Court Opinion

ID: 9754207
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:50:19.935653+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:50.681221
License: Public Domain

Justice ALBIN,
dissenting.
Defendant Demetrius Diaz-Bridges was subject to a classic station-house interrogation, during which he was isolated in a room and questioned by three law enforcement officers over the course of ten hours. The officers read Diaz-Bridges his Miranda rights but failed to honor his right to remain silent invoked by his plain and simple request to spealf with his mother. Diaz-Bridges *573made the request to speak with his mother after more than three hours of interrogation that included repeated pronouncements by the officers expressing their belief that he was lying, that he was guilty, and that he should confess. He made the request to speak with his mother after a lengthy period of silence and uncontrollable sobbing, and after he was an apparently broken man. Logic suggests that had Diaz-Bridges’s request to speak with his mother been honored, the officers would have had to break off questioning, at least for the period while he spoke with her. The State conceded at oral argument that had Diaz-Bridges phrased his request in the following form—“Will you stop questioning me until such time as I can speak with my mother?”—the officers would have been obligated to cease the interrogation.
Until today, the protection of the Miranda rights did not depend on such linguistic technicalities. Now that the majority has failed to uphold the trial court’s suppression of defendant’s confession, a suspect will likely have to provide a formulaic response to invoke his rights.
I cannot join the majority opinion because it clashes with our well-established precedent that a suspect need not “express a desire to terminate interrogation with the utmost of legal precision” and that “an equivocal indication of a desire to remain silent ... suffices to invoke Miranda’s requirement that the interrogation cease.” State v. Johnson, 320 N.J. 263, 281, 576 A.2d 834 (1990) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). I cannot join the majority because there is no prescribed form, no magic words, required for invoking the right to remain silent and because the majority ignores the reality that an anxious, isolated, and legally uneducated suspect subject to the overt and inherent psychological pressures of a police-dominated atmosphere will not speak in the clipped, precise language of a lawyer.
Because I believe that the majority has taken a step backwards from the protections afforded suspects subject to custodial interrogation, I respectfully dissent.
*574I.
“The right against self-incrimination is guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and this state’s common law, now embodied in statute, N.J.S.A 2A:84A-19, and evidence rule, N.J.R.E. 503.”1 State v. Nyhammer, 197 N.J. 383, 399, 963 A.2d 316 (2009). The police are required to provide a suspect with Miranda warnings2 to ensure that he will “have a meaningful opportunity to exercise his right against self-incrimination.” Id. at 400, 963 A.2d 316. jThe “ ‘rubber hose’ scenario” was not the concern of the Miranda decision; rather, it was the modern techniques for breaking the resistance or undermining the will of a suspect. State v. Hartley, 103 N.J. 252, 262-63, 511 A.2d 80 (1986). The purpose of Miranda warnings is “[t]o counteract the inherent psychological pressures in a police-dominated atmosphere that might compel a person ‘to speak where he would not otherwise do so freely.’ ” Nyhammer, supra, 197 N.J. at 400, 963 A.2d 316 (quoting Miranda, supra, 384 U.S. at 467, 86 S.Ct. at 1624, 16 L.Ed.2d at 719).
We have held that to safeguard the right against self-incrimination “ ‘a request, “however ambiguous,” to terminate questioning ... must be diligently honored.’ ” State v. Bey (Bey II), 112 N.J. 123, 142, 548 A.2d 887 (1988) (quoting Hartley, supra, 103 N.J. at 263, 511 A.2d 80). Thus, “[a]ny words or conduct that reasonably appear to be inconsistent with defendant’s willingness to discuss his ease with the police are tantamount to an invocation of the *575privilege against self-incrimination.” Id. at 136, 548 A.2d 887 (emphasis added). The words used by a suspect are not to be viewed in a vacuum, but rather in “the full context in which they were spoken.” State v. Roman, 382 N.J.Super. 44, 64, 887 A.2d 715 (App.Div.2005) (citing State v. Martini, 131 N.J. 176, 231-32, 619 A.2d 1208 (1993)).
If the police are unclear whether a suspect has invoked his right to remain silent, two alternatives are presented: (1) terminate the interrogation or (2) ask only those questions necessary to clarify whether the defendant intended to invoke his right to silence. State v. Johnson, 120 N.J. 263, 281-84, 576 A.2d 834 (1990).3
We already have held that the request to speak with a parent may be the substantial equivalent of invoking the right to remain silent. In State v. Harvey, we found that a defendant invoked his right to remain silent when, after being held for three days in custody, he asked to speak with his father. 121 N.J. 407, 418-20, 581 A.2d 483 (1990), cert. denied, 499 U.S. 931, 111 S.Ct. 1336, 113 L.Ed.2d 268 (1991). We determined that the request for “the chance to consult with a close family member” after three days in custody was qualitatively different from Bey II, supra, 112 N.J. at 139, 548 A.2d 887, in which “the defendant ‘requested permission to lay down and to think about what happened,’ ” (right to remain silent not invoked), and qualitatively similar to Hartley, supra, 103 N.J. at 258, 511 A.2d 80, in which the defendant stated, “I don’t believe I want to make a statement at this time,” (right to remain silent invoked). Harvey, supra, 121 N.J. at 419, 581 A.2d 483. The majority has strained to distinguish Harvey from the facts here, but in the final analysis, there is no meaningful difference between the two cases.
*576Whether a suspect is in custody three hours or three days should not matter in determining whether the police have honored a suspect’s right against self-incrimination. In this case, that obligation could have been fulfilled in one of three ways: acceding to defendant’s request to speak 'with his mother, stopping the interrogation, or, at the very least, clarifying whether he was invoking his right to remain silent.:
Let us now apply these precedents to the facts before us.
IIj
Defendant was a suspect in the January 29, 2008 murder of Elizabeth O’Brien in Jefferson Township, a municipality in Morris County. After O’Brien’s body was discovered the next day, defendant was questioned several Times by county and municipal law enforcement officers. Defendant denied guilt in the offense and was not arrested. By May 2, 2008, defendant was living with his mother and step-father in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Because the murder investigation had come to focus on defendant, Morris County Prosecutor’s detectives and Jefferson Township police officers traveled to Raleigh to further interrogate defendant. On May 2, defendant voluntarily agreed to accompany the officers to a Raleigh police station to answer questions about the O’Brien murder. Defendant was taken to a windowless interrogation room and seated on one side of a table. Arrayed on the other side of the table were Detectives Dangler and Caruso and Sergeant Wilson. For the first three hours, the three officers calmly questioned defendant, who repeatedly denied committing the murder. The tenor of the questioning, however, changed at approximately three hours and eleven minutes into the interrogation.
At that point, the officers informed defendant that they believed he was lying and that he was holding back the truth. They repeated those accusations for the next seventeen minutes. Although defendant reacted with muted flashes of anger, he continued to maintain his innocence. j
*577At approximately three hours and twenty-eight minutes, the tone of the interrogation took a new turn when the officers directly accused defendant of murdering O’Brien. Sergeant Wilson minced no words, informing defendant, “I know that you killed her.” Over the course of the next ten minutes, sometimes talking over one another, all three officers repeatedly told defendant that they knew he had killed O’Brien and that he needed to explain why he did it. During this barrage of questioning, defendant slumped forward, cradled his head in one hand, and began to cry. At this point, Detective Caruso squatted down in front of defendant and began rubbing his back.
Over the next several minutes, the officers took a comforting approach, compassionately advising defendant that “[w]e all make mistakes” and prompting him to “get it off [his] chest.” During this period while defendant continued to sob, the officers encouraged defendant to confess as Detective Caruso and Sergeant Wilson took turns rubbing his back.
At three hours and forty-two minutes into the interrogation, defendant, while still crying and holding his head in one hand, asked the officers, “Can I just call my mom first?” Sergeant Wilson replied, “We want to hear first what you have to say,” and then promised defendant he would get to speak with his mother afterward. Over the next nine minutes, defendant stopped responding and cried uncontrollably, as the three officers, in tandem, provided encouraging words, reassuring him that he was not a “bad person,” and that they would “help [him] through this.” All the while, Sergeant Wilson and Detective Caruso continued to pat and rub defendant’s back. During this time, defendant was not permitted to call his mother, and the officers never attempted to clarify whether the request to speak with his parent meant that he wanted the questioning to stop.
At three hours and fifty-one minutes into the interrogation, defendant began his confession. Over the next hour and twelve minutes, defendant provided a detailed account of the murder. After a twenty-eight minute break, the officers gave defendant fresh Miranda warnings, secured a rights waiver, and attempted *578to take a formal statement. Defendant complained that he “need[ed] a minute,” felt physically ill, and later vomited in the bathroom. Over the next forty-eight minutes, although defendant asked for his mother eight times and did not once answer a question about the murder, the officers neither permitted a call to be made nor halted the interrogation.
Finally, six hours and forty-eight minutes into the interrogation, defendant was permitted to calf his mother. Afterwards, the interrogation resumed and defendant ultimately confessed anew. How defendant would have proceeded had he been permitted to speak to his mother before he first confessed, we shall never know. Once defendant incriminated himself, the “cat already was out of the bag”—asserting the right to remain silent would have appeared as an exercise in futility. See State v. O’Neill, 193 N.J. 148, 171 n. 13, 936 A.2d 438 (2007); see also United States v. Bayer, 331 U.S. 532, 540-41, 67 S.Ct. 1394, 1398, 91 L.Ed. 1654, 1660 (1947) (“[A]fter an accused has once let the cat out of the bag by confessing, no matter what the inducement, he is never thereafter free of the psychological and practical disadvantages of having confessed.”).
IIL
Based on its review of the videotape of defendant’s interrogation, the trial court concluded that the officers failed to “scrupulously honor” defendant’s right to Remain silent because even “an equivocal assertion of the right ... should be interpreted in a light most favorable to the defendant.” (Quoting State v. Burno-Taylor, 400 N.J.Super. 581, 607, 948 A.2d 717 (App.Div.2008)) (internal quotation marks omitted). In suppressing the entirety of defendant’s statement after he requested to speak with his mother, the court reasoned: i
In this case, given the defendant’s silence and weeping before he asks to call his mother, his moaning and silence for some time after this request is refused, before he finally capitulates and admits his guilt, it should have been clear to the detectives that he might well have wanted to exercise his right to remain silent____
Instead of treating his request to call his mother as an attempt to exercise his right to stop the questioning as guaranteed by Miranda, or at the very least *579determining from him if he really wanted to stop talking then, the detectives continued] to pressure him to confess, telling them he had to talk to them. The resulting confession cannot be considered a product of the defendant’s free will and may not be admitted as evidence against him.
I believe that a de novo review of the tape supports those findings. More to the point, the State has failed to meet its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt the voluntariness of defendant’s confession to the police. See O’Neill, supra, 193 N.J. at 168 n. 12, 936 A.2d 438.
The three officers did not offend defendant’s right against self-incrimination by their relentless and extended accusatory questioning of him. But the officers were required to scrupulously honor defendant’s constitutional and state common-law right against self-incrimination. The officers failed to do so when they refused to recognize his simple request to speak with his mother as, at least, an equivocal exercise of his right to remain silent. See Harvey, supra, 121 N.J. at 419, 581 A.2d 483. After all, defendant could not speak to both the officers and his mother at the same time. In light of the surrounding circumstances, defendant’s request to speak with his mother was a proxy for invoking his right to remain silent.
Before defendant made the request to speak to his mother, for ten minutes, he was uncontrollably sobbing with his head in his hand, and verbally unresponsive. Stopping to clarify whether defendant intended to invoke his right to silence when he asked to speak with his mother would have imposed a minimal burden on the officers. But evidently they were intent on plowing ahead until a confession was extracted. Defendant had to make eight requests to speak with his mother before questioning stopped so he could do so. By then, defendant had incriminated himself and any invocation of the right to remain silent could clearly have been viewed as futile.
The majority makes much of the gory details of the crime involved in this case. However, constitutional rights are not rationed according to the nature of the crime of which a suspect is accused.
*580Miranda was intended to protect the rights of the vulnerable suspect, unversed in the law, isolated in the inherently coercive atmosphere of a police station, ¡and subjected to interrogation techniques designed to undermine his resistance and compel him “to speak where he would not otherwise do so freely.” Miranda, supra, 384 U.S. at 467, 86 S.Ct. at 1624, 16 L.Ed.2d at 719. Those rights are less secure now. More ¡has been lost in this appeal than Diaz-Bridges’s failure to suppress his confession.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.
For affirmance in part/reversaí in part/remandment—Justices HOENS and PATTERSON and Judge WEFING (temporarily assigned)—3.
Dissenting—Chief Justice RABÑER and Justice ALBIN—2.
Not Participating—Justice LONG and LaVECCHIA—2.

 See U.S. Const, amend. V ("No person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself____”); N.J.S.A. 2A:84A-19 ("[E]veiy natural person has a right to refuse to disclose in an action or to a police officer or other official any matter that will incriminate him or expose him to a penalty or a forfeiture of his estate____”).

 Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966) held that before a custodial interrogation "the [accused] must be warned that he has a right to remain silent, that any statement he does make may be used as evidence against him, and that he has ;a right to the presence of an attorney, either retained or appointed.” Id. at 444, 86 S.Ct. at 1612, 16 L.Ed.2d at 706-07.

 Although it is true that police officers "are not obliged to accept any words or conduct, no matter how ambiguous, as a conclusive indication that a suspect desires to terminate questioning," Bey II, supra, 112 N.J. at 136-37, 548 A.2d 887 (emphasis added), at a minimum they must seek clarification before proceeding.