Lyons v. State
| Decision Date | 19 February 1987 |
| Docket Number | No. 02A03-8604-CR-00123,02A03-8604-CR-00123 |
| Citation | 503 N.E.2d 928 |
| Parties | Robert Franklin LYONS, Jr., Appellant-Defendant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee-Plaintiff. |
| Court | Indiana Appellate Court |
Bruce S. Cowen, Fort Wayne, for appellant-defendant.
Linley E. Pearson, Atty. Gen., Amy Schaeffer Good, Deputy Atty. Gen., Indianapolis, for appellee-plaintiff.
Robert Lyons was convicted by a jury of two counts of burglary, 1 a class B felony. He was sentenced to two concurrent terms of ten (10) years each. 2 The defendant contends on appeal that the court erred in denying his motion to suppress evidence of statements he made to police officers. 3
We affirm.
On May 8, 1985, the defendant was picked up by a Fort Wayne police officer, Officer Mary Ann Mosley, for questioning about a bicycle theft. He was taken to a juvenile home to spend the night. The defendant testified at trial that, while in transit to the juvenile home, Officer Mosley questioned him about the two burglaries which are the subject of this appeal. He testified that he was not advised of his legal rights at any time prior to or during that questioning. 4
On the following day, Lyons was taken to juvenile court, where he was met by his mother. They were both informed of the defendant's Miranda rights, and they both signed a form waiving those rights. The defendant's mother urged him to tell the truth.
Unaware of any prior confession by the defendant, Juvenile Officer Steve Hollsworth then questioned Lyons about the bicycle theft. Two other police officers and the defendant's mother were present. During the course of the questioning, Lyons began to volunteer information about the two burglaries he said he committed with a companion. The information he gave about the crimes matched actual information in the files of those cases at the Fort Wayne Police Department. In addition, Lyons told Officer Hollsworth where the victims' property could be found. The police located those items and returned them to the burglary victims.
Before trial, the defendant filed a motion to suppress evidence of the statements he made to Officer Hollsworth. He argued that Officer Mosley's failure to administer the Miranda warnings on May 8, 1985, made his confession to her inadmissible and "tainted" his subsequent confession to Officer Hollsworth. Lyons contended that even though Officer Hollsworth advised him of his Miranda rights on the second day of questioning, his waiver of them was not knowingly and intelligently made because he would not have volunteered information about the burglaries to Officer Hollsworth if he had known that his prior statements to Officer Mosley could not be used against him.
He also argued that the waiver of his Miranda rights was not knowingly and intelligently made because, on the date of his second confession, he was only seventeen, and, he was still under the influence of the alcohol and other intoxicants he had consumed on May 7, 1985.
The motion to suppress was denied, and Lyons' statements to Officer Hollsworth were admitted at trial over objection.
Defendant's first contention must fail. This identical issue was presented to the United States Supreme Court in Oregon v. Elstad (1985), 470 U.S. 298, 105 S.Ct. 1285, 84 L.Ed.2d 222, where the Court held that a suspect who has once responded to unwarned, yet uncoercive questioning is not thereby disabled from waiving his rights and confessing after he has been given the requisite Miranda warnings. 105 S.Ct. at 1298.
The Court stated:
"Respondent's contention that his confession was tainted by the earlier failure of the police to provide Miranda warnings and must be excluded as 'fruit of the poisonous tree' assumes the existence of a constitutional violation. This figure of speech is drawn from Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963), in which the Court held that evidence and witnesses discovered as a result of a search in violation of the Fourth Amendment must be excluded from evidence. The Wong Sun doctrine applies as well when the fruit of the Fourth Amendment violation is a confession. It is settled law that 'a confession obtained through custodial interrogation after an illegal arrest should be excluded unless intervening events break the causal connection between the illegal arrest and the confession so that the confession is "sufficiently an act of free will to purge the primary taint." ' Taylor v. Alabama, 457 U.S. 687, 690, 102 S.Ct. 2664, 2667, 73 L.Ed.2d 314 (1982) (quoting Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 602, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 2261, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975)).
But as we explained in Quarles and Tucker, a procedural Miranda violation differs in significant respects from violations of the Fourth Amendment, which have traditionally mandated a broad application of the 'fruits' doctrine. The purpose of the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule is to deter unreasonable searches, no matter how probative their fruits. Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 216-217, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 2258-2259, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979); Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S., at 600-602, 95 S.Ct., at 2260-2261. 'The exclusionary rule, ... when utilized to effectuate the Fourth Amendment, serves interests and policies that are distinct from those it serves under the Fifth.' Id., at 601, 95 S.Ct., at 2260. Where a Fourth Amendment violation 'taints' the confession, a finding of voluntariness for the purposes of the Fifth Amendment is merely a threshold requirement in determining whether the confession may be admitted in evidence. Taylor v. Alabama, supra, 457 U.S. at 690, 102 S.Ct., at 2667. Beyond this, the prosecution must show a sufficient break in events to undermine the inference that the confession was caused by the Fourth Amendment violation.
The Miranda exclusionary rule, however, serves the Fifth Amendment and sweeps more broadly than the Fifth Amendment itself. It may be triggered even in the absence of a Fifth Amendment violation. The Fifth Amendment prohibits use by the prosecution in its case in chief only of compelled testimony. Failure to administer Miranda warnings creates a presumption of compulsion. Consequently, unwarned statements that are otherwise voluntary within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment must nevertheless be excluded from evidence under Miranda. Thus, in the individual case, Miranda's preventive medicine provides a remedy even to the defendant who has suffered no identifiable constitutional harm. See New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. at 649, 104 S.Ct. [2626, 2631, 81 L.Ed.2d 550 (1984) ]; Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U.S. 433, 444, 94 S.Ct. 2357, 2363, 41 L.Ed.2d 182 (1974).
But the Miranda presumption, though irrebuttable for purposes of the prosecution's case in chief, does not require that the statements and their fruits be discarded as inherently tainted."
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