Justices OK Videotaping of Drunk-Driving Suspects

Police officers may ask a drunk-driving suspect to answer routine questions and videotape his slurred responses without warning him of his constitutional right to remain silent, the Supreme Court said Monday.

The 8-1 decision creates an exception to the Miranda doctrine for “routine booking questions” at a police station.

The ruling also upholds the growing use by the police of videotape, which can be a powerful weapon for prosecutors. In one study presented to the court, 56 of 57 drunk-driving suspects in one small town “decided to plead guilty to the charges rather than face their movie debut in court.”

If a suspect is in police custody, officers must warn him of his right to remain silent and to have a lawyer before they try to “elicit a confession” from him, as the court said in the 1966 case of Miranda vs. Arizona.

But merely asking a suspect to state his name, address, height, weight, eye color, date of birth and age is not a “custodial interrogation,” the court said Monday, and is therefore not covered by the Miranda ruling.

The decision reverses a Pennsylvania appellate court, which concluded that officers may not use evidence from any “interrogation” in a station house without first warning the suspect of his rights.

Last year, the high court overturned a Pennsylvania court that had said that officers may not question a suspect along the roadside without first advising him of his rights. In that case, Pennsylvania vs. Bruder, the high court said that a motorist who is stopped by police is not “in custody” and, therefore, the Miranda rule does not apply.

In this case (Pennsylvania vs. Muniz, 89-213), both sides agreed that Inocencio Muniz was in custody when an officer brought him into the station house in the early morning of Nov. 30, 1986. He had been picked up and smelled of alcohol. With the videotape running, he was asked a number of routine questions, including the “date of his sixth birthday.”

At his trial, the videotaped evidence was presented and he was convicted. After a state appeals court ruled this evidence inadmissible, state prosecutors appealed to the high court.

Justice William J. Brennan Jr., one of the architects of the Miranda doctrine, said Monday that all of the routine answers given by Muniz may be used as evidence against him because they are not “testimonial in nature.”

The Miranda doctrine is based on the Sixth Amendment, which says that a person may not “be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” However, in 1966, the same year the Miranda case was decided, the court ruled also that suspects may be compelled to provide samples of their breath, blood and handwriting, or stand in a police lineup. All of these actions could be incriminating. The Sixth Amendment--and therefore Miranda--covers only “testimonial” statements that could be incriminating, Brennan reiterated.

Although upholding nearly all of the evidence in this case, Brennan and four other members of the court said that the question about the date of the suspect’s sixth birthday should not be allowed. This question was designed to test Muniz’s thought processes and therefore is closer to the “testimonial response” covered by the Miranda doctrine.

Justice Thurgood Marshall filed the lone dissent in the case.