Court Opinion

ID: 9625505
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:42:46.794698+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:09.634556
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE ERICKSON
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. A defendant’s extrajudicial statements, or the fruits thereof, cannot be admitted into evidence against him unless the prosecution can establish the voluntariness of those statements beyond a reasonable doubt. People v. Moreno, 176 Colo. 488, 491 P.2d 575 (1971); People v. Kelley, 172 Colo. 39, 470 P.2d 32 (1970). The record in this case cannot support such a determination. The trial court correctly suppressed any evidence of the defendant’s statements and the resulting search of the trunk, and its ruling should be affirmed.
I.

The Unlawful Detention

The arresting officer observed the defendant and his companion standing for approximately one minute before the window of a drugstore. They did not touch the window or door of the store. They did not appear to be intoxicated. They did not repeatedly return to the window in a manner indicating criminal intent. Cf. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). The defendant and his companion were simply standing on the sidewalk, as they had every right to do. Nothing in their conduct provided the slightest justification for the officer’s actions in summoning them into his presence and demanding that they identify themselves. None of the circumstances surrounding the detention — the late hour, the Blossom Festival, a burglary at the jewelry store at some unknown prior time — could give rise to any constitutionally-sufficient reason for the officer’s unlawful invasion into the defendant’s privacy.
*87In every prior case in which this court has found the detention of a person without probable cause to arrest to be constitutionally permissible, that detention resulted from some articulable and arguably justifiable suspicion on the part of the peace officer. See People v. Casias, 193 Colo. 66, 563 P.2d 926 (1977); People v. Taylor, 190 Colo. 144, 544 P.2d 392 (1976); People v. Mathis, 189 Colo. 534, 542 P.2d 1296 (1975); People v. Mullins, 188 Colo. 23, 532 P.2d 733 (1975); People v. Cruz, 186 Colo. 295, 526 P.2d 1315 (1974); People v. Montoya, 185 Colo. 299, 524 P.2d 76 (1974); People v. Burley, 185 Colo. 224, 523 P.2d 981 (1974); Stone v. People, 174 Colo. 504, 485 P.2d 495 (1971); see also Terry v. Ohio, supra.
The officer’s detention of the defendant was not, as the majority suggests, a minimal and quickly dissipated invasion of defendant’s privacy.
II.

The Defendant’s Statements and the Physical Evidence

Although the majority concurs with the trial court’s ruling that the officer erred in stopping the defendant, it concludes that the taint of that unlawful intrusion had dissipated by the time the defendant made his inculpatory statements. A brief examination of the events following defendant’s detention will rebut that conclusion.
When the officer stopped defendant, he asked for the defendant’s name. The officer then called on his car radio to discover whether a warrant had been issued for anyone with that name. During that check, the defendant was not free to leave. When the officer learned that a person with that name was wanted by the military, he drove the defendant, in a police car, to a truck, so that the defendant could produce his identification.
When the defendant was unable to locate his identification, he was handcuffed, arrested, and read his Miranda rights. The pair then drove to the police station. As they reached the police parking lot, the defendant told the officer that his companion had burglarized a book store, although he was unsure where the store was. The defendant was then advised of his Miranda rights again, and the two left the parking lot in the police car to find the store. While the officer and the defendant looked for the store, defendant explained how his companion had burglarized it. Not until after the store was located, and in response to the officer’s repeated questioning, did the defendant finally admit that he too had entered the store. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, the defendant told the officer where the items stolen from the store had been taken. There is no evidence in the record to show what transpired during that period. The defendant then took the officer to the truck where the stolen items had been secreted. After the officer secured the stolen goods, he returned the defendant to the police station, where the defendant refused to sign a written statement and asked for a lawyer.
*88“This case lies at the crossroads of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.” Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 591, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975). The defendant’s inculpatory statements, and the evidence which was seized, were the product of an intrusion which violated the Fourth Amendment. However, the United States Supreme Court has never held that a per se “but for” rule is to be applied in such cases: not every Fourth Amendment violation results in the suppression of resulting incriminating statements. Evidence which has been obtained independent of the violation is still admissible against the defendant. Silverthorne v. United States, 251 U.S. 385, 40 S.Ct. 182, 64 L.Ed. 319 (1920). Statements produced by an unlawful invasion of the defendant’s privacy may also be admitted, if the statements were “sufficiently an act of free will to purge the primary taint of the unlawful invasion.” Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 486, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963).
However, the giving of Miranda warnings — the only circumstance intervening between the unlawful detention and the confession in this case — does nothing to purge the taint or constitute a means for the defendant to assert his free will. Although Miranda warnings may so alleviate the tensions of custody that statements made after those warnings may be admitted into evidence without violating the Fifth Amendment, if they are otherwise voluntary, those same warnings are not alone sufficient to purge the taint of a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
“Although, almost 90 years ago, the Court observed that the Fifth /Amendment is in ‘intimate relation’ with the Fourth,” Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 633 (1886), the Miranda warnings thus far have not been regarded as a means either of remedying or deterring violations of Fourth Amendment rights. Frequently, as here, rights under the two Amendments may appear to coalesce since ‘the “unreasonable searches and seizures” condemned in the Fourth Amendment are almost always made for the purpose of compelling a man to give evidence against himself, which in criminal cases is condemned in the Fifth Amendment.’ Ibid. . . . The exclusionary rule, however, when utilized to effectuate the Fourth Amendment, serves interests and policies that are distinct from those it serves under the Fifth. It is directed at all unlawful searches and seizures, and not merely those that happen to produce incriminating material or testimony as fruits. In short, exclusion of a confession made without Miranda warnings might be regarded as necessary to effectuate the Fifth Amendment, but it would not be sufficient fully to protect the Fourth. Miranda warnings, and the exclusion of a confession made without them, do not alone sufficiently deter a Fourth Amendment violation.
“Thus, even if the statements in this case were found to be voluntary under the Fifth Amendment, the Fourth Amendment issue remains. In order for the casual chain, between the illegal arrest and the statements made subsequent thereto, to be broken, Wong Sun requires not merely that the *89statement meet the Fifth Amendment standard of voluntariness but that it be ‘sufficiently an act of free will to purge the primary taint.’ 371 U.S. at 486. Wong Sun thus mandates consideration of a statement’s admissibility in light of the distinct policies and interests of the Fourth Amendment. “If Miranda warnings, by themselves, were held to attenuate the taint of an unconstitutional arrest, regardless of how wanton and purposeful the Fourth Amendment violation, the effect of the exclusionary rule would be substantially diluted. See Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721, 726-727 (1969). Arrests made without warrant or without probable cause, for questioning or ‘investigation,’ would be encouraged by the knowledge that evidence derived therefrom could well be made admissible at trial by the simple expedient of giving Miranda warnings. Any incentive to avoid Fourth Amendment violations would be eviscerated by making the warnings, in effect, a ‘cure-all,’ and the constitutional guarantee against unlawful searches and seizures could be said to be reduced to ‘a form of words.’” Brown v. Illinois, supra, at 601-603 (footnote omitted).
In determining whether the defendant’s statements in this case were the product of his free will, we must look not only to the presence or absence of Miranda warnings, but to three other factors set forth in Brown v. Illinois, supra:
“The temporal proximity of the arrest and the confession, the presence of intervening circumstances . . . and, particularly, the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct are all relevant.” Id. at 603-604 (footnotes omitted).
In this case, less than one hour elapsed between the arrest and the inculpatory statements. The only intervening circumstances were the arrest and handcuffing of the defendant, the officer’s continuing presence and questioning during that hour, and the giving of Miranda warnings. The trial court implicitly found that these circumstances did not serve to purge the taint of the original detention. Thus, neither the lapse of time nor the intervening circumstances demonstrate that the defendant had been given an opportunity to recover his free will before he made the incriminating statements. See Wong Sun v. United States, supra.
Finally, we must look for the “purpose and flagrancy” of the officer’s conduct. His purpose was solely to satisfy his curiosity. He had absolutely no other reason to detain the defendant.
Exclusion of this evidence is not an unwarranted sanction for this Fourth Amendment violation. The basic purpose of the exclusionary rule is to eliminate any reward to the state when it engages in illegal conduct. The officer’s actions in this case should require the clearest evidence that the taint of that illegal conduct has been attenuated.
“I would require the clearest indication of attenuation in cases in which official conduct was flagrantly abusive of Fourth Amendment rights. If, for example, the factors relied on by the police in determining to make the *90arrest were so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable, or if the evidence clearly suggested that the arrest was effectuated as a pretext for collateral objectives ... or the physical circumstances of the arrest, unnecessarily intrusive on personal privacy, I would consider the equalizing potential of Miranda warnings rarely sufficient to dissipate the taint. In such cases the deterrent value of the exclusionary rule is most likely to be effective, and the corresponding mandate to preserve judicial integrity, see United States v. Peltier, ante, p. 531; Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U.S. 433, 450 n. 25 (1974) , most clearly demands that the fruits of official misconduct be denied. I thus would require some demonstrably effective break in the chain of events leading from the illegal arrest to the statement, such as actual consultation with counsel or the accused’s presentation before a magistrate for a determination of probable cause, before the taint can be deemed removed, see Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103 (1975) ; cf. Johnson v. Louisiana, 406 U.S. 356, 365 (1972); Parker v. North Carolina, 397 U.S. 790, 796 (1970).” Brown v. Illinois, supra at 610-611 (Powell, J. concurring in part). (Emphasis added.)
The record in this case is totally inadequate to support a finding beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant’s inculpatory statements were voluntary. Moreover, when the facts of this case are analyzed in the manner commanded by Brown v. Illinois, supra, it is clear that the purposes of the exclusionary rule, and the enforcement of this court’s dictates as to the privacy rights of citizens, would be furthered by the exclusion of the defendant’s statements.
Accordingly, I would affirm the decision of the trial court.
MR. JUSTICE LEE and MR. JUSTICE CARRIGAN have authorized me to announce that they join me in this dissent.