Court Opinion

ID: 9732378
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:18:24.645775+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:26.960997
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
Appellant was twice questioned by the police in their routine investigations and they doubted his word. He and his sister were then invited to take a polygraph test, and he was brought to the polygraph office by his mother. This was a private business. The offices consisted of two rooms, a waiting room and an examination room. The mother stayed in the waiting room by choice, and appellant was taken to the other room. The room was small, measuring ten by sixteen feet. Officer Valsi who was in full uniform was present in the room with Officer Flemming who conducted the examination. Appellant was attached to the machine. No Miranda rights were given.
*1208Appellant was questioned for forty-five minutes. He was asked whether he knew who had killed the victim, whether he was present when she was killed or died, and whether he had killed her himself, etc. Flemming said at one point to Valsi in a voice that could be heard by appellant that he, appellant, was not being truthful. Appellant at one point began sobbing. The officers were careful to testify that he had not incriminated himself while under their questioning, but did testify, however, that as he was released from the machine, his mother entered the room and appellant threw himself in her arms saying that he had not been telling the truth and that he had had something to do with the murder.
The decision to take appellant to the police station for questioning was then made, and appellant was transported by the police and arrested within minutes after arriving there. By the time his parents arrived there, some one hour later, appellant was under arrest. He and his parents were read Miranda rights; they were given an opportunity to confer and both executed written waivers. Appellant was then interrogated and gave the confession challenged as inadmissible.
The Fifth Amendment requires the suppression of the confession given by appellant at the stationhouse because that confession and the waiver of rights which preceded it were the tainted products of, and came about by, exploitation of illegal police custodial interrogation. Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975). Clearly, there was a criminal interrogation during the administration of the polygraph examination. It is equally clear that after appellant, a thirteen-year-old boy with learning problems, was seated in that small separate room, physically attached to a stationary machine by wires and gadgets, surrounded by two grown men, one of whom was in full uniform, and questioned in an accusatory fashion for a period of forty-five minutes, he was surely "deprived of his freedom of action in [a] significant way." Oregon v. Mathiason, 429 U.S. 492, 97 S.Ct. 711, 50 L.Ed.2d 714 (1977). In Mathiason, a grown man went on invitation to a state patrol office where he sat across a desk from a lone policeman. He orally confessed after five minutes, was given his Miranda rights, gave a taped confession, and was permitted to leave. Here, by contrast, appellant was not a man, but a boy. He was physically and psychologically restrained by the machine attachments and was confronted by two men rather than one. He was questioned in an accusatory manner for forty-five minutes rather than five. He was not offered an opportunity to leave for parts unknown as Mathiason was, but was under orders to report to the police station for further questioning. Unlike Mathiason, appellant French was in custody for the purposes of requiring an advisement of the privilege against self-incrimination and the right to counsel.
Upon being released from the machine, appellant threw himself in his mother's arms, admitting that he had had something to do with the crime. In these circumstance es, the burden was upon the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the subsequent stationhouse confession and the written waiver of rights were not the fruit of his unlawful polygraph office interrogation. Brown, 422 U.S. 590, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416. Here, appellant was in police custody from the time he left the polygraph office until he confessed. The offer to permit the mother to transport him to the stationhouse is a relevant intervening circumstance, but is limited in that regard because the offer still left appellant under control of an adult and under orders to report to the police station. Appellant was placed under formal arrest upon arriving at the police station and before his parents arrived. This is an immediate continuation of the pressures started in the polygraph interrogation. He and his parents were given Miranda advisements for the first time and they executed a waiver. This is palliative but more than offset by the fact that appellant and his parents would have been under a pressure to waive their rights and give a second statement, since the boy had been confronted with the examiner's conclusions of falsehood and had responded by admitting that he had *1209had something to do with the death. No other significant intervening circumstances existed. On this evening, only appellant and his sister were scheduled for polygraph examinations. The police were in the process of investigating their most obvious suspect and knew that, because of his age and mental problems, it would not be difficult to surprise, frighten and confuse him. The official misconduct here is of a serious nature. The State failed to sustain the burden of showing that the stationhouse confession in question was admissible.
I would therefore reverse and remand for a new trial, at which appellant's station-house confession would be excluded.
DICKSON, J., concurs.