Court Opinion

ID: 9795609
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:32:16.987294+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:30:23.525463
License: Public Domain

Justice EID,
dissenting.
1 would reverse the trial court's order suppressing Elmarr's statements and therefore respectfully dissent from the majority's opinion. In my view, the trial court made two significant and fundamental errors in this case.
First, the court found that the incomplete Miranda warnings given by the officers created custody:
[Flrom the moment [the defendant] was advised of his Miranda rights, Defendant was in custody for the purposes of Miranda. _... Defendant was advised of Miranda at the very beginning of the questioning, which would indicate to someone familiar with the criminal process that he was being deprived of his freedom....
In so holding, the court got it exactly backwards. Miranda warnings do not create custody. See 2 Wayne R. LaFave et al., Criminal Procedure § 6.6(F), at 752 (8d ed. 2007) ("The argument that the giving of some of the Miranda warnings itself establishes that the situation was custodial has been rightly rejected ...."); see also United States v. Bautista, 145 F.3d 1140, 1148 (10th Cir.1998). Instead, custody triggers Miranda. See People v. Stephenson, 159 P.3d 617, 623 (Colo.2007). As a noted commentator has suggested, it would be "bizarre" to penalize police officers for attempting to give Miranda warnings in situations that were later determined by a court to be noneustodial. LaFave et al., supra, § 6.6(F), at 752.
The second fundamental error committed by the trial court is the fact that it relied on the officers' subjective intentions in its analysis of whether Elmarr was in custody, concluding that "Captain Epp likely suspected that Defendant was involved in the murder and intended to attempt to elicit incriminating statements from Defendant." As the majority recognizes, and Elmarr acknowledges, the subjective intentions of the officers in questioning the defendant have no role in determining whether the defendant was in custody. Maj. op. at 1161; see also People v. Matheny, 46 P.3d 453, 468 (Colo.*11672002) (concluding that the trial court erred by relying on the officers' subjective intent).
These two errors tainted the entirety of the trial court's analysis and render its fact-finding, upon which the majority relies, suspect. See maj. op. at 1163-1164. In my view, we should correct the trial court's errors and remand the case for further proceedings. See People v. Arias, 159 P.3d 134, 141 (Colo.2007) (Eid, J., dissenting). For this reason, I respectfully dissent from the majority's opinion.