People v. Storm
| Decision Date | 15 August 2002 |
| Docket Number | No. S088712.,S088712. |
| Citation | 124 Cal.Rptr.2d 110,28 Cal.4th 1007,52 P.3d 52 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Charles Edward STORM, Defendant and Appellant. |
| Court | California Supreme Court |
David M. McKinney, San Diego, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.
John T. Philipsborn, San Francisco, and Charles D. Weisselberg for California Attorneys for Criminal Justice as Amicus Curiae on behalf of Defendant and Appellant. Bill Lockyer, Attorney General, David P. Druliner, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Gary W. Schons, Assistant Attorney General, Sara Gros-Cloren, William M. Wood and Holly D. Wilkens, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
This case involves issues, previously unaddressed by this court, which arise under Miranda v. Arizona (1966) 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (Miranda ) and its progeny. During an investigation of his wife's homicide, defendant agreed to take a polygraph test. At the police station, he received Miranda warnings and waived his rights, but then said he wished to consult a lawyer before speaking further. Rather than cease questioning immediately, as Miranda and Edwards v. Arizona (1981) 451 U.S. 477, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 68 L.Ed.2d 378 (Edwards) require in a custodial setting, the polygraph operator encouraged defendant to keep talking. During this interlude, defendant admitted he killed his wife, claiming an assisted suicide.
Defendant was allowed to leave the station. Two days later, detectives came to his home. After assuring him he would not then be arrested, they interviewed him again without new Miranda warnings. Defendant provided a more detailed version of his assisted-suicide story. The detectives then departed as they had promised.
Defendant was charged with premeditated murder. The trial court excluded all his station house statements made after he first requested counsel, but it admitted the later home interview. Defendant took the stand. Contrary to his prior claims, he testified that he "snapped" and killed his wife when, during an argument, she disparaged his sexual performance.
Defendant was convicted as charged. On appeal, he asserted that admission of the home interview was prejudicial error. He argued that the police violated Edwards by recontacting him for questioning after he had invoked his Miranda right to counsel in custody. He insisted that any "break in custody" exception to the Edwards no-recontact rule was inapplicable in this case, because the police released him from custody on a mere "pretext" to avoid Edivards, and because they failed to give new Miranda warnings before requestioning him at home. The Court of Appeal rejected these arguments and affirmed the conviction.
We agree with the Court of Appeal that the break-in-custody exception to the Edwards no-recontact rule governs here. The special protections of Miranda and Edwards apply only to persons questioned in the coercive atmosphere of police custody. The Edwards no-recontact rule guards against police badgering designed to wear down a suspect who remains in custody after invoking his Miranda right to counsel during custodial questioning.
Insofar as defendant's first statement was obtained in violation of Edwards, it was inadmissible in the prosecution's case-in-chief. But when the police realized their mistake, they released him, and they recontacted him only after a two-day interval during which he had ample time, opportunity, and incentive to consult counsel outside the coercive atmosphere of custody. Many cases recognize that such a break in custody vitiates the particular danger addressed by Edwards, and new police questioning is permitted. Moreover, defendant was not rearrested before requestioning, but was re-interviewed, with his permission, in the noncustodial setting of his own home. Hence, no new Miranda warnings and waivers were required. We also agree with the Court of Appeal that by releasing and later reapproaching defendant, the police were not engaged in an improper ruse or pretext to avoid the strictures of Miranda and Edwards. Accordingly, we need not decide whether the Court of Appeal was correct insofar as it suggested that the existence of such deliberate police misconduct would be irrelevant in any event.
Finally, we reject defendant's argument that the home interview was the tainted product of an earlier Edwards violation at the police station. Even if defendant's statements at the police station were elicited in violation of Edwards, there was no actual police coercion, and the record amply demonstrates that defendant spoke of his own free will. The two-day interval between interviews, during which defendant was free from custody, served to further attenuate any taint. The statement obtained at defendant's residence was itself entirely voluntary. As before, no coercive tactics were used. The evidence belies any inference that defendant's primary motive for talking was a realization that the "cat" was already "out of the bag." Finally, because the home interview occurred in a noncustodial setting to which Miranda protections do not apply, new Miranda warnings were not required to dissipate the taint from any prior Edwards violation.
Accordingly, we will affirm the Court of Appeal's judgment.
Charges and trial evidence.
An information charged defendant with the premeditated murder of Gloria Andrade. (Pen.Code, §§ 187, subd. (a), 189.)1 The information further alleged, for purposes of sentence enhancement, that defendant had personally used a deadly and dangerous weapon, a knife (§ 12022, subd. (b)(1)), and that he had previously been convicted of a forcible lewd act upon a child (§ 288, former subd. (b) (now subd. (b)(1)), a serious felony (§§ 667, subds.(a)-(i), 1192.7, subd. (c)). The trial evidence indicated the following:
On November 2, 1996, around 7:00 a.m., the body of Andrade, defendant's wife, was found in the brush beside a roadside turnout near Julian, in rural San Diego County. The body exhibited multiple stab wounds to the throat, chest, and back. Around 10:00 p.m. that evening, defendant telephoned the San Diego Police and reported Andrade missing.
On November 4, 1996, San Diego County Sheriffs homicide detectives Rowe and Heilig went to defendant's apartment to interview him about the report. Defendant stated he last saw Andrade around 9:00 p.m. on November 1, 1996, awoke the next morning to find her gone, made inquiries to try to find her, and then contacted the police. The detectives noticed personal effects on the dining room table; defendant confirmed they were Andrade's driver's license and rings. He claimed she had left them behind.
On November 21, 1996, after Andrade's body had been identified, Detectives Rowe, Moreno, and Jopes returned to defendant's home to interview him about her death. The jury heard a redacted audio recording of this interview, in which defendant claimed he helped Andrade to commit suicide.
Defendant's November 21 statement was as follows: He met Andrade while both were living in a recovery hotel for people with drug and alcohol problems. They later married, and he tried to give her the will to live, but she could not control her drinking and fell into a deep depression. In the weeks before her death, she frequently asked him to help her commit suicide. For a time, defendant resisted, and he finally told her it would have to be on the spur of the moment, because he could not think about it in advance. On the evening of November 1, 1996, she announced the time had come. He grabbed a knife from a kitchen drawer, and they departed in her car. After driving around in search of an isolated site, they arrived at the turnout near Julian. There he inflicted the knife wounds that caused her death.
As related by defendant on November 21, the sequence of wounds is somewhat unclear. However, defendant appears to have said that as he and Andrade exchanged a final kiss at her request, he sliced her throat. She smiled and guided the knife as he did so. Then he stabbed her in the chest as she sighed in relief. Finally, to make sure she was dead, he rolled her over and inflicted the wound in her back.
Defendant said he moved Andrade's body to where it was found because "I knew eventually things would come up," and "I figured ... if she was found within three to five days I might have a better chance of them not findin' anything." Defendant brought home the knife, the gloves Andrade had been wearing, her jewelry, and, by mistake, her identification, but he "knew" he might have left behind such traceable evidence as hair samples, fingerprints, and cigarette butts.
Defendant declared he had "told [Andrade] ... over and over, there's no way I'm gonna get away with this." Indeed, defendant said, though he attempted the missing person coverup, he (Italics added.) Defendant insisted that now (Italics added.)
An autopsy suggested that the order of wounds was different than defendant had indicated in his November 21 statement. Based on the medical evidence, the pathologist opined that Andrade was stabbed in the back before she was stabbed in the chest, and that the nonfatal throat wounds were inflicted near the time of death, after the wound to her heart. Of the 12 knives consensually seized from defendant's apartment on November 21, the knife most consistent with Andrade's wounds was the one defendant had indicated to Detective Rowe.
The prosecution presented evidence that on November 1, 1996, the day Andrade was killed, she was offered a bookkeeping job. She was scheduled to begin on November 5,...
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