Court Opinion

ID: 9552599
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:13:48.623296+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:28:18.898786
License: Public Domain

QUINN, Chief Justice,
specially concurring:
Although I specially concur in the result reached by the majority opinion, I write separately because I believe that the determination of whether a motorist is subjected to “custodial interrogation” for purposes of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), requires a more factually specific inquiry into the circumstances surrounding a traffic stop than is indicated by the majority opinion.
In Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 104 S.Ct. 3138, 82 L.Ed.2d 317 (1984), the United States Supreme Court adopted what amounts to a rebuttable presumption that roadside questioning of a motorist pursuant to a routine traffic stop is noncustodial. This presumption is rooted in two features of the ordinary traffic stop which “mitigate the danger that a person questioned will be induced ‘to speak where he would not otherwise do so freely.’ ” Berkemer, 104 S.Ct. at 3149 (quoting Miranda, 384 U.S. at 467, 86 S.Ct. at 1624). First, the detention of a motorist at a roadside traffic stop is usually “temporary and brief,” with the result that the motorist reasonably expects to be permitted to go on his way after he answers a few questions while the officer checks his license and registration and possibly issues a citation for a traffic violation. Berkemer, 104 S.Ct. at 3149. Second, the circumstances of the typical traffic stop “are not such that the motorist feels completely at the mercy of the police.” Id. at 3150. While the motorist may feel some pressure to answer questions due to the aura of authority surrounding the officer and the knowledge that the officer has some discretion in deciding to issue a citation, this pressure is offset by the fact that traffic stops are typically conducted on a public roadway, thereby diminishing the opportunity for an officer to use the type of overbearing tactics to elicit a confession that precipitated the Miranda decision. Id.
Notwithstanding the presumption that questioning pursuant to a routine traffic stop does not constitute custodial interrogation under Miranda, the Miranda warnings do become applicable “as soon as a suspect’s freedom of action is curtailed to a ‘degree associated with formal arrest.’ ” Berkemer, 104 S.Ct. at 3151 (quoting California v. Beheler, 463 U.S. 1121, 103 S.Ct. 3517, 77 L.Ed.2d 1275 (1983) (per curiam)). This transition would occur at the point when, from the words or actions of the officer or from other circumstances surrounding the stop, a reasonable person in the motorist’s situation would have understood that he was being subjected not to a routine traffic stop but to the functional equivalent of a formal arrest. See, Ber-kemer, 104 S.Ct. at 3152. Once that point is reached, then the motorist has been “deprived of his freedom of action in [a] significant way,” for purposes of the Miranda safeguards, Miranda, 384 U.S. at 444, 86 S.Ct. at 1612, and is entitled to those safeguards.
*1094Applying these guidelines to the case at hand, I concur with the majority that Miranda warnings were not required prior to the officer’s questioning of the defendant about where he had been and where he was going. As in Berkemer, the facts immediately preceding this questioning amounted to no more than a single police officer stopping the defendant on a public roadway and asking him a few routine questions relating to his driving. Since, according to Berkemer, a reasonable person in this situation would not have believed that he was being subjected to “restraints comparable to those associated with formal arrest,” 104 S.Ct. at 3151, the routine questioning associated with the stop of the defendant in this case cannot be characterized as the functional equivalent of custodial interrogation for purposes of the Miranda warnings. I therefore concur in the reversal of the order suppressing the defendant’s statement to the officer that he had stopped for a few beers after work.
I am authorized to say that Justice DU-BOFSKY and Justice LOHR join in this special concurrence.