Court Opinion

ID: 9471584
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:36:02.402602+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:28.611299
License: Public Domain

KRAVITCH, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part, dissenting in part:
I respectfully dissent from Part II of the majority opinion. I concur in the remainder.
Although recognizing that Officer Seals’ express, accusatory question constituted a custodial interrogation under Miranda and Innis, the majority would nevertheless admit the statement because the answer does not appear to be responsive to the question. In my view such a rule is not only an unwarranted extension of the case law of the Supreme Court and this circuit, but an impractical and difficult rule to apply as well.
In addressing the admissibility of statements made in a custodial setting, courts *1536consistently have focused on the conduct of the police and not the response of the accused. The concern of the Supreme Court in Miranda was that the interrogation environment created by the interplay of questioning and custody would place inherent pressure on an accused to compromise his right against compulsory self-incrimination. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1619, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). It was the coercive setting created by the law enforcement officers that created the need for Miranda’s prophylactic requirements.
This approach was reiterated in Innis, where the Court defined interrogation as any practice that the police should know is reasonably likely to evoke an incriminating response. Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 100 S.Ct. 1682, 1690, 64 L.Ed.2d 297 (1980). The Court emphasized that it was defining interrogation in terms of police action, and not the nature of the response, when it stated, “By ‘incriminating response’ we refer to any response — whether inculpatory or exculpatory — that the prosecution may seek to introduce at trial.” Id. n. 5. In Innis, as in Miranda, the Court was principally concerned with discouraging police conduct likely to yield incriminating statements.
In Harryman v. Estelle, 616 F.2d 870 (5th Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 860, 101 S.Ct. 161, 66 L.Ed.2d 76 (1980), the former Fifth Circuit also defined interrogation in terms of police conduct when it rigidly applied Miranda in suppressing a statement made in response to a relatively innocent, but express, accusatory question. Harryman is indistinguishable from this case except that Harryman’s statement appeared to respond to the question, while Acosta’s did not. The majority views this distinction as dispositive of the issue, rendering Acosta’s statement voluntary and therefore beyond the intended scope of Miranda. Although the Court in Harryman suggested that the result might have been different had Harryman’s answer been unresponsive to the question, I cannot agree with this court’s adoption of that dicta as a rule of law. Harryman stands for the proposition that Miranda will be rigidly applied when a law enforcement officer asks an accusatory question that is likely to elicit an incriminating response:
When a law enforcement officer asks a question of an accused and the accused, without the benefit of Miranda’s safeguards, answers, the totality of the circumstances is irrelevant. The accused’s answer is simply inadmissible at trial as part of the prosecution’s case in chief.
616 F.2d at 874.
Harryman, Innis and Miranda focused on the nature of the police conduct precisely because deterring unlawful interrogations is the principal motivation for imposing Miranda’s procedural safeguards. See Miranda, 86 S.Ct. at 1612-18. This court’s holding now departs from that approach by requiring an additional inquiry into the responsiveness of the reply, an inquiry wholly unrelated to the chief purpose underlying the Miranda requirements.
Nor is this case controlled by United States v. Menichino, 497 F.2d 935 (5th Cir.1974), or United States v. McDaniel, 463 F.2d 129 (5th Cir.1972), cert. denied, 413 U.S. 919, 93 S.Ct. 3046, 37 L.Ed.2d 1041 (1973), where the incriminating statements were made following innocent inquiries that were not designed to place, any compelling pressures on the suspect to divulge any wrongdoing. In Menichino the statement followed a series of routine biographical questions, while in McDaniel the statement was a response to a common border patrol inquiry. In contrast to the situation presented here, the policies behind Miranda’s safeguards — deterring police interrogation tactics and allaying the fears of an accused in an inherently coercive atmosphere — would not have been furthered by suppressing the remarks of the defendants in those cases.
Officer Seals asked Acosta a question designed to elicit an incriminating response in a custodial setting, which the majority correctly concludes constituted a custodial interrogation. Our inquiry should end there. The rule set out today does nothing to discourage police from asking express, accusatory questions to a suspect held in custody. Law enforcement officers are free to ask questions before giving Miranda warn*1537ings in hopes of eliciting a statement that might be considered “unresponsive” to the question. They will have much to gain and nothing to lose.
Moreover, emphasizing the nature of the response will require unnecessary and frequently very difficult judicial inquiries to determine whether or not the declarant was responding to a question. As an illustration, suppose Acosta had replied, “This is an off-loading operation, but if you keep quiet, we’ll make it worth your while — you want money, we’ve got money.” Would the entire statement be admissible, or would a court consider the “unresponsive” part voluntary and the “responsive” part a product of the interrogation? Requiring a factual inquiry to determine whether the answer, in whole or in part, is unresponsive to the question and therefore voluntary is a regression to pre-Miranda law, where admissibility depended upon “a totality of the circumstances evidencing involuntary ... admission of guilt.” Haynes v. Washington, 373 U.S. 503, 83 S.Ct. 1336, 1343, 10 L.Ed.2d 513 (1963); see also Miranda, 86 S.Ct. at 1642 (Clark, J., concurring in part, dissenting in part). The Supreme Court in Miranda rejected this flexible approach in favor of a rigid rule that easily could be followed by police and applied by the courts. See 86 S.Ct. at 1618. The Fifth Circuit acknowledged the virtues of inflexible application when it stated in Harryman:
Under Miranda, courts have no reason or mandate to consider whether, as the state suggests here, a law enforcement officer’s question was not really a question because, objectively considered, it did not call for a response. As this case itself illustrates, this would entail just the kind of difficult and often impossible factual inquiry the Miranda rules purposely preempt.
616 F.2d at 874.
The rigidity of Miranda’s requirements was originally intended and continues to be recognized as the doctrine’s greatest strength. Fare v. Michael C., 439 U.S. 1310, 99 S.Ct. 3, 5, 58 L.Ed.2d 19 (1978) (Rehnquist, J., granting application for stay); Miranda, 86 S.Ct. at 1630; Harryman, 616 F.2d at 873. The Supreme Court has stressed that “one virtue of Miranda [is] the fact that the giving of warnings obviates the need for a case-by-case inquiry into the actual voluntariness of the admission of the accused,” California v. Prysock, 453 U.S. 355, 101 S.Ct. 2806, 2809, 69 L.Ed.2d 696 (1981), and has recognized that a court ordinarily should not.review a case involving application of Miranda to a particular set of facts. Id. 101 S.Ct. at 2807.
This court now requires a factual inquiry into the character of a suspect’s response following a direct, accusatory question asked in a coercive, custodial setting. In this case we might conclude with some degree of certainty that Acosta’s answer was so unresponsive to Officer Seals’ question as to render it “voluntary” in the traditional sense. In subsequent cases this factual determination may not be as straightforward. Under the inherently compelling pressures of a custodial interrogation, it would not be unusual for a suspect to make a statement that does not appear to respond to the question posed. Courts will now be called upon to inquire into the mind of the suspect to determine whether the response was the product of an interrogation or was truly volunteered.
Rigid application of Miranda may suppress some statements that could be considered “voluntary.” See Miranda, 86 S.Ct. at 1618. A rule linking admissibility to a court’s determination of responsiveness, however, will likely admit some statements that are actually products of the questions asked. Given the uncertainties inherent in a court’s determination of responsiveness and the well-settled policy of deterring police custodial interrogations unless Miranda’s safeguards are followed, I believe the most prudent course is to adhere to the “core virtue” of Miranda, Michael C., 99 S.Ct. at 5, and hold that a suspect’s answer, however unresponsive, to a law enforcement officer’s express, accusatory question posed in a coercive, custodial setting is inadmissible as a violation of the suspect’s privilege against self-incrimination.1
*1538I would therefore affirm the district court’s order suppressing the statement as against appellee Acosta.

. Although the issue is not presented here, I would not object to admitting Acosta’s reply in *1538a subsequent prosecution for attempted bribery. Nor would I require suppression of statements such as those described in footnote 3 of the majority opinion in a separate prosecution for murder or attempted murder. Since no person has a constitutional right to be warned of his rights before he commits a crime, such statements could conceivably form the bases of separate indictments and could be offered to prove the charges. In the pending prosecution, however, the government offers the statement as an admission or awareness of past wrongdoing, which the fifth amendment prohibits.
Cases from other circuits addressing a similar issue in the context of a sixth amendment violation are distinguishable. See Majority Opinion at n. 3. The Supreme Court has recognized that analyses of the fifth and sixth amendments are not interchangeable, “since the policies underlying the two constitutional protections are quite distinct.” Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 100 S.Ct. 1682, 1689 n. 4, 64 L.Ed.2d 297 (1980); see, Kamisar, Brewer v. Williams, Massiah and Miranda: What is “Interrogation”? When Does it Matter?, 67 Geo. L.J. 1, 48-55 (1978).