Martinez v. State

• Citation: 204 S.W.3d 914
• Decision Date: 09 November 2006
• Docket Number: No. 13-03-388-CR.,13-03-388-CR.
• Parties: Raul Adam MARTINEZ, Jr., Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.
• Court: Court of Appeals of Texas

Page 914

204 S.W.3d 914

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

No. 13-03-388-CR.

Court of Appeals of Texas, Corpus Christi-Edinburg.

November 9, 2006.

Frances Northcutt, Attorney At Law, Houston, for Appellant.

Eric Kugler, Assistant District Atty., William J. Delmore, III, Chief Prosecutor, Appellate Div., Houston, for Appellee.

Before Chief Justice VALDEZ and Justices YANEZ and CASTILLO.

OPINION

Opinion by Chief Justice VALDEZ.

Appellant, Raul Adam Martinez, Jr., was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison. Martinez contends the trial court made a constitutional error by denying his motion to suppress a videotaped statement he made to police. The sole point of error on appeal is that Martinez's videotaped statement should not have been admitted into evidence at trial because it was made during an interrogation that began without Miranda warnings, even though Martinez was given the appropriate warnings just prior to making the statement. Appellee, the State, responds that: (1) Martinez has not met the burden of presenting and developing a record to show error requiring reversal; (2) neither a substantive interrogation nor an incriminating statement occurred before Martinez voluntarily waived his constitutional rights by making the statement; and (3) Martinez was not harmed by the admission of his videotaped statement. We affirm the trial court's judgment.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Factual Background

Martinez was arrested by Officer Macario Sosa for the capital murder of Manuel Arriaga-Molina. During the arrest, Sosa handcuffed Martinez, told him he was under arrest for capital murder, placed him in a police car, and drove him to the police station. No Miranda warnings were given at the scene of the arrest or at the police station. Upon arriving at the police station, Sosa and his partner, Sergeant Hernandez, asked Martinez if he wanted to speak with them about the incident. The three briefly discussed the incident, but Martinez denied knowing anything about it.

Shortly after his brief discussion with the officers, Martinez was turned over to another officer, who administered a polygraph test. It took the polygrapher three to four hours to create the test questions from the case file and administer the test. The record does not contain the questions asked during the test or a report of the test. Martinez was then returned to Officers Sosa and Hernandez and allowed to use the bathroom, telephone his father, and eat. At this point, Officers Sosa and Hernandez confronted Martinez with the fact that areas of deception had been detected during the polygraph test. They then took Martinez from the police station to a municipal court, where he was given his statutory and constitutional warnings by a magistrate. From municipal court, Martinez was taken to a different police station and placed in an interrogation room. Finally, Officers Sosa and Hernandez sat down with Martinez, gave him Miranda warnings, and questioned him; the interrogation was videotaped.

B. Procedural Background

A suppression hearing to determine the admissibility of Martinez's videotaped statement was held shortly before trial; Officer Sosa was the only witness. Officer Sosa described the aforementioned arrest and interrogation process. Martinez's defense counsel highlighted the fact that during his recorded statement, Martinez made two references to statements he was told by another officer. The statements were made when Officers Sosa and Hernandez conveyed the gravity of the situation by reminding Martinez that three people were shot and one was killed. Martinez casually pointed to the wall and responded "[t]hat's what the dude told me over there." Officer Sosa testified that Martinez was referring to the polygraph examiner. A record was not created of the questions, statements, or results of the polygraph examination. The trial court denied Martinez's motion to suppress his videotaped statement.

II. DISCUSSION

Martinez contends that his videotaped confession was the product of a type of "question-first" interrogation made unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.¹ Martinez argues that the unwarned and warned portions of the interviews were done as part of a tactically continuous process aimed at getting him to make admissions before he was aware of his legal rights. He asks us to apply the Fifth Amendment analysis used in Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600, 124 S.Ct. 2601, 159 L.Ed.2d 643 (2004). See U.S. CONST. amend V.

A. The Seibert Case

The Seibert case involved murder and questionable police conduct. Patrice Seibert's 12-year-old son, Jonathan, had cerebral palsy, and when he died in his sleep, she feared charges of neglect because of bedsores on his body. She allowed her other son and a friend to "torch" her mobile home while Jonathan's body and Donald, a mentally ill teenager staying with Seibert, were inside. Donald was left inside the home to avoid any appearance that Jonathan had been unattended. When the local police arrested Seibert, they intentionally questioned her without Miranda warnings for 30 to 40 minutes. During the questioning, an officer squeezed Seibert's arm and repeated, "Donald was also to die in his sleep." After Seibert admitted she knew Donald was meant to die in the fire, she was given a 20-minute coffee and cigarette break. She was then returned to the same room by the same officer, given Miranda warnings, and waived those warnings. The questioning during this session began, "Ok, `trice, we've been talking for a little while about what happened . . . ."

Seibert was charged with first-degree murder for her role in Donald's death. At a suppression hearing before trial, she sought to exclude both her pre-warning and post-warning statements. The trial court excluded only her pre-warning statements and she was convicted of second-degree murder. On appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a plurality opinion, affirmed.

Justice Souter's opinion, which was joined by three other Justices, held that "[t]he threshold issue when interrogators question first and warn later is . . . whether it would be reasonable to find that in these circumstances the warnings could function `effectively' as Miranda requires." Seibert, 542 U.S. at 611-12, 124 S.Ct. 2601. Any Miranda warning "inserted in the midst of [a] coordinated and continuing interrogation" is problematic; and unless "a reasonable person in the suspect's shoes could have seen the station house questioning as a new and distinct experience, [and thus] the Miranda warnings could have made sense as presenting a genuine choice whether to follow up on the earlier admission," the plurality would find the postwarning statements inadmissible. Id. at 614-16. The plurality set forth five "relevant facts that bear on whether Miranda warnings delivered midstream could be effective:"

[1] the completeness and detail of the questions and answers in the first round of interrogation, [2] the overlapping content of the two statements, [3] the timing and setting of the first and the second, [4] the continuity of police personnel, and [5] the degree to which the interrogator's questions treated the second round as continuous with the first.

Id. at 615, 124 S.Ct. 2601. These factors, all of which concern the relationship between the first and second interrogations, are intended to aid courts in determining whether an initial, unwarned interrogation operates to "thwart Miranda's purpose of reducing the risk that a coerced confession would be admitted." Id. at 617, 124 S.Ct. 2601.

Justice Kennedy concurred in the judgment, but on "narrower" grounds. Id. at 622, 124 S.Ct. 2601 (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment only). Like the plurality, Justice Kennedy wrote that "[t]he interrogation technique used in this case is designed to circumvent Miranda v. Arizona," and "statements obtained through the use of this technique are inadmissible." Id. at 618, 124 S.Ct. 2601. For Justice Kennedy, however, the plurality's test, which "envisions an objective inquiry from the perspective of the suspect, and applies in the case of both intentional and unintentional two-stage interrogations, . . . cuts too broadly." Id. at 621-22, 124 S.Ct. 2601. Instead, in Justice Kennedy's view, unless the police used "the two-step interrogation technique . . ." in a calculated way to undermine the Miranda warning, then "[t]he admissibility of postwarning statements should continue to be governed by the principles of Elstad."² Id. at 622, 124 S.Ct. 2601. In those "infrequent case[s]" where the interrogating officer deliberately uses the two-step strategy, "postwarning statements that are related to the substance of prewarning statements must be excluded unless curative measures are taken before the postwarning statement is made." Id. If the two-step method was used deliberately, the interrogating officer must take "curative measures . . . designed to ensure that a reasonable person in the suspect's situation would understand the import and effect of the Miranda warning," such as "a substantial break in time and circumstances between the prewarning statement and the Miranda warning," or "an additional warning that explains the likely inadmissibility of the prewarning custodial statement." Id.

Justice O'Connor authored the four-member dissent, which concluded that "the plurality gives insufficient deference to Elstad," and stated that the Court should have "analyze[d] the two-step interrogation procedure under the voluntariness standards central to the Fifth Amendment and reiterated in Elstad." Id. at 628-29, 124 S.Ct. 2601 (O'Connor, J., dissenting).

B. The Holding Under Seibert

Under Miranda, police officers are required to inform individuals about to undergo custodial interrogation that the state intends to use their statements to convict them, that they have the right to remain silent, and that they have the right to have counsel present during questioning. Mira...