Court Opinion

ID: 9692984
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:15:10.30166+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:38.654428
License: Public Domain

SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, J.
{dissenting in part). I would affirm the decisions of the circuit court and the court of appeals suppressing the defendant’s statement of June 28.
On June 27, upon being questioned about a crime, the defendant exercised his right to remain silent. On June 28 the police resumed questioning him about the same crime. To avoid suppressing the June 28 statement, the majority must apply what the majority calls a "more flexible analysis” under Mosley. I conclude that Mosley cannot be flexed as far as the majority states without frustrating the purpose of the Mosley test.
The majority isolates and analyzes each Mosley factor in á vacuum and then admits the confession into evidence because the police conduct clearly satisfies two factors (original questioning promptly terminated; Miranda rights given at second questioning); clearly does not satisfy two factors (different officers conducted the second interrogation; second interrogation limited to a crime not the subject of the first interrogation); and may be viewed as satisfying one factor (second interrogation may be resumed only after passage of significant period of time). In my view this three out of five approach does not qualify as a flexible analysis. I conclude that the factors should be discussed separately and then viewed as a totality. The factors are interrelated, and unless they are understood to be so, the factors are misapplied. A flexible application of the Mosley factors would re*367quire that the court look at the factors together, as well as in isolation, with a view towards the underlying goal or value they are designed to promote.
The Mosley test is designed to protect a suspect from the coercion that necessarily exists during custodial questioning continued after a suspect has invoked his right to remain silent. I agree with the circuit court and the court of appeals that in this case the defendant’s assertion of a right not to speak has not been scrupulously honored.