Jones v. United States8/16/2001
v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 301 (1980). " he three officers should have known that their actions in approaching and isolating appellant, retrieving the two plastic drug bags [in front of appellant], and immediately asking appellant for identification would likely compel an explanation regarding ownership of the drugs." Jones v. United States, 747 A.2d 558, 562 (D.C. 1999). Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
However, this case provides a good opportunity to comment on how far this court (and others) has departed from the directives (reaffirmed and explained) of the United States Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), and Innis, supra. While it can fairly be said that this court, as an institution, takes pride in its strict adherence to precise statutory and judicial language, in the instant case, the majority, relying primarily on legal reasoning of court decisions in other jurisdictions, appears to be ignoring the fundamental legal principles it purports to refine.
A paradox meets us initially. The majority tells us that the Miranda warnings apply only if "custodial interrogation" exists, i.e., there must be "custody" and "interrogation" at the same time. Yet, the majority does not reach the question of "custody" (a question vigorously debated throughout this litigation) because it agrees with the government that, even if the defendant were in custody, his incriminating statement was not the product of police interrogation. That approach, i.e., to not even recognize the impact of custody on this case, arguably catapults us back, historically, to the very reasons for the promulgation of the Miranda rules and their constitutional underpinnings.
While the starting point for the definition of interrogation in this context is obviously the Miranda decision itself, the most instructive precedent for the scope of that definition is the Supreme Court's decision in Innis. In Miranda, the Court stated, " custodial interrogation, we mean questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way." Miranda, 384 U.S. at 444 (emphasis added); see also Innis, supra, 446 U.S. at 298. As the Court later noted in Innis, this language "and other references throughout the [Miranda] opinion to `questioning' might suggest that the Miranda rules were to apply only to those police interrogation practices that involve express questioning of a defendant while in custody." Innis, supra, 446 U.S. at 298. After examining the policies behind the Miranda decision, however, the Court in Innis chose not to "limit the ambit of Miranda to express questioning;" id. at 299 n.3, rather, it held that Miranda is implicated "whenever a person in custody is subjected to either express questioning or its functional equivalent." Id. at 300 (emphasis added). Specifically, the Court in Innis observed:
he term `interrogation' under Miranda refers not only to express questioning, but also to any words or actions on the part of the police (other than those normally attendant to arrest and custody) that the police should know are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from the suspect. The latter portion of this definition focuses primarily upon the perceptions of the suspect, rather than the intent of the police. Id. at 301 (emphasis added) (footnotes omitted).
Therefore, in Innis, the Supreme Court expanded the definition of custodial interrogation as contemplated in Miranda, rather than, as the majority's holding accomplishes, scaled back that definition. See Derrington v. United States, 488 A.2d 1314, 1326 n.9 (D.C. 1985), cert. denied, 486 U.S. 1009 (1988).
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 District of Columbia DUI Attorneys
DUI Lawyers
|