Ryon v. State

• Decision Date: 26 November 1975
• Docket Number: No. 376,376
• Citation: 29 Md.App. 62,349 A.2d 393
• Parties: Minnie Sue RYON v. STATE of Maryland. (On Remand)
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

Page 62

29 Md.App. 62

349 A.2d 393

Minnie Sue RYON v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 376. (On Remand)

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland.

Nov. 26, 1975.

Karl G. Feissner, Appointed Public Defender, Hyattsville, with whom were Feissner, Garrity, Levan and Schimel, Hyattsville, and Edward P. Camus, Public Defender for Prince George's County, Riverdale, on the brief, for appellant.

James G. Klair, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom were Francis B. Burch, Atty. Gen., Arthur A. Marshall, Jr., State's Atty., for Prince George's County, and Joseph C. Sauerwein, Deputy State's Atty., for Prince George's County, on the brief, for appellee.

Argued before ORTH, C. J., and DAVIDSON and LOWE, JJ.

ORTH, Chief Judge.

WONG SUN v. UNITED STATES

On 14 January 1963 the Supreme Court of the United States decided Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441. The Court pronounced the principles to be applied where the issue is whether statements and other evidence obtained after an illegal arrest or search should be excluded. '(F) ederal agents elicited an oral statement from defendant Toy after forcing entry at 6 a. m. into his laundry at the back of which he had his living quarters. The agents had followed Toy down the hall to the bedroom and there had placed him under arrest. ¹ * * * Toy's statement, which bore upon his participation in the sale of narcotics, led the agents to question another person, Johnny Yee, who actually possessed narcotics. Yee stated that heroin had been brought to him earlier by Toy and another Chinese known to him only as 'Sea Dog'. Under questioning, Toy said that 'Sea Dog' was Wong Sun. Toy led agents to a multifamily dwelling where, he said, Wong Sun lived. Gaining admittance to the building through a bell and buzzer, the agents climbed the stairs and entered the apartment. One went into the back room and brought Wong Sun out in handcuffs. After arraignment, Wong Sun was released on his own recognizance. Several days later, he returned voluntarily to give an unsigned confession. (The Supreme Court) ruled that Toy's declarations and the contraband taken from Yee were the fruits of the agents' illegal action and should not have been admitted as evidence against Toy. (371 U.S.) at 484-488, 83 S.Ct. at 416. It held that the statement did not result from 'an intervening independent act of a free will,' and that it was not 'sufficiently an act of free will to purge the primary taint of the unlawful invasion' Id., at 486, 83 S.Ct. at 416. With respect to Wong Sun's confession, however, the Court held that in the light of his lawful arraignment and release on his own recognizance, and of his return voluntarily several days later to make the statement, the connection between his unlawful arrest and the statement 'had' become so attenuated as to dissipate the taint. 'Nardone v. United States, 308 U.S. 338, 341, 60 S.Ct. 266, 84 L.Ed. 307.' Id., at 491, 83 S.Ct. at 419.' ² The key to the holding in Wong Sun is in this statement by the Court, 371 U.S. at 487-488, 83 S.Ct. at 417:

'We need not hold that all evidence is 'fruit of the poisonous tree' simply because it would not have come to light but for the illegal actions of the police. Rather, the more apt question in such a case is 'whether, granting establishment of the primary illegality, the evidence to which instant objection is made has been come at by exploitation of that illegality or instead by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint.' Maguire, Evidence of Guilt, 221 (1959).'

The Court in Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 2259-2260, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975), explained the Wong Sun holding:

'The exclusionary rule thus was applied in Wong Sun primarily to protect Fourth Amendment rights. Protection of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination was not the Court's paramount concern there. To the extent that the question whether Toy's statement was voluntary was considered, it was only to judge whether it 'was sufficiently an act of free will to purge the primary taint of the unlawful invasion.' 371 U.S. at 486, 83 S.Ct. at 416 (emphasis added).'

The Court in Wong Sun made clear that 'verbal evidence which derives so immediately from an unlawful entry and an unauthorized arrest as the officers' action in the present case is no less the 'fruit' of official illegality than the more common tangible fruits of the unwarranted intrusion. . . . Nor do the policies underlying the exclusionary rule invite any logical distinction between physical and verbal evidence. Either in terms of deterring lawless conduct by federal officers, . . . or of closing the doors of the federal courts to any use of evidence unconstitutionally obtained, . . . the danger in relaxing the exclusionary rules in the case of verbal evidence would seem too great to warrant introducing such a distinction.' 371 U.S. at 485-486, 83 S.Ct. at 416.

MIRANDA v. ARIZONA

Wong Sun left the basic law relating to admissibility of confessions unchanged. The question upon challenge of a confession was simply whether the statement offered was 'voluntary'. In state cases the Supreme Court applied the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, examining the circumstances of interrogation to determine whether the processes were so unfair or unreasonable as to render a subsequent confession involuntary. See, e. g., Haynes v. Washington, 373 U.S. 503, 83 S.Ct. 1336, 10 L.Ed.2d 513 (1963); Payne v. Arkansas, 356 U.S. 560, 78 S.Ct. 844, 2 L.Ed.2d 975 (1958); White v. Texas, 310 U.S. 530, 60 S.Ct. 1032, 84 L.Ed. 1342 (1940); Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278, 56 S.Ct. 461, 80 L.Ed. 682 (1936). Where the State's actions offended the standards of fundamental fairness under the Due Process Clause, the State was then deprived of the right to use the resulting confessions in court. This traditional test of voluntariness was the rule of Maryland. 'The basic standard governing the admissibility of an extra-judicial statement is whether, considering the totality of the circumstances, the statement was voluntary.' Robinson v. State, 3 Md.App. 666, 671, 240 A.2d 638, 641, (1968), citing Taylor v. State, 238 Md. 424, 209 A.2d 595 (1965) and McFadden v. State, 1 Md.App. 511, 231 A.2d 910 (1967). ³

It was not until the decision of the Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, decided 13 June 1966, that the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, a privilege made applicable to the States in Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 84 S.Ct. 1489, 12 L.Ed.2d 653 (1964), was seen as the principal protection for a person facing prolice interrogation. The Court in Miranda, for the first time, expressly declared that the Self Incrimination Clause was applicable to state custodial interrogations, and that an accused's statements might be excluded at trial despite their voluntary character under traditional principles. Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U.S. 433, 94 S.Ct. 2357, 2363, 41 L.Ed.2d 182 (1974). Miranda established a set of specific protective guidelines, commonly known as the Miranda rules or warnings. In post-Miranda trials, where the State seeks to introduce a statement taken from an accused during custodial interrogation, it must, as part of its proof of voluntariness, affirmatively show that all the Miranda warnings required to be given were in fact given, and that the accused, in giving the statement, understood his rights and knowingly and intelligently waived them.

MICHIGAN v. TUCKER

The Supreme Court decided Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U.S. 433, 94 S.Ct. 2357, 41 L.Ed.2d 182 on 10 June, 1974. We know now, in the light of Tucker, that failure to give all the Miranda warnings does not necessarily abridge the privilege against self-incrimination. Tucker tells us, at 444, 94 S.Ct. at 2364, that the Court in Miranda 'recognized that those procedural safeguards were not themselves rights protected by the Constitution but were instead measures to insure that the right against compulsory self-incrimination was protected. . . . The suggested safeguards were not intended to 'create a constitutional straitjacket,' (384 U.S., at 467, 86 S.Ct. 1602), but rather to provide practical reinforcement for the right against compulsory self-incrimination.' Thus, evidence obtained without full compliance with the Miranda dictates is not, for that reason, always to be excluded. So, in Tucker, the failure to advise an accused during a custodial interrogation, held prior to the Miranda decision, of his right to appointed counsel, did not in the circumstances existent, infringe against the right against compulsory self-incrimination but only violated the prophylactic rules developed to protect that right. Therefore, the use of the testimony of a witness discovered by the police as a result of the accused's statements did not violate any requirements under the Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, relating to the adversary system. Prior to Tucker, in Harris v. New York, 401 U.S. 222, 91 S.Ct. 643, 28 L.Ed.2d 1 (1971), the Court held that a statement of the defendant himself, taken without informing him of his right of access to appointed counsel, could be used to impeach defendant's direct testimony at trial. Id., at 224, 91 S.Ct. 643. ⁴

From Wong Sun through Tucker, the rule appeared to be that verbal evidence is not always to be excluded because it derived from an illegal detention (and thus resulted from an unreasonable search and seizure) or because it was obtained without full observance of the Miranda prophylactic safeguards. ⁵ It is when the fruits of police misconduct actually infringe upon a defendant's Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights that they must be suppressed. There were, to be sure, areas which required explication. In Morales v. New York, 396 U.S. 102, 105-106, 90 S.Ct. 291, 293, 24 L.Ed.2d 299 (1969), the Court said: 'In any event, in the absence of a record that squarely and necessarily presents the issue and...