People v. Rivas, 00SA50.

• Decision Date: 23 October 2000
• Docket Number: No. 00SA50.,00SA50.
• Citation: 13 P.3d 315
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Henry Guadalupe RIVAS, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: Colorado Supreme Court

13 P.3d 315

The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Henry Guadalupe RIVAS, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 00SA50.

Supreme Court of Colorado, En Banc.

October 23, 2000.

A.M. Dominquez, District Attorney, Christopher Vogt, Deputy District Attorney, Greeley, Colorado, Attorneys for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Todd Taylor, Greeley, Colorado, Attorney for Defendant-Appellee.

Justice COATS delivered the Opinion of the Court.

The People appealed pursuant to section 16-12-102(2), 6 C.R.S. (2000), and C.A.R. 4.1, challenging the district court's order suppressing certain of the defendant's statements, apparently as the product of custodial interrogation after invocation of his right to counsel. Because the defendant's statements were not made in response to interrogation, the district court's order is reversed and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I.

Following a report of a shooting incident in Greeley on the night of January 21, 1999, the seventeen-year-old defendant was charged as an adult with three counts of aggravated intimidation of a witness or victim,¹ four counts of felony menacing,² and one count of second degree assault.³ He filed a number of pretrial motions, including a motion to suppress statements he made to police officers on the night he was arrested. The testimony of Detectives Schrimpf and Connell was the only evidence presented at the suppression hearing relative to this particular motion.

According to the uncontradicted testimony of the detectives, the defendant was arrested shortly after witnesses claimed that he assaulted a man with a bat, pointed a gun at the witnesses, and fired several rounds in their direction. He was taken into custody at the Greeley Police Department. Because he was a juvenile at the time, the defendant's father was contacted and asked to come to the police station. After arriving, the father was read a Spanish translation of the Miranda v. State of Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694⁴ rights, and the defendant was read his Miranda rights in English in his father's presence. Following a private consultation with his father, the defendant told Detective Connell that he wanted to speak with a lawyer because either way, ... he was going to jail. Detective Connell then told the father that the defendant would in fact be going to jail and escorted the father out.

The defendant was rehandcuffed and left in the interviewing room while Detective Connell worked on the attendant bonding paperwork in his office. About ten minutes later, Connell gave the completed paperwork to Detective Schrimpf for the purpose of taking the defendant to jail. However, Schrimpf returned in a moment and notified Connell that the defendant wanted to tell his side of the story. Connell testified that he did not initially respond because the defendant's father had already left. However, after another five minutes and several more requests by the defendant, including shouting out to him by name, Connell went to the interview room. When Connell reached the doorway, the defendant asked him what charges were being filed.

The detective responded by reciting the charges, at which point the defendant began talking about the incident and continued for about thirty seconds. The defendant acknowledged that he was present at the confrontation and had a pellet gun, but he claimed that he wasn't shooting at anybody and was just trying to scare people. Detective Connell testified that he then tried to find the defendant's father because he wanted to pursue the defendant's statement with follow-up questions. When it was clear that the father was already gone, the defendant was taken to jail without being questioned.

In its ruling the district court did not make specific findings of fact. It expressly presumed for its holding, however, that there had been an adequate advisement of Miranda rights with the defendant's father present. Although the court indicated that once the defendant had a change of heart, the custodial authority was obligated to remirandize the defendant in his father's presence or do something to ensure that [his] age and lack of sophistication were considered, it ultimately appeared to rest its holding on a determination that Detective Connell's response to the defendant's inquiry was likely to elicit an incriminating response. Therefore, notwithstanding its finding that the defendant's statements were voluntary, the district court suppressed them because they were tainted by the whole procedure, including the absence of either a lawyer or the defendant's father at the time the statements were made.

II.

There are two federal constitutional bases for the requirement that a confession be voluntary in order to be admitted into evidence: the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. See Dickerson v. United States, 530 U.S. 428, 120 S.Ct. 2326, 147 L.Ed.2d 405 (2000)

. The due process test, which is also referred to as the voluntariness test, takes into consideration the totality of all the surrounding circumstances — both the characteristics of the accused and the details of the interrogation — in determining whether the accused's will was actually overborne by coercive police conduct. See id. at 2331; People v. Valdez, 969 P.2d 208, 211 (Colo.1998). This test applies to any out-of-court statement of the accused, whether or not the statement was made during custodial interrogation. See id.

Because the inherently coercive nature of custodial police interrogation heightens the risk that an individual will not be accorded his privilege under the Fifth Amendment, the Supreme Court has also laid down concrete constitutional guidelines governing the admissibility of statements given during custodial interrogation. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966)

. Statements made during custodial police interrogation are admissible only if the person making them has already been properly advised concerning his right to remain silent and his right to have a lawyer, and if he has made a voluntary, knowing, and intelligent waiver of those rights. See id. at 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602. Once the person in custody invokes his right to a lawyer, all questioning must cease until that request is complied with or he is released. See id. at 444-45, 86 S.Ct. 1602; see also People v. Trujillo, 773 P.2d 1086, 1092 (Colo. 1989). Furthermore, the police are prohibited from reinitiating contact with the suspect, even to see whether he has changed his mind. See Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 485, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 68 L.Ed.2d 378 (1981); Trujillo, 773 P.2d at 1092.

By statute in Colorado, the Fifth Amendment privilege of juveniles is further protected by requiring the presence of a parent or guardian during custodial interrogation. See § 19-2-511(1), 6 C.R.S. (2000). No statement of a juvenile made as the result of custodial interrogation is admissible unless the juvenile's parent or guardian was present for the Miranda advisement and either the parent or counsel was present during the interrogation. See id. It is clear, however, that section 19-2-511(1) mirrors the Miranda safeguards in that it applies only to statements made by someone while in custody and responding to interrogation by law enforcement officials. See People in Interest of J.C., 844 P.2d 1185, 1188 (Colo.1993)

(characterizing the statute as a codification of the Miranda requirements, as extended to juveniles, with the added requirement that an adult be present) (footnote omitted).

Although Miranda itself referred to custodial interrogation as questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody, 384 U.S. at 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602, Miranda was concerned broadly with the `interrogation environment' created by the interplay of interrogation and custody, and with police techniques or practices that evoke this concern, not all of which involve express questioning. See Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 299, 100 S.Ct. 1682, 64 L.Ed.2d 297 (1980)

. Interrogation has therefore not been limited to express questioning but also includes its functional equivalent. It has been characterized as any words or actions on the part of the police (other than those normally attendant to arrest and custody) that the police should know are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from the suspect. Id. at 301; see also People v. Gonzales, 987 P.2d 239, 241 (Colo.1999); People v. Sharpless, 807 P.2d 590, 591 (Colo.1991); People v. Trujillo, 784 P.2d 788, 790-91 (Colo.1990). In determining whether a person has been subjected to custodial interrogation, courts must consider the totality of the circumstances surrounding the encounter. See Gonzales, 987 P.2d at 241. This remains true whether or not that person is a juvenile. See People in Interest of R.A., 937 P.2d 731, 738 (Colo.1997).

Miranda also made clear that confessions remain a proper element in law enforcement and that volunteered statements of any kind are not barred by the Fifth Amendment. See Miranda, 384 U.S. at 478,

86 S.Ct. 1602. Interrogation, as conceptualized in Miranda, must therefore reflect a measure of compulsion above and beyond that inherent in custody itself. See Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. at 300, 100 S.Ct. 1682. Practices identified as the functional equivalents of interrogation generally employ compelling influences or psychological ploys in tandem with police custody to obtain confessions. Gonzales, 987 P.2d at 242. The ultimate issue for resolution is whether the defendant was compelled by the police to make a statement, not whether he was allowed to talk to the police without the benefit of warnings and counsel. Id.

A suspect's inculpatory statement is not considered to be the product of custodial interrogation merely because it is made after he has been told the charges against him. Se...