Morales v. US

• Decision Date: 13 January 2005
• Docket Number: No. 99-CM-91.,99-CM-91.
• Citation: 866 A.2d 67
• Parties: Berta MORALES, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

866 A.2d 67

Berta MORALES, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.

No. 99-CM-91.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Submitted January 27, 2004.

Decided January 13, 2005.

William G. Dansie for appellant.

Robert J. Feitel, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Roscoe C. Howard, Jr., United States Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and John R. Fisher and Barbara J. Valliere, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief, for appellee.

Before WAGNER, Chief Judge, and REID and GLICKMAN, Associate Judges.

GLICKMAN, Associate Judge:

Police came to the home of Berta Morales, a Spanish-speaking immigrant from El Salvador, to question her about injuries her twelve-year-old son had sustained. After Morales admitted that she had hit her son with a belt, she was arrested. Her inculpatory statements to the police were introduced in evidence against her at trial as part of the prosecution's case-in-chief, and she was found guilty of simple assault. Morales now appeals the trial court's denial of her pretrial motion to suppress her statements. She claims that the police violated her rights under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution and the Interpreter Act, D.C.Code §§ 2-1901 et seq. (2001), by subjecting her to a custodial interrogation without first giving her Miranda¹ warnings or providing her with a qualified interpreter.

The outcome of Morales's appeal turns on whether, taking all the circumstances into consideration, her interrogation was "custodial" in nature. We conclude that it was not and that her rights therefore were not violated. We affirm Morales's conviction.

I.

The trial court denied Morales's motion to suppress her statements after an evidentiary hearing at which it took testimony from Morales and Metropolitan Police Officer Andres Marcucci, Jr.² The court's findings and conclusions in support of its ruling were not transcribed and are not included in the record on appeal. We therefore rely exclusively on the transcript of the witnesses' testimony to summarize the material facts.³

On January 30, 1998, a teacher at Lincoln Middle School noticed suspicious markings on the body of twelve-year-old N.C., a sixth grade student at the school. The teacher contacted a school counselor, who examined N.C. and found "some markings which [she] considered to be severe in his left arm." N.C. explained that his mother had hit him with a belt. The counselor contacted Child Protective Services.

When N.C. did not return home from school that afternoon at the usual time, his mother, appellant Morales, telephoned the police. She was told that the police would be coming to see her that evening. Shortly thereafter, Detective Cheryl Wright-Smith, Officer Marcucci, and a child welfare worker arrived at Morales's apartment. N.C. was with them. "Grateful that they had brought him," Morales invited the police in. The officers asked N.C. to remain in a different room while they spoke with Morales in her living room. Several other persons were present elsewhere in the apartment, including Morales's other son and an adult family member.

Berta Morales is an immigrant from El Salvador who speaks little English. Anticipating that fact, Detective Wright-Smith had asked Officer Marcucci to accompany her to Morales's apartment to serve as an interpreter. Morales testified that Officer Marcucci "speaks Spanish very well" and that she was "able to understand everything he said."⁴ The interview of Morales was conducted through Officer Marcucci's interpretation. The interview lasted a bit more than thirty minutes. It culminated in Morales's arrest.

Detective Wright-Smith explained to Morales that the police were there on account of the marks found on N.C.'s body. Morales understood that the police had "received a report that [she] yesterday punished [her] son," and that this was the reason her son had not come home that afternoon. Morales acknowledged that she had punished N.C., but when the police showed her photographs of his injuries, she denied having "done this" to him. She testified that the police responded that "yes, you have done it, you yourself have just stated that you punished him."

Detective Wright-Smith then asked Morales "several times" whether she had struck N.C. with an umbrella, which Morales repeatedly denied. Officer Marcucci testified that Morales gave "three different answers" to explain the marks on N.C.'s arms: "One was that he was in a fight at school ..., one was that he fell from a bicycle, and ... one was that he was horsing around, that he liked to play fight a lot."

At some point during the questioning, Morales attempted to go to the next room to get N.C. but was prevented from doing so. According to Officer Marcucci, Detective Wright-Smith "stopped her," saying, "no, we don't need him right here right now." Morales "said okay" when Detective Wright-Smith "said we gotta finish what we're doing here first before we call him." When asked whether Morales "was free to go get her son," Officer Marcucci testified that "at that moment we told her not to, just leave him where he was at." According to Morales herself, she wished to get N.C. from the next room in order to "tell me in front of the police ... why it was they were telling me that my child had stated that I had hit him with an umbrella." Morales told the police three times that she wanted to see her son, and "they would not let me speak to him." Officer Marcucci, she testified, "got in front of me and he said wait, wait, not to proceed." When asked on direct examination whether at this point she felt she was under arrest, Morales replied, "Yes, I felt bad."

Later during the interview, N.C. was brought into the living room. Morales testified that she was not able to go near her son because Officer Marcucci "was there between the two of us." Officer Marcucci confirmed that he and Detective Smith positioned themselves between N.C. and his mother. Eventually Morales said to the police that while she had not hit N.C. with an umbrella, she "had used a belt." Morales explained that she "constantly ha[d] to be punishing" N.C. because he was "a bad kid" who "doesn't listen." She insisted, however, that she had "never used any ... other object to... strike the child."

After Morales made these admissions, she was placed under arrest for assaulting her son.⁵ The officers recovered an item from her apartment that Morales indicated was the "belt" she had used (which was actually a purse strap). Morales was handcuffed and transported to the police station, where she was Mirandized for the first time at 8:55 p.m., some two hours after the police commenced questioning her in her home.⁶

II.

Morales contends that when the police questioned her in her apartment, they violated the Fifth Amendment by not giving her Miranda warnings and the Interpreter Act by not utilizing a qualified interpreter.⁷ The validity of each of these grounds for suppressing Morales's incriminating statements depends on whether she was in "custody" when the police interrogated her. Miranda warnings are required only when a suspect being interrogated is in custody, see Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 434, 104 S.Ct. 3138, 82 L.Ed.2d 317 (1984) ("[A] person subjected to custodial interrogation is entitled to the benefit of the procedural safeguards enunciated in Miranda") (emphasis added), and the protections of the Interpreter Act similarly apply only when an individual is in custody within the meaning of Miranda. See Castellon v. United States, 864 A.2d 141, 152 (D.C.2004) ("[T]he definition of custody for Miranda purposes is the appropriate standard for determining whether the circumstances are such that an individual's right to a qualified interpreter arises under the [Interpreter] Act.").

An individual is in custody for Miranda purposes only where there is "a formal arrest or restraint on freedom of movement of the degree associated with a formal arrest." California v. Beheler, 463 U.S. 1121, 1125, 103 S.Ct. 3517, 77 L.Ed.2d 1275 (1983) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also Berkemer, 468 U.S. at 440,104 S.Ct. 3138. Whether the curtailment of freedom rises to that level is to be assessed by reference to "how a reasonable man [or woman] in the suspect's position would have understood his [or her] situation." Berkemer, 468 U.S. at 442,104 S.Ct. 3138. The determination "depends on the objective circumstances of the interrogation, not on the subjective views harbored by either the interrogating officers or the person being questioned." Stansbury v. California, 511 U.S. 318, 323, 114 S.Ct. 1526, 128 L.Ed.2d 293 (1994). The court is obliged to consider "all of the circumstances surrounding the interrogation" in reaching its conclusion. Id. at 322, 114 S.Ct. 1526.

Whether the evidence establishes that Morales was in "custody" is a question of law as to which our review is de novo. See Castellon, 864 A.2d at 152 (citation omitted); Resper v. United States, 793 A.2d 450, 456 (D.C.2002). In answering that question, we are obliged to view the record in the light most favorable to sustaining the trial court's ruling; given the absence in the record of "express findings" of fact by the trial court, this means that we must "determine if the denial of the motion to suppress is supportable under any reasonable view of the evidence." Peay v. United States, 597 A.2d 1318, 1320 (D.C.1991) (en banc) (quoting Brooks v. United States, 367 A.2d 1297, 1304 (D.C.1976)).

Morales does not contend that she was under formal arrest when she made her inculpatory statements, but she argues that the police restrained her freedom to a comparable extent. Our examination of the circumstances persuades us otherwise. We are convinced that Morales was not in "custody" within the meaning of Miranda when the police questioned her at her home.

Certainly the setting was non-custodial. Morales was questioned not in the isolated confines of a police...