Court Opinion

ID: 9768166
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:44:56.488579+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:37.030682
License: Public Domain

OVERSTREET, Judge,
dissenting.
I dissent to the majority’s holding that the per se rule of inadmissibility is for a misstatement of the statutory warning given before interrogation, but not for remarks made during interrogation. The rule of per se inadmissible confessions made subsequent to “for or against” statements of interrogators is of such great import that it warrants the broad application that it has heretofore enjoyed. When a defendant makes a confession following an interrogator’s statement that the confession may be used “for or against” the defendant, the confession ought to be inadmissible per se, even when proper Miranda warnings preceded the interrogation. The majority’s myopic and truncated analysis effectively undermines the integrity of the interrogation process and thereby compromises the policy objective of protecting the interrogee from improper influence and inducement.
Appellant was arrested in New Mexico pursuant to a warrant and given appropriate Article 38.22, V.A.C.C.P., warnings. Upon interrogation, which was audio-taped and transcribed, appellant made a written confession. An investigator with the district attorney’s office conducted the interrogation. Appellant, on appeal, argued that the investigator’s remarks, made during the course of the interrogation, caused appellant’s confusion regarding his rights and confession and that the trial court erred in not suppressing the confession which was the result of such improper persuasion by the investigator.
Per the State’s transcription of the audiotapes of the interrogation, these remarks preceded appellant’s confession:
[INVESTIGATOR]: I’m the district attorney investigator for Jack and Wise County. Like I told you a minute ago. My main focus with the District Attorney’s office for the last two and a half years has been with the child abuse cases. That’s all I work, and nothing but child abuse.
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[INVESTIGATOR]: Wes, I’m here to try to make things easier for you. I drove all *858this distance to try- to make things work for you on your behalf.
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[INVESTIGATOR]: ... You do not have to take this case to court. You can plead guilty to the charges, you can give a statement to the district attorney’s office, plead guilty to the charge, you can plea bargain the case out, so to speak. That means no trial, you basically, it’s a talk between the appointed district attorney and attorneys, and they work out the details and they decide what they think is a good offer for you. Which may be probation, it may be sixty years, but no matter what it is, you’d have the final outcome on that say.... It doesn’t mean just because you give a statement and tell about what happened, doesn’t mean that you can’t go to court, because you can still go to court. Because you can fight that sentencing. OK? [APPELLANT]: But that’s the offer that there is, is a ten year probation and that means I’m marked for ten years as a sex offender, is that right?
[INVESTIGATOR]: No matter what, yeah.
[APPELLANT]: It’s never erased, it’s always on my record for as long as I live and breathe.
[INVESTIGATOR]: That’s correct.
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[INVESTIGATOR]: ... And I’m just here, I’m kind of the middle man here. I mean I work under the DA. I came down here to talk to you, to get your story and take it back to the DA.
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[INVESTIGATOR]: ... I’m just, like I said, I’m just the middle man. I go back and tell the DA what you told me and it goes from there.
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[INVESTIGATOR]: We, you have got to be a man about what took place, accountable for your actions, and what you did. You need to get it out on the table, talk about it, get it down in writing, let me go back to the district attorney and and [sic] say he cooperated with us, he told me what happened out there and how, how it took place.
Appellant argues that these remarks, among others, by the interrogating officer effectively offered an inducement to make a statement, with such inducement being comparable to a statement that his confession could be used “for or against” appellant. At a hearing on appellant’s motion to suppress the confession, the trial court denied the motion. At trial the confession was admitted into evidence, over objection.
An interrogator’s remarks, following warnings, to the defendant that a1 confession may be used “for or against” the defendant irreversibly obfuscates the requirements of 38.22 § 2(a)(1),(2), V.A.C.C.P., that the suspect be warned prior to interrogation that any statement made by the accused may be used against the accused at his trial and in court.1 Even where proper 38.22 warnings precede such remarks by interrogators, “for or against” remarks modify the preceding warning. While warning a suspect that his statements- may be used against him is appropriate, an interrogator’s subsequent remark that the statement of the suspect may be used “for or against” the suspect is a muta*859tion of the constitutional and statutory requisite warning.
This Court should not encourage interrogators to take artistic license with the statutorily and constitutionally required warnings. Initially relating those warnings accurately does not grant a license to subsequently modify and embellish them to induce a confession during the course of the interrogation. An interrogator’s remarks that explicitly contradict a clause of the preceding Art. 38.22 warning is as inappropriate as an interrogator’s failure to inform a suspect of the required Art. 38.22 § 2(a)(1),(2) warnings pri- or to making the confession.
To suggest, as the majority does, that an interrogator’s remarks made subsequent to proper reading of warnings cannot render a subsequent confession inadmissable per se is a radical departure from common sense and is far afield of present caselaw. The United States Supreme Court has even said in, Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 476, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1629, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, 725 (1966),
[A]ny evidence that the accused was threatened, tricked, or cajoled into a waiver will, of course, show that the defendant did not voluntarily waive his privilege. The requirement of warnings and waiver of rights is a fundamental with respect to the Fifth Amendment privilege and not simply a preliminary ritual to existing methods of interrogation.
I do not subscribe to the notion that the rule of per se inadmissible confessions is limited by previous caselaw to confessions obtained subsequent to improper warnings. Even where proper warnings have been given, an interrogator’s subsequent remarks, in some instances, may render resulting confessions inadmissible per se.
The basis of the per se rule of inadmissibility is that if the accused is advised that his confession may be used “for or against him” or “for and against him,” such is an improper warning, and without more renders the confession inadmissible as a matter of law, because to warn the accused that his confession might be used for him holds out an inducement for making the confession. Dunn v. State, 721 S.W.2d 325, 341 (Tex.Cr.App.1986)(plurality opinion); Sterling v. State, 800 S.W.2d 513, 518-19 (Tex.Cr.App.1990), cert. denied, 501 U.S. 1213, 111 S.Ct. 2816, 115 L.Ed.2d 988 (1991).
In both Dunn and Sterling, this court found no impropriety regarding the reading of Miranda warnings to the defendant prior to the interrogation. In both cases, during the interrogation, however, the interrogating officer effectively told the defendant that the defendant’s confession may be used “for or against” the defendant. See Dunn v. State, 721 S.W.2d at 337, 340; and Sterling, 800 S.W.2d at 515, 518. In both cases, the interrogating officer’s remarks that the confession could be used “for or against” the defendant was the premise on which this court concluded that the confession was inadmissable per se. Dunn, 721 S.W.2d at 341; Sterling, 800 S.W.2d at 519.
The instant case is similar to Dunn and Sterling. The interrogating officer appropriately and properly warned appellant. During the interrogation, however, the investigator effectively told appellant that a confession would be used for appellant’s benefit, i.e. for him. After the interrogator stated that his role in the interrogation process was “kind of the middle man,” he thereafter clearly sought to portray his request for a statement as a way in which he could assist appellant in his relations with the District Attorney. The clear implication of the interrogating investigator’s remarks to appellant is that a written statement could be used “for” appellant. And as this Court pointed out iri Dunn, 721 S.W.2d at 341, “For over one hundred years this Court has held that if the evidence is uneontroverted and uncontradicted that the person who takes or obtains a written confession from the accused tells the accused that his confession might be used ‘for or against him[,]’ or ‘for and against him,’ then this renders the confession inadmissible at trial because the warning does not comply with our State confession statute....”
And while the majority, Creager v. State, 952 S.W.2d 852, 854-55 (Tex.Cr.App.1997), cites Gardner v. State, 733 S.W.2d 195, 202-03 (Tex.Cr.App.1987), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 1034, 109 S.Ct. 848, 102 L.Ed.2d 979 (1989), *860for the proposition that “[t]he Fifth Amendment right is not violated when a suspect is warned that his statement ‘could be used against him, or could be used for him[,]”’ Gardner does not make such a holding. Gardner held that because the defendant failed to timely voice an objection, no error as to his Fifth Amendment claim was preserved. Gardner v. State, 733 S.W.2d at 202-03. In obiter dictum, Gardner stated that it had found no cases in which such a warning violates Miranda or infringes on a defendant’s Fifth Amendment rights, and that this Court found no error. Id. at 203. However, such obiter dictum is a far cry from the definitive Fifth Amendment proposition that the majority cites Gardner for.
The majority also denigrates Dunn for simply being a plurality opinion. However, a majority of this Court in Sterling, supra, applied Dunn as “squarely on point[,]” because of improper “for or against” inducements, and held that such rendered the confession inadmissible because of violating Article 38.22. Sterling v. State, 800 S.W.2d at 518-19. In holding that that induced statement was inadmissible, a majority of this Court cited, discussed and applied Dunn for the principle of per se inadmissibility. Thus if a majority of this Court wishes to now overrule Dunn’s per se inadmissibility holding as a plurality opinion, it must also overrule Sterling’s majority equivalent holding.
The defendant’s waiver of rights is compromised by the interrogator’s remark that the defendant’s confession may be used “for or against him.”2 In that situation, the defendant would not possess the requisite “knowledge” component in order to voluntarily waive his rights prior to confession.3 Our tolerance of an interrogator’s arbitrary mutation and convolution of the constitutional and statutory requirement that the defendant be warned prior to questioning that his statements “may be used against him” is literally a travesty of jurisprudence.
The majority in no way presents a reasoned argument for easting aside this Court’s controlling precedential caselaw of “over one hundred years[,]” but instead concocts an artificial distinction between whether inducement was made during warnings prior to interrogation or during the interrogation itself. But a difference which makes no difference is no difference.
For the reasons stated herein, I voice my dissent.
BAIRD, J., joins.

. Article 38.22 § 2, V.A.C.C.P., states:
Sec. 2. No written statement made by an accused as a result of custodial interrogation is admissible as evidence against him in any criminal proceeding unless it is shown on the face of the statement that:
(a) the accused, prior to making the statement, either received from a magistrate the warning provided in Article 15.17 of this code or received from the person to whom the statement is made a warning that:
(1)he has the right to remain silent and not make any statement at all and that any statement he makes may be used against him at his trial; (2) any statement he makes may be used as evidence against him in court;
(3) he has the right to have a lawyer present to advise him prior to and during any questioning;
(4) if he is unable to employ a lawyer, he has the right to have a lawyer appointed to advise him prior to and during any questioning; and
(5) he has the right to terminate the interview at any time; and
(b) the accused, prior to and during the making of the statement, knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily waived the rights set out in the warning prescribed by Subsection (a) of this section.

. When the State bears the burden of proof on a motion in which the defendant seeks to suppress a statement which he claims was obtained in violation of Miranda, the State need prove waiver only by a preponderance of the evidence. Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157, 168, 107 S.Ct. 515, 522, 93 L.Ed.2d 473, 485 (1986).

. It must be shown that the accused, prior to and during the making of the statement (i.e.confession, admission, et.cetera) knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily waived the rights set out in the warnings prescribed by 38.22 § 2(a), V.A.C.C.P. See Art. 38.22 § 2(b), V.A.C.C.P.