Court Opinion

ID: 9452898
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:56:00.105635+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:24.609245
License: Public Domain

ELY,
Circuit Judge (dissenting in part):
While I concur in the judgment of reversal, I cannot agree with the majority that there was here no violation of Rule 5(a), Federal Rules of -Criminal Procedure.
Irwin was taken into custody by federal agents at 9 o’clock in the morning of December 13, 1963. Beginning one hour later, his interrogation continued uninterrupted, except for “numerous breaks for coffee, lunch, dinner, and toilet re*54lief,” for more than twelve hours. More than seven hours.of this period were daylight hours of a weekday, a time when, I assume, a United States Commissioner would be readily accessible in the metropolitan city of San Diego. But it was not until 3 o’clock the next morning, after the interrogation had been completed and Irwin’s statements had been reduced to writing, that the federal officers finally arranged for the arraignment required by Rule 5(a).
The majority opinion states that our decisions in Ginoza v. United States, 279 F.2d 616 (9th Cir. 1960), and Morales v. United States, 344 F.2d 846 (9th Cir. 1965), “are distinguishable on their facts from the case at bar.” I disagree. In those eases, which held that federal officers would not be permitted to avoid the obligation imposed upon them by Rule 5(a), we undertook to establish requirements which were capable of being easily understood and applied. And, in the great bulk of cases which have arisen since Ginoza and Morales were handed down, federal officers have discharged that obligation in accordance with their requirements. The instant case involved the alleged abduction of the son of one of the world’s best known entertainers, and perhaps it was because of the unusual public attention which focused on the matter that the particular agents were remiss in performing that obligation here.
The majority characterizes Irwin’s declarations as “spontaneous” so as to apply the rule of United States v. Mitchell. Such a description connotes, to my mind, that those declarations were made impulsively, without deliberation and without external constraint or stimulus. I cannot accept the application of that label to statements which were obtained in an environment of interrogation which extended over a period of twelve hours.
I regret that my brothers have chosen to take a step which, in my view, must lead to new areas of controversy in the District Courts, as well as in our own.