Court Opinion

ID: 9845477
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:22:46.676341+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:09.212239
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, J.,
concurring.
I voted with the majority in this case because I believe requiring the police to be sensitive to the impact of an interrogation upon a defendant is, in the long run, more protective of a defendant’s constitutional rights and more consistent with the kind of safeguards Miranda v. Arizona, 384 US 436, 86 S Ct 1602, 16 L Ed 2d 694 (1966) meant to provide than is requiring a police officer to give a defendant the warnings required by Miranda at the point at which the officer has made a decision to arrest.
Were our opinion here only deciding this case and nothing more, I would have voted with the dissent by *76Justice Lent. My concern with the position of that dissent applied generally, however, is that making a police officer’s decision to arrest the trigger point for issuance of Miranda warnings points the way to the possibility of police abuse, and leaves the investigatory procedure too susceptible to police manipulation. Only the officer knows at what point he or she makes a decision to arrest. By requiring that something other than the officer’s state of mind be considered in determining whether or not a defendant is “deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way,” Miranda, 384 US at 444, 477, 86 S Ct at 1612, 1629, 16 L Ed 2d at 706, 725, the officer has to make a determination of whether or not that individual would feel a significant, coercive deprivation of his or her freedom of action. It is my belief that this inquiry ultimately provides the standard of protection enunciated in Miranda and with which we struggle here.