Court Opinion

ID: 9755672
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:46:07.282433+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:10.105655
License: Public Domain

Justice EAKIN,
Concurring.
I join the lead Opinion in affirming appellant’s convictions and sentences of death. However, with respect to the admissibility of appellant’s statement made in the patrol car, I do not believe we need to reach the public safety exception to Miranda to resolve the issue, as no interrogation occurred. Miranda warnings are necessary only when a defendant is subject to custodial interrogation. I agree that appellant, in handcuffs in a patrol car, was in custody. I do not agree that he was interrogated.
Interrogation of course “refers not only to express questioning, but also to any words or actions on the part of the police (other than those normally attendant to arrest and custody) that the police should know are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from the suspect.” Commonwealth v. DeJesus, 567 Pa. 415, 787 A.2d 394, 402 (2001) (citing Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 100 S.Ct. 1682, 64 L.Ed.2d 297 (1980)). The likelihood of an incriminating response to this single non-accusatory question of the woman’s whereabouts was slim. Such was not the design of the inquiry, and hence Miranda warnings were not required.
Trooper Tretter’s question was based on his logical belief that he had responded to a domestic dispute. Seeing blood, he was understandably anxious to define what he faced, and asked one question about the location of another potential party. He did not ask appellant what he had done, how he had done it, why he had done it; he didn’t even ask “what happened here?” He did nothing at all designed to elicit *244incriminating information; the fact that the answer he got was incriminating is not the measure of the question itself. As it was not designed to elicit an incriminating response, the question itself simply did not rise to the level of interrogation. There being no interrogation, Miranda warnings were not necessary, and we need not address whether an exception to Miranda is implicated—Miranda itself is not implicated.