Com. v. Comolli

• Decision Date: 03 November 1982
• Citation: 14 Mass.App.Ct. 607,441 N.E.2d 536
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Richard P. COMOLLI.
• Court: Appeals Court of Massachusetts

Page 536

441 N.E.2d 536

14 Mass.App.Ct. 607

COMMONWEALTH v. Richard P. COMOLLI.

Appeals Court of Massachusetts,

Middlesex.

Argued Sept. 16, 1982.

Decided Nov. 3, 1982.

Bernadette J. Twomey, Asst. Dist. Atty., for the Commonwealth.

Robert W. Gardner, Jr., Ayer, for defendant.

Before GREANEY, PERRETTA and KASS, JJ.

GREANEY, Justice.

This is the Commonwealth's interlocutory appeal from the order of a District Court judge, which allowed the defendant's motion to suppress oral statements made to a State police trooper at the scene of an automobile accident. G.L. c. 278, § 28E, inserted by St. 1979, c. 344, § 45. Mass.R.Crim.P. 15(a)(2), 378 Mass. 882-883 (1979). The judge filed a document entitled "Ruling of the Court" which contains only skeletal references to the facts surrounding the statements and which concludes that the statements were elicited contrary to the requirements of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).

At the hearing on the motion, State police Trooper John Ross testified that he arrived at the scene of a two-vehicle accident on Route 3 in Bedford at approximately 5:15 A.M. on December 20, 1980. Both vehicles were heavily damaged and neither could be driven. Bedford police officers told Ross that the driver of one vehicle had been transported to a hospital and that the other driver, the defendant, was sitting in a Bedford police cruiser. The temperature was near zero. Ten to fifteen minutes after he arrived, Trooper Ross spoke to the defendant for the first time, asking him to come to his cruiser. In the cruiser, the trooper asked the defendant if he needed medical care. The defendant declined. The defendant stated that he had not seen the other car until just before his vehicle struck it in the rear. He also identified the vehicle he had been operating and said that while he was not sure exactly how fast he had been going, he normally travelled on Route 3 at a speed of sixty to sixty-five miles per hour. The conversation with the defendant was interrupted at least twice when the trooper left the cruiser to speak with Registry Inspector Robert Moreschi and a police photographer as they arrived separately. Trooper Ross testified that he never told the defendant that he could or could not leave the scene and he was unsure as to how the defendant eventually left.

The trooper stayed at the accident site for approximately two hours. Later he went to the hospital where he learned that he could not speak to the victim because of his injuries. Thereafter he went with Inspector Moreschi to the place where the vehicles had been towed. After inspecting the vehicles, the investigating officers returned to the crash site to make observations and take measurements. These inspections were necessary because earlier observations had been conducted in darkness immediately after the accident. The trooper learned of the victim's death on December 22, and testified that he made the decision to charge the defendant with vehicular homicide, operating to endanger, and speeding, under G.L. c. 90, §§ 17, 24, and 24G, on December 23 or 24, after further discussing the case with Inspector Moreschi.

The defendant testified that he was in the State police cruiser for approximately one and one-half hours and that there had been at least three interruptions in the questioning, the first lasting fifteen to twenty minutes. He testified that the trooper "told me to sit in the car [and] that I was to remain in the car until he told me I could leave the car." He also testified that at one point Trooper Ross left the cruiser, saying, "Stay here, I'll be right back." It is not disputed that Miranda warnings were never given. The defendant testified that he left the scene after Trooper Ross said words to the effect of "I have just about all the answers I need. You may go now."

The judge ruled that the questioning amounted to custodial interrogation, which required Miranda warnings because "the questioning took place in a closed police cruiser at the request of the [t]rooper, the questioning lasted a good bit of time, including periods of renewed questioning during which the [t]rooper left the cruiser and returned leaving the defendant inside," and because "the defendant testified that he felt he could not leave the cruiser." The judge also indicated that once the defendant was identified as the driver of the vehicle that had struck the other vehicle in the rear, he was "the only logical suspect." He ruled that, "[i]n these circumstances, while some preliminary inquiry was appropriately investigatory, once certain key facts were obtained (location of cars, injury, and that the defendant was the operator), the questions about speed and manner of operation passed beyond investigation into evidence-gathering from the only known suspect." He then suppressed "answers to the [t]rooper's questions about speed and about how the accident happened."

In Commonwealth v. Merritt, 14 Mass.App. 601, 441 N.E.2d 532 (1982), decided today, we considered the special problems inherent in the application of Miranda to serious motor vehicle accidents. In this case, as in Merritt, initial observations by the investigating officer at the accident site were inconclusive as to whether a crime had been committed. It is immaterial, however, that a determination of criminal conduct had not been made at the time of the questioning if that questioning amounts to "custodial interrogation," sufficient to trigger the applicability of Miranda. It is not necessary to repeat here what we said in general terms in the Merritt decision about the meaning of "custodial interrogation." We turn to the four specific indicia of custody relied upon by the judge in his determination that the interrogation violated Miranda.

1. Location. The judge felt that questioning in a police cruiser at an officer's request was indicative of custody. The use of police premises for questioning, however, does not necessarily imply custodial interrogation. Oregon v. Mathiason, 429 U.S. 492, 495, 97 S.Ct. 711, 714, 50 L.Ed.2d 714 (1977). The testimony indicates that the questioning took place on a highway in the pre-dawn hours of a bitterly cold winter day. The defendant's vehicle had been demolished. These conditions suggest that any questioning, custodial or not, might reasonably be expected to have taken place in a police vehicle, simply by reason of lack of any alternative shelter, heat, or light. It further suggests that the necessity of using the police vehicle should have been obvious to the defendant, thereby minimizing its subjective effect as an indication that he was in custody. In the absence of any explicit or implicit finding by the judge that a reasonable person would, in the circumstances, have perceived the police cruiser as a tool or token of custody, we are reluctant to assign great weight to this factor.

2. Duration. We are not able to attach much significance to the judge's conclusion that "the questioning lasted a good bit of time, including periods of renewed questioning during which the [t]rooper left the cruiser and returned leaving the defendant inside. It has been held that taking such a "quantitative approach" in analyzing whether an interrogation "was too long to constitute general on-the-scene questioning" ignores "the fundamental inquiry mandated by Miranda--whether the person is placed in a coercive environment which restricts his freedom so as to render him 'in custody,' Oregon v. Mathiason, supra, 429...