Court Opinion

ID: 9782271
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 18:14:51.546385+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:54.680638
License: Public Domain

GEORGE, C. J.
I respectfully dissent. Justice Chin’s eloquent dissent illuminates the deep flaws inherent in the majority’s reasoning. Beyond what *1040he has written, there is little to add. I write separately simply to emphasize that, regardless of the degree of one’s enthusiasm concerning the prophylactic protections afforded by Miranda v. Arizona (165) 384 U.S. 436 [86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, 10 A.L.R.3d 974] (Miranda), we are obligated to follow that decision as long as it remains the law. We should not countenance a ruse whereby Miranda is given judicial lip service—obeyed in name but not in fact. Unfortunately, the court’s opinion today will encourage precisely the sort of subterfuge by some law enforcement investigators, with the ensuing violation of constitutional rights, that Miranda sought to end. (See Miranda, supra, 384 U.S. at pp. 454-455 [86 S.Ct. at p. 1617] [noting the various techniques in which law enforcement interrogators are trained to deflect, if not defeat, a subject’s professed desire to speak with an attorney]; People v. Peevy (1998) 17 Cal.4th 1184, 1205-1207 [73 Cal.Rptr.2d 865, 953 P.2d 1212]; see also People v. Sims (1993) 5 Cal.4th 405, 445 [20 Cal.Rptr.2d 537, 853 P.2d 992] [dissipation of the taint occasioned by improper police conduct “ ‘requires at least an intervening independent act by the defendant or a third party’ to break the causal chain in such a way that the second confession is not in fact obtained by exploitation of the illegality”].) The court’s holding departs from Miranda and its case law progeny, in favor of approving an investigatory approach that is totally artificial in its protection of the constitutional rights accorded an accused. For these reasons, I have joined Justice Chin’s dissent.