United States v. Patane: the Supreme Court's Continued Assault on Miranda - David Bosworth

• Citation: Vol. 56 No. 4
• Publication year: 2005

CASENOTE

United States v. Patane: The Supreme Court's Continued Assault on Miranda

I. Introduction

In United States v. Patane,¹ the United States Supreme Court ruled on the issue of whether a police officer's failure to give a suspect the complete Miranda warnings required the court to suppress a gun found as a result of the suspect's voluntary statements.² In a 5-4 decision, the Court held that failure to give such warnings does not require suppression of physical evidence gained from unwarned voluntary statements.³ The dissenting justices were concerned about the negative effects this ruling would have on police procedures, judicial inquiries, and suspect's rights.⁴ This decision creates another exception to the Miranda rule and could have the effect of weakening the rule in its entirety.

II. Factual Background

In 2001 Samuel Francis Patane violated a restraining order by attempting to telephone his ex-girlfriend, Linda O'Donnell. In June of that year, Colorado Springs Police Officer Tracy Fox began to investigate the matter. Around the same time, another detective, Josh Benner, received information that Patane, a convicted felon, illegally possessed a .40 caliber Glock pistol. Fox and Benner proceeded to Patane's residence together.⁵

After reaching the residence, Officer Fox inquired into Patane's attempts to contact O'Donnell and found sufficient cause to make an arrest for violation of a restraining order. After the arrest, Detective Benner attempted to advise Patane of his rights under Miranda v. Arizona,⁶ but Patane interrupted, asserting that he knew his rights. Neither officer attempted to complete the Miranda warnings. Benner then proceeded to ask Patane about the Glock. Patane was initially hesitant to discuss the matter, saying that he was not sure he should tell Benner anything because he did not want Benner to take the gun away. After Benner persisted, Patane told him that the pistol was in his bedroom and gave the detective permission to retrieve the gun.⁷

Patane was charged with, and later indicted by a grand jury for, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. The United States District Court for the District of Colorado granted Patane's motion to suppress the pistol on the grounds that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest him. Although the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the probable cause ruling, the Court affirmed the suppression order on an alternate theory that the gun was the fruit of an unwarned statement.⁸ On a grant of certiorari, the Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case in a 5-4 decision.⁹

III. Legal Background

A. Miranda: A Solution to Coercive Police Tactics

The Self-incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment states: "No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witnessagainst himself."¹⁰ The Supreme Court has long recognized that the Fifth Amendment, in concert with the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause, prohibits the use of coerced confessions in both state and federal courts.¹¹ In the early twentieth century, the Court based its determination of whether a confession was coerced or voluntary on the evaluation of the "totality of the circumstances" surrounding the interrogation.¹² A confession was deemed voluntary, and therefore admissible, if it was not '"extracted by any sort of threats or violence, nor obtained by any direct or implied promises, however slight, nor by the exertion of any improper influence.'"¹³ While the "totality of the circumstances" test proved to be effective at deterring physical coercion by police during custodial interrogations, the test had less of an effect on deterring the increasingly psychological tactics used by police towards the middle of the twentieth century.¹⁴ These psychological tactics made the voluntariness of a statement harder to determine and the "totality of the circumstances" test more difficult to apply.¹⁵

Recognizing that the modern practice of custodial interrogation was becoming more psychological in nature, the Warren Court attempted to set concrete guidelines for law enforcement agencies to follow.¹⁶ InMiranda v. Arizona, the Court first developed a specific set of pre-interrogation warnings that must be given to suspects under custodial interrogations.¹⁷ According to the Court, custodial interrogation is "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."¹⁸ Before police interrogate a suspect in custody, the suspect must be informed that (1) they have the right to remain silent, (2) that any statement they do make may be used against them, and (3) that they have a right to an attorney, either retained or appointed.¹⁹ Waiver of these rights is only effective if made voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently after the warnings have been given.²⁰ In addition to the warning, the Court also established procedural safeguards to protect a suspect's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Once a suspect has invoked their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, the police must stop the interrogation, and the prosecution may not use the suspect's refusal to cooperate against the suspect at tial.²¹

The Court implemented the Miranda warnings and their procedural safeguards based on the reasoning that confessions gained in a coercive atmosphere could never truly be the product of free choice.²² The Court based this conclusion on cases in which the defendants' statements may have been voluntary in the traditional sense, but their admissions were nonetheless violations of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.²³ The Court made it clear that a statement would not be admissible without both the proper warnings and adequate waiver.²⁴

B. A Changing Court's Distaste for Miranda as Evidenced by a Systematic Erosion of the Ruling

The Warren Court decided Miranda in 1966, but soon after, beginning in 1970, the Burger Court started to weaken the precedent Miranda set forth. With the addition of Chief Justice Burger in 1969, followed by Blackmun in 1970, and later Powell and Rehnquist in 1972, the Court began to back away from the rationale adopted in Miranda. Instead of classifying Miranda warnings as a constitutional right in and of themselves, the newly structured Court chose to view the warnings prescribed by Miranda as prophylactic in nature. Characterizing the Miranda decision as prophylactic instead of constitutional allowed the Court much more discretion in determining how Miranda should be applied. The newly aligned Court used this distinction to systematically weaken the rule instead of overruling their brethren on a decision with which they did not agree.

Evidence of this strategy can first be seen in Harris v. New York.²⁵ A mere five years after the Miranda decision, the Court held that while statements gained from a suspect in violation of Miranda could not be used in the prosecution's case-in-chief, they were admissible for impeaching a witness's testimony at trial.²⁶ In Harris a suspected drug dealer was arrested and then questioned without being advised of his right to counsel.²⁷ At trial, the prosecution used the transcript of this questioning to impeach Harris's testimony.²⁸ Chief Justice Burger stated that "the shield of Miranda" could not be used to prevent the prosecution from admitting into evidence prior inconsistent utterances the defendant made voluntarily.²⁹ The Court was not concerned about weakening the deterrence effects of Miranda, reasoning that inappropriate police conduct was sufficiently discouraged by the exclusion of evidence from the prosecutions case-in-chief.³⁰

Using similar reasoning, the Court in Michigan v. Tucker³¹ approved the use of testimony from a man that police located only as a result of the suspect's comments during unwarned questioning.³² In Tucker the Court reiterated the proposition that statements taken in violation ofMiranda principles cannot be used by the prosecution to prove its case at trial.³³ However, the court reasoned that because Tucker's statements were only used to locate a witness and were not used by the prosecution in its case-in-chief, there was no violation of Tucker's constitutional rights under the Fifth Amendment.³⁴ The Court concluded that the police did not violate the suspect's right against self-incrimination, but only infringed upon the prophylactic rules put in place by Miranda to protect that right.³⁵ Again, the Court was not swayed by the need to deter inappropriate police conduct, stating that this rationale loses much of its force when the police acted in good faith.³⁶

The Supreme Court developed another exception to the Miranda rule in New York v. Quarles.³⁷ In Quarles a police officer pursued Benjamin Quarles, an armed rape suspect, into a grocery store. After apprehending Quarles, the officer noticed that Quarles was wearing an empty shoulder holster and asked him where he hid the gun. Quarles indicated that the gun was hidden in some empty cartons, and the officer retrieved the weapon.³⁸ The Supreme Court of Queens County, New York held that the gun was inadmissible because the suspect was not given Miranda warnings before his confession about the whereabouts of the weapon.³⁹ This decision was affirmed on appeal through the New York Court of Appeals.⁴⁰ On a grant of certiorari, the Supreme Court reversed.⁴¹ In an opinion written by Justice Rehnquist, the Court introduced a "public safety" exception to the Miranda rule.⁴² Once again, the Court viewed Miranda warnings as prophylactic, saying that the warnings themselves are not rights, but simply a means to protect the actual right against self-incrimination.⁴³ The Court reasoned that the need for answers from a suspect when public safety is concerned outweighed the need for a prophylactic rule protecting the constitutional right against self-incrimination.⁴⁴

The Court's characterization of Miranda as a...