Court Opinion

ID: 9734484
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 17:36:20.296268+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:48.728066
License: Public Domain

SCHWELB, Associate Judge,
concurring in the judgment:
I agree that Jones’ inculpatory statements should have been suppressed. My analysis, however, differs from the majority’s in some respects.
First, I am not sure that this case requires the application of the doctrine of Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 100 S.Ct. 1682, 64 L.Ed.2d 297 (1980), in which the Supreme Court addressed police conduct vis-a-vis a suspect which amounts to the “functional equivalent” of express questioning. See id. at 300-01, 100 S.Ct. 1682. Officer Groomes testified that Jones was questioned directly about his guilt: “[W]e were kind of asking him if he wanted to volunteer information on who[m] he bought it from, stuff like that.” In my opinion, this was interrogation, not just its functional equivalent. If Jones was in custody, this was a blatant Miranda1 violation, without regard to Innis issues.
*191Turning to the question whether the interrogation was custodial, my review of the record satisfies me that the government has waived the point. In the trial court, the prosecutor made no objection when the judge repeatedly stated that Jones was in custody for Miranda purposes. Indeed, the judge declared to Jones’ attorney: “I’m prepared to find that [Jones] was in custody based on the testimony you’ve already gotten,” and she declined to entertain further defense evidence on the point. The prosecutor remained silent, thus implicitly acquiescing in a ruling which limited the record on the custody issue. Subsequently, during argument, the prosecutor effectively conceded that Jones was in custody:
It’s the government’s position that these statements are not suppressible because they were not made in response to police interrogation. The officer stated that she was sure that she did not elicit any response for the defendant while he ivas in their custody..
(Emphasis added.)
“Parties may not assert one theory at trial and another theory on appeal.” Haches v. Haches, 446 A.2d 396, 398 (D.C.1982) (citation omitted). “Points not asserted with sufficient precision to indicate distinctly the party’s thesis will normally be spurned on appeal.” Hunter v. United States, 606 A.2d 139, 144 (D.C.) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 991, 113 S.Ct. 509, 121 L.Ed.2d 444 (1992). “These principles apply as rigorously to the government as they do to a criminal defendant who faces the loss of his liberty.” United States v. Porter, 618 A.2d 629, 642 n. 24 (D.C.1992).
In my opinion, the government’s effective concession in the trial court that Jones was in custody makes it unnecessary to decide that issue, and I see no reason to do so. Without the waiver by the government, the question would not be an easy one for me. We held in In re E.A.H., 612 A.2d 836, 838-39 (D.C.1992) that a Terry stop does not implicate Miranda rights. The record before us is truncated on account of the judge’s unopposed ruling, and I am not sure, on the basis of the present record, that the seizure had proceeded beyond a Terry stop and ripened to a formal arrest at the time that Jones made his admissions.
Finally, I think it worth noting the obvious: Our holding that Jones’ statement should have been suppressed does not affect the remainder of the evidence against him, including Officer Groomes’ testimony that Jones dropped the drugs to the ground. Nothing in this court’s decision precludes a retrial of Jones without the suppressed statement. Indeed, a new trial may be unnecessary if the trial judge, after excluding that statement from her calculus, is nevertheless satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt of Jones’ guilt.
For the foregoing reasons, I concur in the judgment.

. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).