Martinez v. State

• Decision Date: 17 December 2008
• Docket Number: No. PD-1917-06.,PD-1917-06.
• Citation: 272 S.W.3d 615
• Parties: Raul Adam MARTINEZ, Jr., Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

272 S.W.3d 615

Raul Adam MARTINEZ, Jr., Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas.

No. PD-1917-06.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

December 17, 2008.

Frances M. Northcutt, Houston, for Appellant.

Eric Kugler, Asst. District Atty., Houston, Jeffrey L. Van Horn, State's Atty., Austin, for State.

OPINION

JOHNSON, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which PRICE, WOMACK, HOLCOMB, and COCHRAN, JJ., joined.

Raul A. Martinez, Jr., appeals his conviction for capital murder.¹ Because the state chose not to seek the death penalty, the jury's finding of guilt resulted in a sentence of life in prison. The Thirteenth Court of Appeals upheld his conviction.² Martinez v. State, 204 S.W.3d 914 (Tex. App.-Corpus Christi 2006). This Court granted appellant's petition for discretionary review: "Whether the court of appeals misapplied the standards of Seibert in determining that a proper and functional Miranda warning was given appellant here and finding appellant's custodial statement admissible." We reverse.

FACTS

In the early morning of August 2, 2003, Alfredo Balderas Loredo, Gustavo Camilo, and Manuel Arriaga Molina were socializing in the rear of an apartment complex in Houston when two men approached them with a rifle and a pistol. Two of the victims described the man carrying the rifle as a short, heavy, Hispanic male and the man carrying a pistol as a tall, skinny, Hispanic male. Mr. Balderas testified that the shorter man pressed the rifle into his abdomen and demanded money. Simultaneously, the taller man pointed the pistol at the other two victims and demanded money. Mr. Arriaga gave his wallet to the taller man, who responded by shooting Mr. Arriaga in the groin. Mr. Camilo also gave his wallet to the taller man, who responded by shooting Camilo in the stomach. The men pushed Mr. Balderas to the ground, took his wallet, shot him in the neck, and fled. Still alert, Mr. Balderas used his cell phone to call his brother-in-law, and his brother-in-law called the police. The three victims were taken to the hospital. Mr. Balderas was treated for his injuries and released that night. Mr. Camilo was hospitalized for a longer period of time and underwent multiple surgeries. Mr. Arriaga died a few hours after the incident.

Detectives Macario Sosa and Toby Hernandez of the Houston Police Department's homicide division investigated the case. There were no suspects until the officers were informed of a Crime Stoppers tip identifying appellant and James Ruiz as the primary suspects. Appellant matched the description of the short, heavy, Hispanic male, and Ruiz matched the description of the tall, skinny, Hispanic male. Mr. Balderas identified both appellant and Ruiz in a photo array. Mr. Camilo was able to identify only appellant. Officer Sosa secured a "pocket warrant"³ for appellant's arrest.⁴

On November 18, 2003, Officer Sosa arrested appellant in a convenience-store parking lot. Appellant was driving a late-model green Chevy Malibu.⁵ At the time of his arrest, police did not give appellant Miranda warnings. At police headquarters, Officers Sosa and Hernandez questioned appellant about the robbery and murder. Appellant, however, denied knowing anything about the incident.

Shortly thereafter, Officers Sosa and Hernandez took appellant to a police polygrapher, who used the case file to develop the questions to be asked and then administered a polygraph test to appellant. This process took three to four hours to complete. The record does not reflect the name of the officer who administered the test, and when asked, Officer Sosa could not identify the officer.⁶ Likewise, the questions that were asked during the polygraph examination are not in the record.

After the test, Officers Sosa and Hernandez again took custody of appellant, and Officer Sosa informed appellant that he had failed the polygraph exam.⁷ Officer Sosa conceded that it is not customary for a suspect to be informed that he "failed" a test; suspects are usually informed that "deception was indicated on some of the test questions." The record is silent as to which questions the polygrapher determined that appellant had answered deceptively. Officers then took appellant to municipal court, where a magistrate gave appellant Miranda and other statutory warnings for the first time.

Upon appellant's prompt return to the central holding station, Officers Sosa and Hernandez again questioned appellant about the robbery and murder. Officer Sosa repeated the Miranda warnings, and appellant gave a videotaped statement regarding the incident.⁸ At the beginning of the video, appellant stated that he had become aware of certain facts about the crime through the polygraph examiner. Although before the polygraph appellant asserted that he was not aware of the robbery and murder, on the videotape appellant discussed pertinent information regarding the crime. Appellant further stated that he was not one of the assailants who had robbed and shot the victims, but rather was a "lookout" person. He maintained that he had remained in the backseat of his Chevy Malibu throughout the incident. Appellant had initially stated that there were only three persons involved, but after Officer Sosa informed him of conflicting information, he then stated that there were four persons involved in the incident. Appellant also asserted that the individual who was actually carrying the rifle resembled appellant and that they could easily have been mistaken for each other.

The state indicted appellant for capital murder. Before trial, appellant filed a motion to suppress his statement and requested a hearing. At the hearing on that motion, appellant sought to suppress the videotaped statement because he had not received Miranda warnings when he was arrested or before the polygraph examination. Officer Sosa was the state's sole witness at the hearing. The trial court found Officer Sosa to be a credible witness, concluded that appellant had voluntarily and knowingly waived his right to remain silent, and admitted the videotaped statement.

On appeal, appellant's sole issue was that the "failure to Mirandize appellant before the initial interrogation and the polygraph examination led to constitutional error in the admission of his videotaped statement at trial." Martinez, 204 S.W.3d at 914. The court of appeals affirmed appellant's conviction, finding that appellant did not satisfy the five factors set out in Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600, 124 S.Ct. 2601, 159 L.Ed.2d 643 (2004). It further stated that the admission of the videotaped statement did not constitute constitutional error because it was made after a proper and functional Miranda warning. Id. at 922.

In his petition to this Court, appellant's sole claim is that the court of appeals misapplied the standards of Seibert when it considered whether a proper and functional Miranda warning was given.

SEIBERT

Patricia Seibert was charged with murder. After her arrest, she gave a confession about the murder without being given Miranda warnings.⁹ Seibert, 542 U.S. at 600, 124 S.Ct. 2601.¹⁰ The detective returned 20 minutes later, gave Miranda warnings, and obtained a signed waiver and a second confession. Before trial, Seibert sought to exclude both the unwarned and warned statements. The Missouri trial court excluded only the unwarned statement, and the defendant was convicted of second-degree murder. The Missouri Supreme Court, however, reversed the defendant's conviction, stating that the interrogation was continuous and that the second statement was the product of the invalid first statement. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari. A four-justice plurality also ruled that Seibert's warned statements were inadmissible. Seibert, 542 U.S. at 616, 124 S.Ct. 2601. The Court stated that

when a confession so obtained is offered and challenged, attention must be paid to the conflicting objects of Miranda and the question-first strategy. Miranda addressed "interrogation practices ... likely ... to disable [an individual] from making a free and rational choice" about speaking, 384 U.S. at 464-465, 86 S.Ct. 1602, and held that a suspect must be "adequately and effectively" advised of the choice the Constitution guarantees. Id. at 467, 86 S.Ct. 1602. Question-first's object, however is to render Miranda warnings ineffective by waiting to give them until after the suspect has already confessed.... By any objective measure, it is likely that warnings withheld until after interrogation and confession will be ineffective in preparing a suspect for successive interrogation, close in time and similar in content. The manifest purpose of question-first is to get a confession the suspect would not make if he understood his rights at the outset. When the warnings are inserted in the midst of coordinated and continuing interrogation, they are likely to mislead and "deprive a defendant of knowledge essential to his ability to understand the nature of his rights and the consequences of abandoning them." Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412, 424, 106 S.Ct. 1135, 89 L.Ed.2d 410 (1986).

Id. at 601, 124 S.Ct. 2601. The plurality further emphasized that

the threshold issue when interrogators question first and warn later is thus whether it would be reasonable to find that in these circumstances the warnings could function "effectively" as Miranda requires. Could the warnings effectively advise the suspect that he had a real choice about giving an admissible statement at that juncture? Could they reasonably convey that he could choose to stop talking even if he had talked earlier? For unless the warnings could place a suspect who has just been interrogated in a position to make such an informed choice, there is no practical justification for accepting the formal warnings as compliance with Miranda, or for treating the second stage of interrogation as distinct from the first, unwarned and inadmissible segment.

Id. at 611-12, 124 S.Ct. 2601.

The...