Court Opinion

ID: 9454694
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:54:50.47367+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:14.935232
License: Public Domain

FREEDMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting
Our acceptance of the jury’s determination of the defendant’s guilt should not blind us to the grave constitutional question which his conviction presents.
Two uniformed and armed police officers drove.up to defendant’s home in a police car at 7 o’clock in the morning. They had no warrant for his arrest or for a search of his home or automobile, although they probably had sufficient information to justify the issuance of such warrants. At their knock, his mother opened the door, and he came down to meet them when she told him they were inquiring for him. Defendant testified that he had drunk much liquor that night and was still feeling its effect as well as the lack of sleep,'for he had returned home only three or four hours earlier. His adventure of the night would alone have left him most unfit to resist the inquiries of the officers.
On the questioning by the police, defendant admitted that he owned a yellow M.G., apparently unique on the Island, and that it was parked at the airport parking lot, less than 100 yards across the street. He then rode in the police car a short distance to his M.G. Another police officer drove up in a police car and joined them as they arrived. The police asked whether he had anything in his automobile. .that did not belong to him, and he replied that he did. Asked where .it was, he said it was in the trunk of his *235car. He was told to get it. Thereupon he opened the trunk and the police obtained from him the victim’s dress, girdle and underpants. According to his testimony, he showed the clothing to the police and they took it; the police testified that he handed it to them.
Defendant was given no warning before the questioning at his home and at the time the physical evidence was secured from his car. He testified that he knew nothing about the requirement for a search warrant, and thought that an officer had an inherent right to search his car. When he finally inquired of the officers ‘What it was all about”, they told him that he was being .charged with rape, although they did not place him under arrest. A few hours after the police left him, he was arrested and brought to the police headquarters at the Fort, charged with the offense, and then the solemn ritual of a Miranda1 warning was performed before further questioning took place.
It seems to me that the police were required to comply with Miranda and warn defendant of his right to remain silent and his right to counsel before he answered any of their questions. Such a warning was not given either at his home or at the airport parking lot.
It is said that Miranda is inapplicable because this is not a station house interrogation, and defendant met the officers in the familiar surroundings of his home, in the presence of his wife and parents. The Supreme Court has shown, however, in the very recent case of Orozco v. Texas, 394 U.S. 324, decided March 25, 1969, that the true test in an interrogation subsequent to Miranda is the nature of the circumstances surrounding the suspect, and that coercive environment may be created even in a defendant’s home. There four police officers entered defendant’s bedroom, where they questioned him and obtained his incriminating answers. That case differs from this *236because there the officers admitted that defendant was not free to go where he pleased but was under arrest, although it is not clear that they told him this. Mr. Justice Black said:
“The State has argued here that since petitioner was interrogated on his own bed, in familiar surroundings, our Miranda holding should not apply. It is true that the Court did say in Miranda that ‘compulsion to speak in the isolated setting of the police station may be greater than in courts or other official investigations where there are often impartial observers to guard against intimidation or trickery.’ 384 U.S. 436, 461. . . . According to the officer’s testimony, petitioner was under arrest and not free to leave when he was questioned in his bedroom in the early hours of the morning. The Miranda opinion declared that the warnings were required when the person being interrogated was ‘in custody at the station or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any way.’ 384 U.S. 436, 477.”
Here there is no evidence that defendant was under arrest at the time of the initial investigation, but he was in the presence of the police and part of the time was surrounded by them in a police car when they drove the short distance to the airport. At his home the circumstances were such that the officers must have been well aware that by their presence he was under the threat that they might any moment mention in the hearing of his parents and his wife, whom he had married less than a year before, that he was being accused of rape. Even if he were completely innocent of rape he would not have wanted his wife to learn that he had been out all night drinking with a female companion. The police therefore must have known that he would be eager to rid his parents and wife of their presence. Indeed, he would probably have preferred to be alone with the police in a station house than to have them at his home.
I therefore believe that since defendant’s admissions under police questioning were the product of circumstances which were coercive, he should not have been required to *237answer any questions without a Miranda warning of his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.
I also belieye defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated, because his handing over of the incriminating evidence to the police was the result of the same coercive circumstances, without any notice that he was not required to obey their request. Indeed the question whether he had anyone else’s clothing in his car was asked when he was in the presence only of the police and had left his home; and if he had refused to answer as the result of a Miranda warning, the entire search incident might never have occurred. In my view the principle of Miranda is as much applicable to defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights as it is to the questioning in his home. It therefore was the duty of the police to advise him that since they had no search warrant, he was not required to produce any evidence which he might have in his automobile. If it is improper for the police to question a prospective accused under circumstances inherently coercive without giving him a full warning of his rights and affording him an opportunity to obtain legal advice, it is equally improper for them to demand of him the physical evidence indicating his guilt, without giving him notice that he had the right to refuse their demand when they have no warrant.
I therefore believe that the defendant is entitled to a new trial at which there would be excluded from evidence the garments which the police improperly obtained from him without a warrant following questioning at his home without a Miranda warning.
I therefore respectfully dissent.

 Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).