Gonzalez v. State
| Decision Date | 20 December 2012 |
| Docket Number | Sept. Term, 2012.,No. 4,4 |
| Citation | 57 A.3d 484,429 Md. 632 |
| Parties | Ramiro Arce GONZALEZ v. STATE of Maryland. |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Juan P. Reyes, Asst. Public Defender (Paul B. DeWolfe, Public Defender, Office of the Public Defender, Baltimore, MD), on brief, for petitioner.
Todd W. Hesel, Honors Atty. (Douglas F. Gansler, Atty. Gen. of Maryland, Baltimore, MD), on brief, for respondent.
Argued before BELL, C.J., HARRELL, BATTAGLIA, GREENE, ADKINS, BARBERA, and McDONALD, JJ.
It is settled that, before conducting a custodial interrogation, the police must comply with the dictates of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). Miranda requires the police to advise the suspect that “he has the right to remain silent, that anything he says can be used against him in a court of law, that he has the right to the presence of an attorney, and that if he cannot afford an attorney one will be appointed for him prior to any questioning if he so desires.” Id. at 479, 86 S.Ct. 1602. Only if the suspect, upon receiving valid warnings, makes a knowing, intelligent, and voluntary waiver of the rights embodied in the warnings may the police question the suspect. Id. at 478–79, 86 S.Ct. 1602. In the present case, we must decide whether the police complied with both the “warnings” and “waiver” requirements of Miranda before interrogating Petitioner, Ramiro Arce Gonzalez.
Petitioner is a Mexican immigrant who does not speak or comprehend the English language. His native language is Mixtec, an indigenous language spoken in a particular region of Mexico.1 The police arrested Petitioner in connection with a murder. Through a state trooper who used a combination of Spanish and, in explaining the words “court” and “attorney,” Mixtec, the police issued the Miranda warnings and received Petitioner's waiver of the rights embodied in those warnings. The same state trooper acted as the interpreter during the subsequent interrogation, which was conducted entirely in Spanish. During the interrogation Petitioner made a statement connecting him to the murder.
Before trial, Petitioner sought suppression of the statement on the grounds that he did not receive proper Miranda warnings and, consequently, was unable to make a knowing, intelligent, and voluntary waiver of the rights addressed in those warnings. The suppression court denied the motion. Petitioner's statement to the police was admitted into evidence at trial, and he was convicted of first degree murder and related offenses.
On appeal to the Court of Special Appeals, Petitioner argued, among other claims of error, that the State failed to prove that he was properly advised of, and validly waived, the Miranda rights. A panel of the Court of Special Appeals issued an unreported opinion holding that the record developed at the suppression hearing sufficed to permit the court to rule that the Miranda warnings and Petitioner's waiver complied with constitutional dictates. For the reasons that follow, we agree with the Court of Special Appeals.
The trial that led to Petitioner's conviction for first degree premeditated murder was conducted over three days in October 2009. The crime, however, had occurred four years earlier.2
The record discloses that, on the night of October 15, 2005, the victim, Cheryl Williams, joined Petitioner and his acquaintance, Rutilio Melo, in a minivan. Melo drove the minivan to a site near a wooded area of Princess Anne, Somerset County, where Williams later was murdered.
Investigation of the crime led the police soon to focus on Melo. The police arrested and interviewed Melo, who, like Petitioner, speaks the dialect Mixtec Alto. Melo, with Trooper Ed Torres interpreting in Spanish, implicated Petitioner in the murder. Within hours, the police arrested Petitioner. With Trooper Torres interpreting in Spanish, Petitioner made a statement to the police. In that statement Petitioner admitted that he accompanied Melo to the site where he, Petitioner, had sexual intercourse with the victim; Melo used a car jack to bludgeon the victim to death; and he, Petitioner, assisted Melo in moving the body further into a wooded area and then disposing of the murder weapon. Petitioner later filed a motion to suppress that statement.
The suppression hearing3
A suppression hearing was held to determine the admissibility of the statement Petitioner made during the police interrogation. Detective Sergeant George Nelson, the lead investigator, described the interrogation, which took place at the Princess Anne State Police Barrack. Detective Nelson testified that Trooper Torres issued Petitioner the Miranda warnings in Spanish, using a Maryland State Police (MSP) 180 form. That process consumed 22 minutes and was not recorded. Detective Nelson then conducted the interrogation, with Trooper Torres interpreting for Petitioner, in Spanish. Pursuant to his usual practice, Detective Nelson first conducted what he called a “pre-interview” to determine whether Petitioner had any valuable information; that pre-interview likewise was not recorded. After the pre-interview, Detective Nelson and Trooper Torres left the room. They returned several hours later to conduct a second interrogation of Petitioner, which was recorded on audiotape.4
Detective Nelson testified to his observations of how Petitioner comprehended what was being interpreted in Spanish during the issuance of the Miranda warnings and subsequent interrogation:
[Petitioner] would shrug his shoulders, shake his head. Sometimes he would say si. Even prior to Trooper Torres finishing his question, the responses were, in most instances, normal, almost immediate. There wasn't a pause like he was trying to figure out what Trooper Torres was saying. I didn't see a problem. If I did, I wouldn't have continued.
Trooper Torres also testified at the hearing. Much of his testimony focused on his issuance of the Miranda warnings to Petitioner, Petitioner's waiver of the Miranda rights, and the subsequent interrogation, during which Trooper Torres served as the interpreter. Trooper Torres testified that he was not a certified interpreter, but his parents were born in Puerto Rico. Although he was born in the United States, Trooper Torres lived in Puerto Rico until the age of nine or ten, where he spoke predominantly Spanish in the home. He testified that he regularly serves as an unofficial interpreter when Spanish-speakers are arrested. Trooper Torres explained that there are times when he recognizes that an individual for whom he is interpreting does not comprehend what is being translated:
Generally when I do interpret and I discover that the person I'm translating to doesn't understand what I'm speaking or what I'm trying to—the point I'm trying to get across, I will backtrack and first what I'll do is I'll translate for them. If they don't understand, they need to tell me, “I don't know what you mean.” Then I'll break it down in layman's terms, so to speak. I'll rephrase it or change the wording, and generally that will—and then I'll ask them, “Do you understand now,” and they'll give me the proper response yes or no. And if the answer is no, then I'll just change the way I ask the question. And most—well, they always ask—I always ask, “Do you understand now?” They'll reply, “Yes, I understand.”
Turning to Petitioner's case in particular, Trooper Torres testified that he first encountered Petitioner when he arrested Petitioner at his home. At that time, Torres communicated in Spanish with others at the house and then with Petitioner, while placing him under arrest. Trooper Torres testified that, at the State Police Barrack, he and Detective Nelson went into the interview room together to meet with Petitioner. Trooper Torres described that at the outset he identified himself and Detective Nelson as police officers, and he advised Petitioner that he was a subject of a murder investigation and that is why he was placed under arrest. Trooper Torres delivered all of this in Spanish and Petitioner responded in Spanish that he understood. Trooper Torres testified that
Trooper Torres testified that he next administered the Miranda warnings to Petitioner in Spanish. Trooper Torres explained that he read from a Spanish language copy of a Miranda rights card and then translated into Spanish each right listed on the MSP 180 form, which contained the Miranda warnings, line by line.5 After each line, Trooper Torres asked Petitioner, “Do you understand[?].” If Petitioner indicated that he did not understand, Trooper Torres would rephrase each Miranda right and warning until he was satisfied that Petitioner understood.
Trooper Torres stated that, during his issuance of the Miranda warnings, Petitioner indicated that he did not understand the Spanish words for “court” and “attorney.” In order to explain those words to Petitioner, Trooper Torres read from a card the phonetic spelling of what he believed to be the Mixtec versions of those two words. Trooper Torres explained that he obtained the phonetic spelling of “court” and “attorney” in Mixtec from the sister of Petitioner's confederate, Rutilio Melo. Torres testified that, while administering the Miranda warnings to Melo earlier that day,
I made contact with [Melo's] sister who was also there at the barrack, and I would ask her what was the Mixtecan word for attorney, judge and court because those are words that [Melo] did not understand at that point. And she actually wrote them down phonetically for me, and then I went back into the interview with Melo and said it in [the] Mixtecan word for it, and at that point he did understand the Miranda.
Trooper Torres could not recall what Mixtec words he used in advising Petitioner. Yet he testified that,
[w]hen [Petitioner] had a question on a certain portion of it, I would...
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