R. L. J., In Interest of

• Decision Date: 19 July 1976
• Docket Number: No. Z-475,Z-475
• Parties: In the Interest of R. L. J., a child.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 132

336 So.2d 132

In the Interest of R. L. J., a child.

No. Z-475.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

July 19, 1976.

Rehearing Denied, Sept. 1, 1976.

Richard W. Ervin, III, Public Defender, and Michael J. Minerva, Asst. Public Defender, Tallahassee, for appellant.

Robert L. Shevin, Atty. Gen., and Andrew W. Lindsey, Asst. Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, for appellee.

SMITH, Judge.

Wakulla County deputy sheriff Bailey asked appellant R. L. J., ¹ then 14 years old, to go to the sheriff's office for questioning. Bailey there gave the boy warnings required for custodial interrogation by Miranda v. Arizona, ² elicited his confession to breaking and entering a dwelling with intent to commit a misdemeanor, and delivered him to an intake officer of the Division of Youth Services. R. L. J. was adjudicated a delinquent ³ and he now appeals, urging that evidence of his confession should have been suppressed. His lawyer asserts that deputy Bailey made 'an unconstitutional arrest' and that neither Miranda warnings nor other intervening circumstances 'sufficiently attenuated the taint' of the illegal arrest to 'break, for Fourth (and Fourteenth) Amendment purposes, the causal connection between the illegality and the confession. ' Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 592, 603, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 2256, 2261, 45 L.Ed.2d 416, 420, 427 (1975); ⁴ Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963). A parallel question arises under Section 12 of Florida's Declaration of Rights, which protects '(t)he right of the people to be secure in their persons . . . against unreasonable . . . seizures. . . .'

Deputy Bailey had a well-founded suspicion, not amounting to probable cause for arrest, that appellant participated in recent burglaries. Bailey decided to question the youth and went to his home, where appellant's father told Bailey that appellant was with his brother-in-law, also a suspect. Bailey explained his wish to question appellant at the sheriff's office and, according to Bailey's testimony, appellant's father replied that he had no objection. Bailey drove to the brother-in-law's house and found appellant in the yard with his brother-in-law. When he asked appellant 'if I might talk with him for a little while down at the sheriff's office,' appellant inquired, 'Why?' Bailey replied that 'I would rather wait and go to the sheriff's office and I would explain it to him there.' Appellant then 'agreed to ride down to the sheriff's office with me in order for me to talk with him.' Bailey did not advise the youth he was not obligated to go along for questioning. Appellant explained:

'Well, I figured that him a law officer, you had to, you now, I had to go with him.'

At the sheriff's office Bailey read Miranda warnings to appellant from a card and after 30 to 40 minutes of questioning, obtained the confession which was received in evidence.

I.

Bailey made no arrest 'in the technical and restricted sense' when he asked appellant to accompany him to headquarters for questioning. Melton v. State, 75 So.2d 291, 294 (Fla.1954); ⁵ Range v State, 156 So.2d 534 (Fla.App.2d, 1963); Mallory v. United States, 354 U.S. 449, 77 S.Ct. 1356, 1 L.Ed.2d 1479 (1957). But the absence of a formal arrest does not end the inquiry. The Fourth Amendment monitors arrests whether announced or unannounced, and it applies a rule of reason to both greater and lesser intrusions on protected privacy. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 16, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1877, 20 L.Ed.2d 889, 903 (1968). ⁶ Thus, regardless of whether deputy Bailey thought he had 'arrested' appellant, and in spite of his disclaimer, ⁷ any personal seizure unjustified by Fourth Amendment standards must be shown, under the rule of Wong Sun and Brown, not to have influenced the confession on which the State seeks to rely.

The threshold issue, then, is whether there was a personal seizure as defined in Terry, 392 U.S. at 19 n. 16, 88 S.Ct. at 1879, 20 L.Ed.2d at 905:

'Obviously, not all personal intercourse between policemen and citizens involves 'seizures' of persons. Only when the officer, by means of physical force or show of authority, has in some way restrained the liberty of a citizen may we conclude that a 'seizure' has occurred.'

The record shows that appellant moved progressively into a state of custody from the moment deputy Bailey asserted authority to request appellant's presence at headquarters without explanation. By increments appellant was thereafter 'deprived of his freedom of action' in a 'significant way.' Miranda, 384 U.S. at 444, 86 S.Ct. at 1612, 16 L.Ed.2d at 706. He was 14 and a felony suspect. At first he tentatively challenged the requested interview by asking its purpose. When Bailey parried that inquiry, and so tacitly asserted his will and authority to proceed without explanation, the acquiescing youth was taken by patrol car for questioning at headquarters 'in a police-dominated atmosphere.' Miranda, 384 U.S. at 445, 86 S.Ct. at 1612, 16 L.Ed.2d at 707. ⁸

Considering appellant's youth, the deputy's methods and the purposeful formality of the headquarters visitation, we find that appellant's liberty was restrained to a degree cognizable under the Fourth Amendment. The deputy's Miranda warnings were themselves an acknowledgment--though assuredly not a conclusive one--that the imminent interrogation was custodial and therefore attended by guaranties of the Fifth Amendment, which 'is in 'intimate relation' with the fourth. ' Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 633, 6 S.Ct. 524, 534, 29 L.Ed. 746, 752 (1886); Brown, 422 U.S. at 601, 95 S.Ct. at 2260, 45 L.Ed.2d at 425. Appellant was in custody.

II.

Miranda warnings were given and there was no evidence that appellant's confession was coerced by physical deprivation, persistent interrogation or other constraints which the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments have long been held to condemn. See Columbe v. Connecticut, infra, n. 15. But this was no momentary on-scene intrusion of the sort which the Fourth Amendment accommodates for field investigation. ⁹ Appellant's detention was more concentrated, lengthier and more purposeful than that, and his privacy interests were therefore more substantial than those of one who, though free to go, is stopped on the street for routine questioning. ¹⁰

It is argued for appellant that a person under 18 cannot voluntarily submit to detention for interrogation in Florida because custodial interrogation without arrest is unauthorized by § 39.03(1), F.S., specifying occasions when a child 'may be taken into custody.' The cited statute provides that '(a) child may be taken into custody . . . (b) (f)or a delinquent act, pursuant to the laws of arrest . . ..', and in other circumstances not here pertinent.

We cannot agree that Florida's statutory enumeration of occasions for taking juveniles into custody forbids custodial questioning of juveniles in all events. Chapter 39 does not purport to govern all relationships between police and juveniles. Its principal concern, as its title indicates, is orderly and sensitive 'judicial treatment' of juveniles. That phrase implies a concern for adjudicatory standards and for appropriate ancillary processes. Section 39.01(30) defines 'taken into custody,' the linchpin phrase of appellant's argument, as

'the status of a temporary physical control of a child by a person authorized by this chapter, pending his release, detention, or placement.'

The statute refers to a child's 'release' as his release 'to a parent, a responsible adult relative, or an adult approved by the court'; to a child's 'detention' as his delivery after parental notice 'to the appropriate intake officer or . . . detention home or shelter'; and to his 'placement' as judicial release to an adult not a relative. Sec. 39.03(2), (3), F.S. We think the statute was not intended to forbid a brief and otherwise lawful investigative custody which is simply ended, without ceremony, when its legitimate purpose has been served. In these events formal 'release, detention, or placement' is rarely 'pending' or necessarily desirable. To read chapter 39 as prohibiting all custodial interrogation of nonarrested juveniles would encourage marginally valid arrests for investigative purposes, ¹¹ deprive law enforcement authorities of a means to exonerate innocent suspects, and unduly deter apprehension of many felons. ¹² We decline to give chapter 39, F.S., an effect so obviously unintended by the legislature. Accord, T. B. v. State, 306 So.2d 183 (Fla.App.2d, 1975).

We note In re A.J.A., 248 So.2d 690 (Fla.App.3d, 1971), which read § 39.03, F.S.1971, as denouncing investigative delays after a child's arrest and before his presentation to a magistrate. ¹³ Section 39.03(3), F.S.1971, then provided:

'The person taking and retaining a child in custody shall notify the parents . . . and shall, Without delay for the purpose of investigation or any other purpose, deliver the child, by the most direct practicable route, to the court of the county or district where the child is taken into custody . . ..' 248 So.2d at 691 (emphasis added).

The Florida Supreme Court approved the District Court's decision '(i)n view of the explicit mandatory language' of the statute. Roberts v. State, 285 So.2d 385, 386 (Fla.1973), quashing this Court's decision in State v. Roberts, 274 So.2d 262 (Fla.App.1st, 1973). But the 1973 Legislature revised § 39.03(3), F.S., and substituted a milder requirement that the child 'taken into custody' be delivered to the intake officer 'without unreasonable delay.' Sec. 4, ch. 73-231, Fla.Laws; § 39.03(3)(a), F.S.1975. It is evident the legislature thus removed statutory impediments to juvenile custodial interrogation which does not offend the United States and Florida Constitutions.

III.

No Florida statute having intervened to prevent appellant's headquarters interrogation, we must base our decision on whether appellant voluntarily submitted to the detention...