Court Opinion

ID: 9727991
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:54:35.195674+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:44.826204
License: Public Domain

LEVINE, Justice,
concurring in the result.
Miranda gave us a brightline test to apply to confessions given by suspects in custody. Police must give those familiar warnings and the suspect must waive his or her rights before the police may subject the suspect to interrogation. Breach of that protocol results in an inadmissible confession. When police question a suspect not in custody, or a custodial suspect properly Mirandized who has waived his or her rights, and that suspect “confesses,” we test the validity, ie., volun-tariness, of that confession under the traditional, pre-Miranda, due process test, namely, whether the police conduct “so shocks the sensibilities of civilized society” as to constitute a violation of due process under the federal constitution. Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412, 433-34, 106 S.Ct. 1135, 1147, 89 L.Ed.2d 410 (1986).
The question presented in this case is how much deception and trickery may be used in police interrogation before it is deemed to be coercive enough to overbear the free will of the suspect while shocking our sensibilities. The answer given by the federal cases indicate that the police may go a long, long way, far beyond the mere ploy of withholding information of an arrest warrant.
In Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. 298, 105 S.Ct. 1285, 84 L.Ed.2d 222 (1985), the defendant argued that he should have been told before he confessed that a prior inadmissible incriminating statement could not be used against him. The response from the Supreme Court made short shrift of that argument: “This Court has never embraced the theory that a defendant’s ignorance of the ‘full consequences of his decision vitiates their voluntariness.” Id. at 316-17, 105 S.Ct. at 1297. Sensibilities were not shocked in Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U.S. 731, 89 S.Ct. 1420, 22 L.Ed.2d 684 (1969), when a defendant confessed after having been told falsely that his codefendant had turned state’s evidence. So too, a guilty plea was voluntary even though the defendant was not told that a prior coerced confession could not be used against him. McMann v. Richardson, 397 U.S. 759, 90 S.Ct. 1441, 25 L.Ed.2d 763 (1970). There was no trickery in United States v. Washington, 431 U.S. 181, 97 S.Ct. 1814, 52 L.Ed.2d 238 (1977), when the defendant testified before the grand jury, having been warned by the prosecutor that he had the right to remain silent but not informed that he could be indicted as a result of his grand jury testimony. And, in Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52, 106 S.Ct. 366, 88 L.Ed.2d 203 (1985), the defendant’s complaints about ineffective assistance of counsel who misinformed him about his eligibility for parole, provoked the following response: ‘We have never held that United States Constitution requires the State to furnish a defendant with information about parole eligibility in order for the defendant’s plea of guilty to be voluntary ...” Id. at 56, 106 S.Ct. at 369. Even an officer’s false suggestion that the defendant’s victim was still alive and could identify her attacker does not violate due process. Miller v. Fenton, 796 F.2d 598 (3rd Cir.), cert. denied, Miller v. Neubert, 479 U.S. 989, 107 S.Ct. 585, 93 L.Ed.2d 587 (1986).
It seems rather clear to me that, under federal law, the failure to disclose the arrest warrant to Murray is not the kind of conscience-shocker that deprives Murray of his right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Measuring Murray’s confession against the requirements of federal due process, I agree that it was voluntary and admissible *114under federal law. I concur, therefore, that withholding information of the arrest warrant did not constitute sufficient trickery to overcome defendant’s free will. See Miller v. Fenton, supra. See generally 29 Am.Jur.2d, Evidence §§ 571, 572.
I do not agree that the state due process question is properly before us or that the federal cases require us to hold as a matter of state constitutional law that there is no due process violation. That question should await another day when it has been properly briefed and analyzed in the context of our state’s constitution, history, public policy and case law.
I concur in the result.