State v. Patterson

• Decision Date: 21 July 1978
• Docket Number: No. 6076,6076
• Citation: 581 P.2d 752,59 Haw. 357
• Parties: STATE of Hawaii, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Jay Baker PATTERSON, Defendant-Appellee, and Christel Forth, Defendant.
• Court: Hawaii Supreme Court

Page 752

581 P.2d 752

59 Haw. 357

STATE of Hawaii, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Jay Baker PATTERSON, Defendant-Appellee and Christel Forth, Defendant.

No. 6076.

Supreme Court of Hawai'i.

July 21, 1978.

Syllabus by the Court

1. Custodial interrogation for Miranda purposes means 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.

2. Whether defendant is in custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action for Miranda purposes is to be determined from the totality of the circumstances, objectively appraised.

3. Miranda rule does not preclude police, in the exercise of their investigatory functions, from making general on-the-scene inquiries to determine whether crime has been committed or is in progress.

4. Persons temporarily detained for brief questioning by police officers who lack probable cause to make an arrest or bring an accusation need not be given Miranda warnings until such time as the point of arrest or accusation has been reached or the questioning has ceased to be brief and casual and become sustained and coercive.

Douglas L. Halsted, Deputy Pros. Atty., Hilo, for plaintiff-appellant.

D. Barclay Bryan, Honolulu (Kai, Dodge & Evensen, Honolulu, of counsel), for defendant-appellee.

Before RICHARDSON, C. J., and KOBAYASHI, OGATA, MENOR and KIDWELL, JJ.

MENOR, Justice.

The defendant Jay Baker Patterson was indicted for the offense of burglary in the first degree. His pretrial motion to suppress certain statements he had made to the police was granted by the trial court. From the order of suppression the State appeals.

Three police officers had responded, at approximately 3:00 a. m., to a report of a possible burglary in progress at a private residence in the Kona area. Officer George Pereira was the first to arrive at the scene followed by the other officers. He drove his vehicle up the driveway and parked directly behind a Chevrolet sedan which was parked just outside of the carport with its lights off. The defendant was standing next to the automobile's left rear fender. As the officer came to a stop and started to leave his vehicle, the defendant walked towards him. Officer Pereira recognized the defendant as a "known police character" and greeted him by his first name.

The officer immediately asked the defendant what he was doing there but received no answer. The officer next asked whether he lived there and whether he had permission to be there and the defendant answered both questions in the negative. The officer then asked about the ownership of the vehicle in the driveway and the defendant said it belonged to a friend. At that point Sgt. Kenneth Uyeda, who had been looking around, called Officer Pereira's attention to a woman's purse lying on the front seat of the vehicle. In this connection Officer Pereira testified:

"I observed, also, the numerous farm tools, inside of the car in the rear seat and in the trunk area of the car. Which I asked the defendant, if these things had belonged to him, being that it was in his friend's vehicle. And he told me, 'no.' "

That was the extent of the police interrogation, and it was at that point that Officer Pereira placed the defendant under arrest "for examination burglary." He was then driven to the Kona police station by the officer. On the way the defendant volunteered additional incriminating statements. At the station he was, for the first time, advised of his Miranda rights, which he waived. Following this waiver he willingly gave a more detailed account of his activities that evening.

The determinative issue in this case is whether the defendant should have been given the Miranda warnings sometime during the questioning conducted by the police at the scene of the alleged offense. We hold that the warnings need not have been given.

An individual in police custody may not be subjected to interrogation without first being advised of his Miranda rights. State v. Kalai, 56 Haw. 366, 537 P.2d 8 (1975). Custodial interrogation, which would require the police to advise a person of his constitutional rights before interrogation, was defined by the Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1612, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), as "questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in a significant way."

In State v. Kalai, supra, where questioning took place at the home of the defendant, we observed that the Miranda rule was not confined to the station house setting, and that it did not lose its relevancy simply because the interrogation was taking place in familiar surroundings. And while the focus of the investigation upon the defendant as a factor in triggering the application of the Miranda rule could have been more clearly and more definitively expressed, we nevertheless intimated therein that Miranda warnings must be given to the defendant before police interrogation where the investigation has zeroed in upon the defendant as a prime suspect to the extent that the police would have been justified in arresting him without a warrant on probable cause. In Kalai, however, the police were without knowledge of facts sufficient to effect an arrest. Neither were the compulsive factors with which Miranda was concerned shown to exist so as to support the conclusion that the defendant had been subjected to custodial interrogation. Kalai, incidentally, was an after the fact interview and did not involve on-the-scene interrogation.

Since our decision in Kalai, the Supreme Court has rendered a further clarification of what it meant by custodial interrogation. In Beckwith v. United States, 425 U.S. 341, 96 S.Ct. 1612, 48 L.Ed.2d 1 (1976), the Court rejected the focus test as an alternative standard. ¹

"Although the 'focus' of an investigation may indeed have been on (the defendant) at the time of the interview . . ., he hardly found himself in the custodial situation described by the Miranda Court as the basis for its holding. Miranda implicitly defined 'focus,' for its purposes, as '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.' " 425 U.S. at 347, 96 S.Ct. at 1616. (Emphasis in original)

Beckwith was followed by Oregon v. Mathiason, 429 U.S. 492, 97 S.Ct. 711, 50 L.Ed.2d 714 (1977). And although we might not have necessarily reached the same results, under the Hawaii Constitution, ² as did the majority of the Supreme Court in Mathiason, we think that the following observations by the Court are generally sound:

"(A) noncustodial situation is not converted to one in which Miranda applies simply because a reviewing court concludes that, even in the absence of any formal arrest or restraint on freedom of movement, the questioning took place in a 'coercive environment.' Any interview of one suspected of a crime by a police officer will have coercive aspects to it, simply by virtue of the fact that the police officer is part of a law enforcement system which may ultimately cause the suspect to be charged with a crime. But police officers are not required to administer Miranda warnings to everyone whom they question. Nor is the requirement of warnings to be imposed simply because the questioning takes place in the station house, or because the questioned person is one whom the police suspect." 429 U.S. at 495, 97 S.Ct. at 714.

We adhered basically to these principles in Doe v. Chang, 58 Haw. 94, 564 P.2d 1271 (1977). In that case the petitioners were the target of a departmental investigation for welfare fraud. They sought to enjoin the Department of Social Services and Housing from conducting investigatory interviews with the petitioners without first giving them the Miranda warnings. In affirming the trial court's dismissal of their petition, we said:

"Plaintiffs have not alleged any deprivation of their freedom of action in connection with the investigatory interrogations complained of here, other than the constraint imposed by their assumption that co-operation with the questioners was a condition of continued welfare benefits, nor have they alleged that they were informed that failure to provide such co-operation would result in any disadvantage to them."

But while focus of the investigation upon the defendant, standing alone, will not trigger the application of the Miranda rule, Beckwith v. United States, supra, it nevertheless continues to be an important factor in the determination of whether the defendant was subjected to custodial interrogation. State v. Kalai, supra; State v. Bohanan, 220 Kan. 121, 551 P.2d 828 (1976); Hancock v. Estelle, 558 F.2d 786 (5th Cir. 1977). Where the police, prior to questioning the individual, are in possession of facts sufficient to effect an arrest without a warrant based on probable cause, it is less likely that the person confronted would be allowed to come and go as he pleases. The degree of this likelihood may, of course, depend upon the nature and gravity of the offense, as well as other circumstances. In any event, whether the defendant was in custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action for Miranda purposes is to be determined from the totality of the circumstances, objectively appraised. Lowe v. United States, 407 F.2d 1391 (9th Cir. 1969); cf. State v. Tsukiyama, 56 Haw. 8, 525 P.2d 1099 (1974). These would include the place and time of the interrogation, the length of the interrogation, the nature of the questions asked, the conduct of the police, and all other relevant circumstances.

The adoption of the Miranda rule, however, was never intended to hamper law enforcement agencies in the exercise of their investigative duties or in the performance of their traditional investigatory functions. Miranda v. Arizona, supra. In that case the Court sa...