Court Opinion

ID: 9762780
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:30:57.517384+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:37.420929
License: Public Domain

FLAHERTY, Justice,
concurring.
I agree with Mr. Justice Larsen that Superior Court must be reversed, but I write separately because my analysis of the case is somewhat different from that of the Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court.
It is easy to lose sight of the fact that the purpose of the rule articulated in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), and its progeny was to protect a citizen’s Fifth Amendment right to silence and counsel against the overreaching of police. The United States Supreme Court has described the purpose of the Miranda rule as protecting against “ ‘the overbearing compulsion ... caused by isolation of a suspect in police custody,’ ” Minnesota v. Murphy, 465 U.S. 420, 104 S.Ct. 1136, 1144, 79 L.Ed.2d 409 (1984), and this Court has stated: “The protection of Miranda was designed to shield an accused from the coercive atmosphere of ‘custodial interrogation’ where the accused might reasonably believe that he would be held incommunicado and not be released before confessing to a crime.” Commonwealth v. Ziegler, 503 Pa. 555, 470 A.2d 56 (1983). In general terms, of course, that is also the message of Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 68 L.Ed.2d 378 (1981), requiring that police questioning must end when a suspect, held in police custody, requests legal counsel. It will be recalled from Miranda, however, that in order for the warnings of Miranda to be required, the person must be subjected to custodial interrogation. Custodial interrogation is also a predicate of the Edwards case.
In the present case, the findings of the lower courts notwithstanding, Hubble was not in custody. Police testi*519mony was that just before Hubble gave his inculpatory statement, police told him, "If you want to go home, we’ll take you home.” N.T. 125. (Hubble did not own a car.) Hubble himself testified that that the police told him that if he made a statement, police would allow him to go home. N.T. 326-327. Moreover, it was only because Hubble and his wife insisted on staying in the state police barracks, as they were on their way out the door to be taken home, that the confession of July 12, 1977 occurred at all. And when Hubble called an advisor (his probation officer) from the police station, the probation officer, testified: “I told him that I wasn’t sure whether [the public defender’s office] would represent him until he was arrested or not, but I told him to call them and find out.” N.T. 251. (Emphasis added). On these facts, it cannot be said that Hubble was in custody. He was being taken home when he insisted on staying in the police facility, where he subsequently gave a confession; just before he gave the confession, police offered to take him home; neither the police nor Hubble’s own advisor thought that he had been arrested; and Hubble himself testified that after making statement he expected to be taken home.
There is a certain humor, in fact, in the lower courts’ findings that Hubble was in custody. One envisions a cartoon in which police are carrying an unwilling citizen to the porch of his home, where they deposit him in a chair, and the citizen is protesting, “Please, don’t force me to incriminate myself by keeping me in this awful place, separated from my familiar surroundings and the support and counsel of my family.” I would hold, as a matter of law, that Hubble was not in custody.
If Hubble was not in custody at the time of his interrogation, then neither Miranda nor Edwards are applicable and the inculpatory statements were properly admitted into evidence.
Even if there were some question as to custody, however, I concur with the view of Mr. Justice Larsen that Edwards does not require a reversal of the conviction. Assuming *520that Hubble asked for a lawyer on July 12, 1977 and that his statement to police on July 12, 1977 should be suppressed because police questioning continued in spite of the request for legal assistance, Hubble’s phone call to police on July 13th, under Edwards, re-opened legitimate police questioning. As Edwards states, once counsel has been requested, the suspect is not subject to further custodial interrogation “unless the accused himself initiates further communication, exchanges, or conversations with the police.” 451 U.S. at 485, 101 S.Ct. at 1885, 69 L.Ed.2d at 386.
Here, Hubble initiated further conversations with police and it was proper for police to once again question him. Therefore, the subsequent confession of July 13, which was given freely and after renewed Miranda warnings, reaffirmed the confession of July 12, and would be admissible (along with the text of the July 12 confession). I quite agree with Mr. Justice Larsen that the fact that Hubble “let the cat out of the bag” on July 12 during what was, for the sake of argument, an improper police questioning, does not preclude the use of the July 12 confession where it was subsequently ratified during permissible police questioning on July 13. See Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. 298, 105 S.Ct. 1285, 84 L.Ed.2d 222, (1985) (“[A] suspect who has once responded to unwarned yet uncoercive questioning is not thereby disabled from waiving his rights and confessing after he has been given the requisite Miranda warnings.”) 470 U.S. at —, 105 S.Ct. at 1298, 84 L.Ed.2d at 238.
The plain truth is that there was no police terror or brutality involved in this case. There was no overreaching. The evils which Miranda and its progeny seek to prevent were not present. The massive resources of government were not brought to bear to coerce a confession from a hapless citizen. Hubble was distraught and finally confessed not because of what the police did, not because government tortured and mistreated him, but because he could not live with the secret that he had participated in a terrible crime.
I join in reversing the order of Superior Court.