• Miranda and the Fifth Amendment
• Civil Liability for Intentional Miranda Violations

When an incriminating statement obtained during a custodial interrogation in violation of Miranda is used against a defendant in the prosecution’s case-in-chief, the defendant’s constitutional Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination is violated.  Such a violation, even if not involving coercive interrogation techniques, may serve as a basis for a federal 42 U.S.C. § 1983 civil suit for which the offending officer is responsible.

Plaintiff Terence Tekoh worked at a Los Angeles medical center, his job being to move patients between their hospital rooms and the MRI section.  On one such occasion, he was accused by a female patient of having lifted her cover sheets and touching her vaginal area.  Hospital staff reported the allegation to the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.  Deputy Carlos Vega responded to investigate.  In contacting plaintiff, Deputy Vega asked if there was somewhere private that they could talk.  It was suggested that they use the MRI “reading room;” a small, windowless, and soundproof room used by doctors to read MRIs. They were later joined by Deputy Vega’s supervisor, Sgt. Strangeland.  What happened in that room before Sgt. Strangelove’s arrival became the point of contention.  Per Deputy Vega, plaintiff immediately admitted that he had “made a mistake.”  Asked to write on paper what had occurred, plaintiff put in writing what he himself referred to as an “honest and regrettable apology,” admitting in a brief account to “spreading (the patient’s) vagina lip for a quick view.”  Sgt. Strangeland arrived afterwards, somewhat corroborating Deputy Vega’s account when he later testified that by the time he got there, plaintiff’s “demeanor (appeared to be) ‘that of a man who was contrite, who truly . . . regretted what he had done.’”  Plaintiff, on the other hand, claimed that he continually denied touching the patient, but wrote out his mini-confession only after having been threatened by Deputy Vega.  Specifically, plaintiff alleged that Deputy Vega refused to allow a third person to accompany them into the MRI room, would not let him leave the room once they were in there, ignored his request for an attorney, falsely claimed that the assault had been captured on video, used racial slurs, and threatened him with deportation, all triggering flashbacks to his experiences with police brutality in Cameroon where he was from.  According to plaintiff, Deputy Vega put a pen and paper in front of him, telling him to “write what the patient said [he] did.” When plaintiff hesitated, Deputy Vega put his hand on his gun and said he was not joking. According to plaintiff, Deputy Vega then dictated the contents of the written confession.  Plaintiff testified that he was so scared that he was “ready to write whatever [Vega] wanted,” acquiescing to writing the statement as dictated to him.  Both parties agreed, however, that plaintiff was never read his Miranda rights.  Arrested and charged in state court with unlawful sexual penetration, per P.C. § 289(d), plaintiff’s confession was admitted into evidence at trial.  With a mistrial being declared mid-trial (due to evidence being used that had not previously been disclosed to the defense; i.e., a Brady v. Maryland violation), defendant was retried, and acquitted.  (It is unknown why.  It’s tough to lose a trial with a full written confession.  It can only be assumed that the jury disbelieved both the victim and Deputy Vega, while discounting the veracity of Tekoh’s alleged confession.)  After his acquittal on the criminal charge, plaintiff filed this civil action in federal court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, seeking damages for allegedly violating his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.  The main issues at trial were (1) whether or not plaintiff’s constitutional rights had been violated by Deputy Vega’s failure to Mirandize him, and (2) whether to constitute a violation, the confession had to have been obtained by coercion, with a Miranda violation but being one factor to consider on this issue.  The trial court judge granted a retrial after admittedly mis-instructing the jury in the first trial.  In the second trial, the district court judge instructed the jury that in determining whether plaintiff’s Fifth Amendment rights had been violated, they were to consider the “objective totality of all the surrounding circumstances (in determining) (w)hether a confession (was) improperly coerced or compelled . . . .”, followed by a non-exclusive list of the circumstances that may be considered.  The jury returned a verdict for the civil defendants (i.e., Deputy Vega and the County of Los Angeles.).  Plaintiff appealed.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal reversed.  The issue on appeal was whether the failure to advise an in-custody suspect of his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination pursuant to the dictates of Miranda v. Arizona (1966) 384 U.S. 436, constitutes a Fifth Amendment constitutional violation which can be the subject of a federal 42 U.S.C. § 1983 civil suit.  It was also an issue whether a Miranda violation must be accompanied by coercive interrogation techniques in order to implicate the Fifth Amendment.  (Note that the Court assumes, without discussing the issue, that plaintiff was in custody and should have been read his Miranda rights before being questioned.  See Note, below.) The confusion on these issues stem from U.S. Supreme Court decisions decided prior to the year 2000, which referred to the warnings described in Miranda as mere “prophylactic rules,” or “procedural safeguards,” that were (at the time) “not themselves rights protected by the Constitution.”  (E.g., see New York v. Quarles (1984) 467 U.S. 649, 653-655; and Michigan v. Tucker (1974) 417 U.S. 433, 444.)  Civil suits pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 are permitted only when necessary to vindicate “rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution.”  Because a simple Miranda violation (absent evidence or coercion) was not considered a violation of the Fifth Amendment, there was no federal redress available to a criminal defendant pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 absent a showing that he or she had been coerced into confessing.  The only way a plaintiff could show that his constitutional rights had been violated was by proving that any statements he gave to police were involuntarily coerced.  The trial court in this case erroneously believed that this was still the rule when it instructed the jury they could hold Deputy Vega civilly liable if it was proved that plaintiff’s “confession (was) improperly coerced or compelled.”  The trial court, however, erred in not considering the Supreme Court’s decision in the landmark case of Dickerson v. United States (2000) 530 U.S. 428.  In Dickerson, the High Court struck down Congress’s attempt to blunt the effects of the Miranda decision by enacting a statute (i.e., 18 U.S.C. § 3501) which provided that confessions were admissible as long as they were voluntarily made, regardless of whether Miranda warnings had been provided, and that a Miranda advisal was but one factor to consider in evaluating the voluntariness of a criminal defendant’s incriminating statements.  Describing the Miranda decision as “constitutionally based,” and as having “constitutional underpinnings.” the Dickerson Court (at 440 & fn. 5) ultimately concluded that Miranda was “a constitutional decision” that Congress could not overrule by merely enacting a contrary statute.  This significant turnaround from prior decisions generated all sorts of confusion, even among the individual justices of the Supreme Court.  Two fractured (i.e., plurality, as opposed to majority) decisions from the Supreme Court (see Chavez v. Martinez (2003) 538 U.S. 760, and United States v. Patane (2004) 542 U.S. 630.) ultimately concluded that what the Court meant was that Miranda was intended to impose a “trial right” only.  In other words, the Fifth Amendment is not implicated unless a statement obtained in violation of Miranda is used against a criminal defendant in court in a criminal prosecution, and in the prosecution’s case-in-chief.  It is also not necessary that the resulting incriminating statements were obtained involuntarily; any Miranda violation will suffice.  But where “no proceedings had been brought against the plaintiff, he had not suffered a Fifth Amendment violation.”  Also, if a criminal defendant’s statements taken in violation of Miranda are suppressed and not admitted into evidence, or are otherwise not used against him at trial, then the Fifth Amendment is not implicated.  “(T)he exclusion of the statements themselves would be a ‘complete and sufficient remedy’ for the violation.”  In this case, plaintiff’s incriminating statements obtained during Deputy Vega’s un-Mirandized interrogation were in fact used against him at his criminal trial, even though he was eventually acquitted.  Whether or not convicted, his Fifth Amendment rights were implicated. Title 18 U.S.C. § 1083 thus provided him with some civil redress for that violation.  Also, it was noted that the fact that it is the prosecutor who decides whether or not to use a defendant’s incriminating statements against him does not shield the law enforcement officer who conducted the offending interrogation from civil liability.  When a law enforcement officer obtains incriminating statements in violation of Miranda, and includes those statements in his reports submitted to the prosecutor, it is foreseeable that the prosecutor may consider those statements when initiating a criminal prosecution and then attempting to use them in evidence.  Based upon all this, the Court found the trial court’s erroneous jury instructions, imposing upon the plaintiff the obligation to prove that his confession had been coerced, to be prejudicial error, entitling him to a new trial.  The matter was therefore remanded to the trial court for that purpose.

As noted above, it was just assumed that Tekoh was in custody when he was questioned.  This may have been an issue before the jury in this civil case, and may have even been decided in Deputy Vega’s favor (i.e., that Tekoh was not in custody), given the fact that the jury reached a verdict in Deputy Vega’s favor.  The Court does not address this issue at all, so we’re left in the dark.  We also have to assume that Deputy Vega failed to Mirandize Tekoh due to his own personal belief that his questioning of Tekoh was taking place in a non-custodial setting.  I can’t think of any other reason why Tekoh was not Mirandized.  But either way, the Court does note in a footnote (fn. 11) that had it been held to be a non-custodial questioning, then there would be no civil liability for the simple reason that there was no Miranda violation.  Miranda only applies when the questioned person is in custody.  The other important point of this case is that a confession does not need to have been involuntarily obtained (i.e., “coerced”) in order for it to have been in violation of the Fifth Amendment.  Any Miranda violation, whether involving coercion or not, at least where the resulting incriminating statements are used in the People’s case-in-chief in a later criminal prosecution, violates the Fifth Amendment.  Police officers need to note the Court’s specific finding that should you violate Miranda, and the resulting criminal statements are passed onto a prosecutor who uses them in his or her case-in-chief, you are the one who is risking potential civil liability; not the prosecutor.  Just another reason why the Miranda rule needs to be respected.