Vega v. Tekoh

• Decision Date: 23 June 2022
• Docket Number: 21-499
• Citation: 142 S.Ct. 2095,213 L.Ed.2d 479
• Parties: Carlos VEGA, Petitioner v. Terence B. TEKOH
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

142 S.Ct. 2095

213 L.Ed.2d 479

Carlos VEGA, Petitioner

v.Terence B. TEKOH

No. 21-499

Supreme Court of the United States.

Argued April 20, 2022

Decided June 23, 2022

Roman Martinez, Washington, DC, for petitioner.

Vivek Suri for the United States as amicus curiae, by special leave of the Court, supporting the petitioner.

Paul L. Hoffman, Culver City, CA, for respondent.

Rickey Ivie, Ivie McNeill Wyatt Purcell & Diggs, APLC, Los Angeles, CA, Roman Martinez, Counsel of Record, Gregory G. Garre, Charles S. Dameron, Michael Clemente, Joshua J. Craddock, Latham & Watkins LLP, Washington, DC, for petitioner.

Paul Hoffman, John Washington, Schonbrun Seplow Harris Hoffman & Zeldes LLP, Hermosa Beach, CA, John Burton, The Law Offices of John Burton, Pasadena, CA, Erwin Chemerinsky, University of California, Berkeley School of Law, Berkeley, CA, for respondent.

Justice ALITO delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case presents the question whether a plaintiff may sue a police officer under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, based on the allegedly improper admission of an "un- Mirandized "¹ statement in a criminal prosecution. The case arose out of the interrogation of respondent, Terence Tekoh, by petitioner, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Carlos Vega. Deputy Vega questioned Tekoh at his place of employment and did not give him a Miranda warning. Tekoh was prosecuted, and his confession was admitted into evidence, but the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Tekoh then sued Vega under § 1983, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the use of Tekoh's un- Mirandized statement provided a valid basis for a § 1983 claim against Vega. We now reject this extension of our Miranda case law.

I

In March 2014, Tekoh was working as a certified nursing assistant at a Los Angeles medical center. When a female patient accused him of sexually assaulting her, the hospital staff reported the accusation to the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department, and Deputy Vega responded. Vega questioned Tekoh at length in the hospital, and Tekoh eventually provided a written statement apologizing for inappropriately touching the patient's genitals. The parties dispute whether Vega used coercive investigatory techniques to extract the statement, but it is undisputed that he never informed Tekoh of his rights under Miranda v. Arizona , 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), which held that during a custodial interrogation police officers must inform a suspect that "he has the right to remain silent, that anything he says can be used against him in a court of law, that he has the right to the presence of an attorney, and that if he cannot afford an attorney one will be appointed for him prior to any questioning." Id. , at 479, 86 S.Ct. 1602.

Tekoh was arrested and charged in California state court with unlawful sexual penetration. At Tekoh's first trial, the judge held that Miranda had not been violated because Tekoh was not in custody when he provided the statement, but the trial resulted in a mistrial. When Tekoh was retried, a second judge again denied his request to exclude the confession. This trial resulted in acquittal, and Tekoh then brought this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Vega and several other defendants seeking damages for alleged violations of his constitutional rights, including his Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination.

When this § 1983 case was first tried, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Vega, but the judge concluded that he had given an improper jury instruction and thus granted a new trial. Before the second trial, Tekoh asked the court to instruct the jury that it was required to find that Vega violated the Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination if it determined that he took a statement from Tekoh in violation of Miranda and that the statement was then improperly used against Tekoh at his criminal trial. The District Court declined, reasoning that Miranda established a prophylactic rule and that such a rule could not alone provide a ground for § 1983 liability. Instead, the jury was asked to decide whether Tekoh's Fifth Amendment right had been violated. The court instructed the jury to determine, based on "the totality of all the surrounding circumstances," whether Tekoh's statement had been "improperly coerced or compelled," and the court explained that "[a] confession is improperly coerced or compelled ... if a police officer uses physical or psychological force or threats not permitted by law to undermine a person's ability to exercise his or her free will." App. to Pet. for Cert. 119a. The jury found in Vega's favor, and Tekoh appealed.

A Ninth Circuit panel reversed, holding that the "use of an un- Mirandized statement against a defendant in a criminal proceeding violates the Fifth Amendment and may support a § 1983 claim" against the officer who obtained the statement. Tekoh v. County of Los Angeles , 985 F.3d 713, 722 (2021). The panel acknowledged that this Court has repeatedly said that Miranda adopted prophylactic rules designed to protect against constitutional violations and that the decision did not hold that the contravention of those rules necessarily constitutes a constitutional violation. See 985 F.3d at 719–720. But the panel thought that our decision in Dickerson v. United States , 530 U.S. 428, 120 S.Ct. 2326, 147 L.Ed.2d 405 (2000), "made clear that the right of a criminal defendant against having an un- Mirandized statement introduced in the prosecution's case in chief is indeed a right secured by the Constitution." 985 F.3d at 720. Therefore the panel concluded that Tekoh could establish a violation of his Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination simply by showing that Miranda had been violated. See 985 F.3d at 720. The panel thus remanded the case for a new trial.

Vega's petition for rehearing en banc was denied, but Judge Bumatay, joined by six other judges, filed a dissent from the denial of rehearing. Tekoh v. County of Los Angeles , 997 F.3d 1260, 1261, 1264–1272 (C.A.9 2021). We then granted certiorari. 595 U. S. ––––, 142 S.Ct. 858, 211 L.Ed.2d 533 (2022).

II

Section 1983 provides a cause of action against any person acting under color of state law who "subjects" a person or "causes [a person] to be subjected ... to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws." The question we must decide is whether a violation of the Miranda rules provides a basis for a claim under § 1983. We hold that it does not.

A

If a Miranda violation were tantamount to a violation of the Fifth Amendment, our answer would of course be different. The Fifth Amendment, made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, Malloy v. Hogan , 378 U.S. 1, 6, 84 S.Ct. 1489, 12 L.Ed.2d 653 (1964), provides that "[n]o person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." This Clause "permits a person to refuse to testify against himself at a criminal trial in which he is a defendant" and "also ‘privileges him not to answer official questions put to him in any other proceeding, civil or criminal, formal or informal, where the answers might incriminate him in future criminal proceedings.’ " Minnesota v. Murphy , 465 U.S. 420, 426, 104 S.Ct. 1136, 79 L.Ed.2d 409 (1984) (quoting Lefkowitz v. Turley , 414 U.S. 70, 77, 94 S.Ct. 316, 38 L.Ed.2d 274 (1973) ). In addition, the right bars the introduction against a criminal defendant of out-of-court statements obtained by compulsion. See, e.g., Bram v. United States , 168 U.S. 532, 565, 18 S.Ct. 183, 42 L.Ed. 568 (1897) ; Miranda , 384 U.S. at 466, 86 S.Ct. 1602 ; Michigan v. Tucker , 417 U.S. 433, 440–442, 94 S.Ct. 2357, 41 L.Ed.2d 182 (1974).

In Miranda , the Court concluded that additional procedural protections were necessary to prevent the violation of this important right when suspects who are in custody are interrogated by the police. To afford this protection, the Court required that custodial interrogation be preceded by the now-familiar warnings mentioned above, and it directed that statements obtained in violation of these new rules may not be used by the prosecution in its case-in-chief. 384 U.S. at 444, 479, 86 S.Ct. 1602.

In this case, the Ninth Circuit held—and Tekoh now argues, Brief for Respondent 20—that a violation of Miranda constitutes a violation of the Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination, but that is wrong. Miranda itself and our subsequent cases make clear that Miranda imposed a set of prophylactic rules. Those rules, to be sure, are "constitutionally based," Dickerson , 530 U.S. at 440, 120 S.Ct. 2326, but they are prophylactic rules nonetheless.

B

Miranda itself was clear on this point. Miranda did not hold that a violation of the rules it established necessarily constitute a Fifth Amendment violation, and it is difficult to see how it could have held otherwise. For one thing, it is easy to imagine many situations in which an un- Mirandized suspect in custody may make self-incriminating statements without any hint of compulsion. In addition, the warnings that the Court required included components, such as notification of the right to have retained or appointed counsel present during questioning, that do not concern self-incrimination per se but are instead plainly designed to safeguard that right. And the same is true of Miranda ’s detailed rules about the waiver of the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. 384 U.S. at 474–479, 86 S.Ct. 1602.

At no point in the opinion did the Court state that a violation of its new rules constituted a violation of the Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination. Instead, it claimed only that those rules were needed to safeguard that right during custodial interrogation. See id ., at 439, 86 S.Ct. 1602 (describing its rules as "procedures which assure that the individual is accorded his...