Court Opinion

ID: 9516431
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 23:42:25.861373+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:37:14.728275
License: Public Domain

COYNE, Justice
(concurring specially).
In my opinion, there can be no question that there was no violation of the defendant’s constitutional rights, that he received a fair trial, and was convicted on evidence properly admitted. I cannot, however, regard the defendant’s outburst in response to Detective Christensen’s declaration that defendant lied as either an equivocal or ambiguous invocation of his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. It seems to me that when the defendant stood up in agitation, shouted “I don’t have to take any more of your bullshit,” and stalked out of the interrogation room, he was making a time-honored childish statement — “I won’t listen to anything more you have to say,” not “I want to remain silent.”
There are times, of course, that police interrogation is too aggressive and the will of the suspect is overborne, and in such cases the confession is, and should be, suppressed. But police should be allowed to assume that a suspect is willing to give an account of his whereabouts and his actions at the time of the crime in question until the suspect clearly claims the protection of the Fifth Amendment.
That the defendant himself did not intend by his outburst to invoke the Fifth Amendment is apparent from his willingness to renew the interrogation when informed of the survival of the four-year-old boy who had been stabbed in the murderous attack that left his mother and sister dead.
Because the defendant’s contention that he invoked the protection of the Fifth Amendment appears to be only an afterthought, I join the affirmance of his conviction.