Miranda Ruling Backs Police

The California Supreme Court made it easier Thursday for police to obtain confessions from suspects even after they have requested a lawyer.

Ruling in a San Diego murder case, the state high court decided 5 to 2 that an admission illegally obtained at a police station does not invalidate a later confession made at a suspect’s home.

Justice Marvin R. Baxter, writing for the majority, said Thursday’s holding is limited to situations in which there is no “ruse, subterfuge, or pretext” by police to deliberately violate a suspect’s right to have a lawyer present during an interrogation.

Two dissenting justices complained the decision gives police “carte blanche” to obtain confessions without regard to suspects’ rights.

“We would be naive to assume that law enforcement will not take advantage of the new evidentiary door the majority’s holdings would helpfully open for them,” wrote Justice Ming W. Chin, whose dissent was signed by Chief Justice Ronald M. George.

The court ruled in the case of Charles Edward Storm, who was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his wife in 1996. During an investigation by the San Diego Sheriff’s Department, Storm agreed to take a polygraph test.

He was advised of his right to legal counsel, to remain silent and that anything he said would be used against him, and he waived those rights, according to the opinion.

But when the polygraph operator told him the test showed he was lying, he said he wanted to consult a lawyer.

Instead of immediately ending the questioning, the polygraph operator encouraged Storm to keep talking. Storm then admitted he had killed his wife and claimed it was an assisted suicide.

But because police failed to end the interrogation when Storm asked for a lawyer, the confession could not be used in court, prosecutors advised investigating officers.

Based on that opinion, detectives devised a new strategy: They decided to release Storm and contact him again later in hopes of obtaining a legal confession that could be used in court.

Two days later, detectives went to Storm’s home and told him they wanted to hear his side of the story. They promised to leave after the conversation ended and told Storm he could go about his business.

Storm confessed again, and reiterated that he stabbed his wife because she wanted to die and asked that he help her. The detectives arrested him the next day.

The judge at Storm’s trial ruled his first confession inadmissible but held that the second confession could be used because it was given at Storm’s home without coercion. An appellate court agreed.

During his trial, Storm testified that he had not killed his wife in an assisted suicide. Instead, he said, he “snapped” during an argument when she disparaged his sexual abilities.

Baxter, writing for the majority, observed that the requirement that suspects be read their constitutional rights applies only to those who are questioned in “the coercive atmosphere of police custody.”

The court agreed the first confession could not be used as evidence against Storm, because police should have stopped questioning him after he asked for a lawyer.

“But when the police realized their mistake, they released him, and they contacted him only after a two-day interval during which he had ample time, opportunity and incentive to consult counsel outside the coercive atmosphere of custody,” Baxter wrote.

The court rejected defense contentions that the first confession in violation of Miranda tainted the second confession. Storm spoke “of his own free will” to detectives at his home, Baxter noted.

“The two-day interval between interviews, during which defendant was free from custody, served to further attenuate any taint,” Baxter wrote. “The statement obtained at defendant’s residence was itself entirely voluntary.”

Chief Justice George, in a one-page dissent, said the court is required to follow the rule established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1966 that police must advise suspects of their constitutional rights. That case, familiar to every police officer in America, is known as the Miranda decision.

“We should not countenance a ruse whereby Miranda is given judicial lip service--obeyed in name but not in fact,” the chief justice wrote. “Unfortunately, the court’s opinion today will encourage precisely the sort of subterfuge by some law enforcement investigators, with the ensuing violation of constitutional rights, that Miranda sought to end.”

Chin, joined by George, said no one welcomes the prospect of tossing out a murderer’s confession.

“Often, and quite possibly in this case, such a confession affords the primary evidence linking the suspect to his crime,” Chin said. But there are some cases when throwing out a confession becomes “not only an unwelcome and distasteful option but a constitutional necessity,” Chin wrote.

He said the second confession might have been admissible if made many days after the first interrogation or if the police had again advised Storm of his rights.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Holly D. Wilkens, who argued the case for the prosecution, said she expects the defense to seek U.S. Supreme Court review.

She also said she does not believe the ruling will encourage police to illegally obtain confessions in hopes of winning an admissible confession later.

“I just don’t think there is any incentive to be deliberately violating people’s rights on the off chance you can release them” and get them to confess again later, she said. “More often than not, you are never going to receive the same statement again.”

But UC Berkeley law professor Charles D. Weisselberg, who wrote a brief in the case for the state’s criminal defense lawyers’ bar, said he fears “law enforcement will use this case aggressively.”

“I think this decision will certainly be reported in [police] training bulletins throughout California,” said Weisselberg, who represented the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice.

He pointed to a Shasta County district attorney’s bulletin for police that came out shortly after the Court of Appeal in San Diego ruled the second confession Storm gave admissible.

The description of the ruling was titled: “Catch and Release and Catch ‘em Again.”