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People v. Mayfield1/2/1997
he surrendered, however, he was not immediately permitted to speak to his father, and Deputy Stein would not give him a direct answer when defendant asked whether he would be permitted to speak to his father. Defendant insists that the officers present should have known that defendant would interpret this equivocation as an implied demand that he cooperate by making incriminating statements.
We find this argument unpersuasive. Defendant spoke to his father on the telephone from the residence and surrendered only after he could see his father outside. Defendant evidently regarded his father's presence as an assurance of defendant's own physical safety during the process of surrender. Once that process was complete, the officers had no reason to believe that further communication with his father was a matter of such grave importance to defendant that he would feel compelled to incriminate himself in order to persuade the officers to grant his request. Nothing in the officers' statements to defendant or in defendant's statements to Deputy Stein suggested that either had any such bargain in mind.
Accordingly, we conclude that defendant's statements to Deputy Stein were not the product of custodial interrogation. The trial court properly denied the defense motion to exclude them from evidence under Miranda v. Arizona, (supra) , 384 U.S. 436.
4. Inherent Improbability
Defendant contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion to exclude the testimony of Deputy Stein regarding defendant's postarrest statements on the ground that the testimony was inherently improbable. Defendant cites no authority for the proposition that the testimony of an ordinary witness may be excluded on this ground. Instead, he relies on authority that (1) testimony that is inherently incredible is insufficient to support a conviction (e.g., United States v. Chancey (11 Cir. 1983) 715 F.2d 543, 546-547); (2) a conviction will be reversed if it was obtained by evidence that the prosecution knew or should have known was false (e.g., United States v. Agurs (1976) 427 U.S. 97, 103 [49 L. Ed. 2d 342, 349-350, 96 S. Ct. 2392]); (3) a conviction will be reversed if it was obtained by scientific evidence using techniques the reliability of which had not been adequately proven (e.g., People v. Hayes (1989) 49 Cal. 3d 1260, 1268-1270 [265 Cal. Rptr. 132, 783 P.2d 719]); and (4) one reason for excluding evidence of an involuntary or coerced confession is that such confessions are unreliable (e.g., Brown v. Mississippi (1936) 297 U.S. 278 [80 L. Ed. 682, 56 S. Ct. 461]).
We are skeptical of the claim that the testimony of an ordinary witness who claims to have heard the confession or damaging admission of a criminal defendant may be excluded from evidence on the ground that it is inherently improbable. Generally, "doubts about the credibility of in-court witness should be left for the jury's resolution." ( People v. Cudjo (1993) 6 Cal. 4th 585, 609 [25 Cal. Rptr. 2d 390, 863 P.2d 635].) Assuming for the sake of argument that such a ground of exclusion exists, defendant has not shown that it should have been invoked to exclude the testimony of Deputy Stein.
In claiming that Deputy Stein's testimony was inherently incredible, defendant focuses primarily on Deputy's Stein testimony that he remembered every word defendant spoke and that he wrote down defendant's statement, after a lapse of five to ten minutes, without the slightest error. But even if we assume that Deputy Stein's memory is not as precise as he claimed (a proposition that was never tested), this would not destroy the credibility of his testimony or its relevance as evidence of defendant's guilt. Defendant's stateme
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