People v. Hill

• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: BRICKLEY; ARCHER; CAVANAGH
• Citation: People v. Hill, 415 N.W.2d 193, 429 Mich. 382 (Mich. 1987)
• Decision Date: 13 November 1987
• Docket Number: Docket No. 78796
• Parties: PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. M.L. HILL, Defendant-Appellant. 429 Mich. 382, 415 N.W.2d 193

Page 193

415 N.W.2d 193

PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. M.L. HILL, Defendant-Appellant.

Docket No. 78796.

429 Mich. 382, 415 N.W.2d 193

Supreme Court of Michigan.

Argued May 5, 1987.

Decided Nov. 13, 1987.

John D. O'Hair, Pros. Atty., Timothy A. Baughman, Chief of the Criminal Div., Detroit, for plaintiff-appellee.

James Krogsrud, Asst. Defender, Detroit, for defendant-appellant.

BRICKLEY, Justice.

This case requires that we determine, whether Miranda ¹ warnings must, prior to questioning, be given to an individual at the time he becomes the focus of the investigation or, instead, at the time he is in custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way. We hold that the latter consideration controls.

I

The appellant in this case, the Rev. M.L. Hill, was charged with defrauding Michigan Consolidated Gas Company in the use of heat supplied to his church. On February 10, 1985, three investigators, two from Michigan Consolidated Gas Company and one from the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office, went to the church to question Rev. Hill and conduct a search pursuant to a valid search warrant. During the brief questioning, Rev. Hill made a number of inculpatory statements.

The questioning took place in Rev. Hill's office. In addition to the defendant and the investigators, two or three other persons, not known to the investigators, but presumably known to Rev. Hill, were also in the office.

The prosecution's investigator testified that by the time he and the other investigators questioned Rev. Hill, he was the focus of the investigation. However, at no time prior to or during the questioning was Rev. Hill informed of his Miranda rights.

On this basis, defendant moved for the suppression of all the statements he made to the investigators. The trial judge granted the motion on the basis of his finding "that the triggering mechanism of the requirement of Miranda warnings is 'focus' and not 'custody'...." ² The Court of Appeals reversed the trial court's decision on the ground that, in light of the United States Supreme Court's rejection of the "focus" test in Beckwith v. United States, 425 U.S. 341, 96 S.Ct. 1612, 48 L.Ed.2d 1 (1976), the proper test for determining whether Miranda rights must be provided is whether or not the defendant was in custody at the time of the questioning. We granted leave to resolve this question. ³

II

Much of the confusion surrounding this area of the law stems from this Court's failure to clearly define the interplay between the United States Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), and its earlier decision in Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977 (1964).

Escobedo was primarily an extension of Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201, 84 S.Ct. 1199, 12 L.Ed.2d 246 (1964). In Massiah, the Supreme Court had held that once an individual is formally charged with a crime, any statements deliberately elicited from him without permitting him the assistance of counsel must be excluded as violative of the Sixth Amendment. The Supreme Court stated that any time the police try to so elicit a statement from a defendant his Sixth Amendment rights are brought into play since the time between arraignment and beginning of trial is " 'the most critical period of the proceedings ... [and] defendants ... [are] as much entitled to such aid [of counsel] during that period as at the trial itself.' " Id. at 205, 84 S.Ct. at 1202, quotingPowell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 57, 53 S.Ct. 55, 77 L.Ed. 158 (1932). The majority in Escobedo viewed the case as extremely similar to Massiah. The fundamental difference, of course, was that Escobedo, unlike Massiah, had not been charged with a crime at the time of questioning. However, the majority determined that once the investigation had focused on the defendant legal aid and advice were as important as if he had been indicted:

"It would exalt form over substance to make the right to counsel, under these circumstances, depend on whether at the time of the interrogation, the authorities had secured a formal indictment. Petitioner had, for all practical purposes, already been charged with murder." 378 U.S. at 486, 84 S.Ct. at 1762.

While the Escobedo Court focused in particular on the degree to which the defendant had become the prime suspect, there is other language in the opinion which indicates that the Court was also concerned with the fact that at the time of questioning the defendant was in police custody:

"We hold, therefore, that where, as here, the investigation is no longer a general inquiry into an unsolved crime but has begun to focus on a particular suspect, the suspect has been taken into police custody, the police carry out a process of interrogations that lends itself to eliciting incriminating statements, the suspect has requested and been denied an opportunity to consult with his lawyer, and the police have not effectively warned him of his absolute constitutional right to remain silent, the accused has been denied 'the Assistance of Counsel'...." 378 U.S. 490-491, 84 S.Ct. at 1765 (emphasis supplied).

In Miranda, the analysis clearly shifted from whether the suspect was the focus of the investigation to whether he was in custody. In an oft-cited footnote and its accompanying text, the Miranda Court stated at 384 U.S. 444, 86 S.Ct. at 1612;

"By custodial interrogation, we mean questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way. ⁴

Rather than clearing up the relation between focus and custody, this excerpt resulted in some courts holding that the triggering element of the Miranda requirement was to be understood within the focus paradigm of Escobedo rather than the converse. ⁴ However, subsequent United States Supreme Court cases have made clear that Miranda's custody concept has displaced Escobedo's focus concept. ⁵ In Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293, 87 S.Ct. 408, 17 L.Ed.2d 374 (1966), the defendant was the focus of a federal investigation for jury tampering. Federal agents paid an informer to report to them concerning a conversation the defendant had had with him and others. The defendant argued, inter alia, that his Sixth Amendment rights had been violated, since the government had grounds to take him into custody on the jury tampering charge prior to the conversations in question, and had he been placed in custody at that time the government "could not have continued to question [him] without observance of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel [citations to Massiah and Escobedo ]." 385 U.S. at 309, 87 S.Ct. at 417.

The United States Supreme Court strongly rejected this claim, stating:

"Nothing in Massiah, in Escobedo, or in any other case that has come to our attention, even remotely suggests this novel and paradoxical constitutional doctrine, and we decline to adopt it now. There is no constitutional right to be arrested. The police are not required to guess at their peril the precise moment at which they have probable cause to arrest a suspect, risking a violation of the Fourth Amendment if they act too soon, and a violation of the Sixth Amendment if they wait too long. Law enforcement officers are under no constitutional duty to call a halt to a criminal investigation the moment they have the minimum evidence to establish probable cause, a quantum of evidence which may fall far short of the amount necessary to support a criminal conviction." Id. at 310, 87 S.Ct. at 417.

While not yet explicitly rejecting the focus test, this analysis left little if any room for its use. As one commentator described it:

"[C]onsiderations drawn from Escobedo's emphasis on 'focus' underlay Jimmy Hoffa's claim that the Constitution confers a right to arrest. At an early stage in [the] 'investigation,' he argued, the Government could present probable cause for his arrest, and therefore he had a constitutional right to be arrested and allowed the protection of counsel. The Court boggled at the novelty of this claim. But its surprise was unwarranted. Hoffa's lawyers had simply chosen inartistic phrasing for an argument substantially drawn from the Court's own opinions: when suspicion had focused on Hoffa the general investigation was functionally complete; at that point, he was the accused and thereby entitled to the absolute protection of the privilege against self-incrimination.

"Even if Hoffa had made his point in a less startling fashion, however, his chance for success would have been slight. In Miranda the Court had already ... emphasized that the line was to be drawn mechanically at the point when the suspect was taken into custody. It would be all but impossible to determine the point outside the police station at which suspicion has been focused on a single individual. The point at which an accused is taken into custody, however, can be judicially determined with reasonable certainty." Note, Judicial control of secret agents, 76 Yale LJ 994, 1008 (1967).

Any doubts that Hoffa may have left as to the status of the focus test were removed in Beckwith v. United States, supra. The defendant was under investigation by the IRS for criminal tax fraud. Two IRS special agents came to the defendant's home and questioned him there after giving him incomplete Miranda warnings. The defendant argued that since he was the focus of the investigation, he should have been given full Miranda warnings, even though he was not yet in custody. The United States Supreme Court, while never citing Escobedo, made absolutely clear that the warnings need not be given simply because the defendant has become the focus of the investigation:

"[W]e 'are not impressed with this argument in the abstract nor as applied to the particular facts of Beckwith's interrogation.' It goes far beyond the reasons for that holding and such an...