Justices Take Up Police Interrogation Case

The Supreme Court, taking up an appeal from the Oxnard police, agreed Monday to decide whether officers are shielded from being sued if they pressure a badly wounded victim of a police shooting to confess his wrongdoing in a hospital emergency room.

Oliverio Martinez, a 32-year-old farm worker, was left blind and paralyzed after a run-in with Oxnard police on a November evening in 1997.

Martinez was riding a bicycle home and took a shortcut across a vacant lot. Two officers, investigating a tip about drug dealing nearby, ordered him to stop and dismount, which he did. When an officer grabbed a knife in his waistband, the two struggled. Martinez allegedly reached for the officer’s gun, and a policewoman shot him five times, including once in the temple.

Taken to a hospital, Martinez said he was dying. Sgt. Ben Chavez, suspecting the same, went along in the ambulance in hopes of getting a tape-recorded statement that would exonerate the officers.

In pain, Martinez repeatedly asked the sergeant to leave, as did hospital workers.

“I am choking. I am dying,” Martinez said in a taped conversation.

“OK, yes. Tell me what happened,” Chavez said. “If you are going to die, tell me what happened.”

But Martinez survived, and he sued Oxnard police for violating his constitutional rights by stopping him illegally, for using excessive force and for seeking to force a confession from his hospital bed.

A federal judge in Los Angeles and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals cleared the case to go to trial, but the Supreme Court intervened Monday, saying it will first hear the city’s claim that Chavez is immune from being sued for his effort to extract a statement from the wounded man.

A ruling in Chavez vs. Martinez, 01-1444, due next year, will decide whether the police can use coercive methods to obtain statements, as long as the person’s words are not used against him in a criminal case.

Alan E. Wisotsky, the city’s attorney, argued that the constitutional ban on coercive questioning by the police applies only to suspects who are in custody. Moreover, it covers only incriminating statements that are used in a criminal case, he said.

“First, [Martinez] was not in custody. If he had had a miraculous recovery, he was free to leave,” Wisotsky said in a telephone interview. “Second, at no time did Martinez ask for an attorney. And third, Miranda only applies to statements introduced at a criminal trial.”

His appeal to the high court says the civil suit against Chavez should be thrown out because the city had no criminal case against Martinez.

Martinez “was never charged with any crime,” the appeal said. So the hospital-bed statements were not “sought to be introduced against him in any criminal proceeding.”

Cities routinely defend their police officers in civil suits and are ultimately responsible for paying damages that might result.

The hospital conversation loomed large in pretrial discussions, lawyers on both sides said.

Oxnard’s lawyers wanted to tell a jury that Martinez admitted he had grabbed the officer’s gun and pointed it at an officer and therefore was largely responsible for the shooting.

Lawyers for Martinez deny he made such an admission. They argue that it is unconscionable to use comments from a shooting victim who is in intense pain.

Under Supreme Court precedent, police officers are immune from being sued unless they violate a constitutional right that is clear and well-established.

In November, the 9th Circuit rejected Chavez’s claim of immunity.

Judge Richard Tallman said the sergeant stayed in the emergency room area for 45 minutes and refused repeated requests to leave. He also did not give Martinez the so-called Miranda warnings.

“A reasonable officer, questioning a suspect who had been shot five times by the police and then arrested, who was receiving medical treatment for excruciating, life-threatening injuries that sporadically caused him to lose consciousness, would have known that persistent interrogation of the suspect, despite repeated requests to stop, violated his [constitutional] right to be free from coercive interrogation,” Tallman wrote for a unanimous court.

Los Angeles attorney R. Samuel Paz, who is representing Martinez, had urged the high court to deny the city’s appeal so the case could go to trial.

“This is a tragic case. [Martinez] is blind and paralyzed. He is living with his father, but he needs physical therapy and regular care,” Paz said

While sympathizing with Martinez’s condition, Wisotsky said the city and its officers are not responsible. “Sure, it’s tragic, but he made a huge mistake.... When you grab a gun and point it at a police officer, they have a right to act in self defense,” he said.

Savage reported from Washington and Wilson from Ventura.