would not have allowed Jennings to leave the room without further instructions from his superiors. In any event, the subjective intent of Godden and the deputy sheriff is not determinative; what matters is what a reasonable person in Jennings’s condition, taking into account all the relevant circumstances, would have believed his position to be.
Similarly untenable is Godden’s claim that sheriffs deputies were stationed in Jennings’s hospital room solely for observation *684because they feared he might try to commit suicide again. Sheriffs deputies do not generally monitor suicidal patients in hospitals as part of their official duties — unless, of course, the particular patient is in custody.
Decided November 5, 2007.
Barbara B. Claridge, for appellant.
Daniel J. Craig, District Attorney, Charles R. Sheppard, Assistant District Attorney, Thurbert E. Baker, Attorney General, David A. Zisook, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
For the foregoing reasons, I concur specially in the opinion of the Court.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Justice Hunstein joins in this special concurrence.

 384 U. S. 436 (86 SC 1602, 16 LE2d 694) (1966).

 Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U. S. 652, 661-663 (124 SC 2140, 158 LE2d 938) (2004); Thompson v. Keohane, 516 U. S. 99, 112 (116 SC 457, 133 LE2d 383) (1995). The lower courts have struggled to apply the standard articulated in Yarborough and its progenitors in the context of hospital interrogations, with varying results. See Kimberly J. Winbush, What Constitutes “Custodial Interrogation" at Hospital by Police Officer Within Rule of Miranda v. Arizona Requiring that Suspect Be Informed of His or Her Federal Constitutional Rights Before Custodial Interrogation - Suspect Injured or Taken III Before or After Commission of Crime, 25 ALR6th 379 (2007) (collecting and analyzing cases).

 Yarborough, supra, 541 U.S. at 663 (“Two discrete inquiries are essential to the determination: first, what were the circumstances surrounding the interrogation; and second, given those circumstances, would a reasonable person have felt he or she was not at liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave. Once the scene is set and the players’ lines and actions are reconstructed, the court must apply an objective test to resolve the ultimate inquiry: was there a formal arrest or restraint on freedom of movement of the degree associated with a formal arrest.”) (quoting Thompson, supra, 516 U. S. at 112).