"reasonably likely to elicit from the defendant an incriminating response." In
fact, where "the only possible object of the police action in revealing
evidence to a defendant is to elicit a statement from him, it does no violence
to logic to conclude that the police should have known that it would do so."
In other words, under these facts, it was not only "reasonably likely" to
elicit an incriminating response; it was DESIGNED to do so.
8. The issue went before the U.S. Supreme Court again in Arizona v. Mauro,
481US 520, 95LEd2d 458, 107SCt 1931 (1987). The suspect had been arrested for
the murder of his male child. At the police station, he was questioned by the
police.
When he said he wanted a lawyer, the questioning was immediately
stopped. Meanwhile, another detective was questioning the suspect's wife, and
she said that she wanted to speak with her husband.
The detective was
reluctant to allow her to do so, but she insisted on it. The detective checked
with his supervisor, who told him to go ahead and allow the meeting if the wife
really wanted it (which she did).
The detective, however, was told not to
leave the husband alone with his wife.
The detective then told both the
suspect and his wife that they could speak together, but only if a police
officer was present in the room.
They agreed to this, and the meeting took
place. Statements that the suspect made were later introduced against him at
trial, as the government tried to show that he was sane at the time he
committed the crime. The defendant, on the other hand, argued that he had been
illegally interrogated by the police in violation of Miranda, and moved to
suppress all of his statements.
9. The court held that Mauro had not been interrogated. The detective who was
present in the room asked the suspect no questions.
Also, there was no
evidence that the decision to allow the suspect's wife to visit him was a
psychological ploy that was the functional equivalent of interrogation.
Clearly, the police did not send the wife in for the purpose of eliciting
incriminating statements from her husband. On the contrary, the police tried
to discourage her from even talking to her husband, but finally "yielded to her
insistent demands."
The court concluded that the police "need not adopt
inflexible rules barring suspects from speaking with their spouses, nor must
they ignore legitimate security concerns by allowing spouses to meet in
private. In short, the officers in this case acted reasonably and lawfully by
allowing Mrs. Mauro to speak with her husband."
10. In U.S. v. Peyton, 10 MJ 387 (CMA, 1981), the accused had been apprehended
When advised of his rights, the accused
said that he wanted a lawyer, so the interview was immediately terminated. The
investigator, however, allowed the suspect to remain in his office while he
completed CID Form 44, "which is a personal data card that the CID requires an
agent or investigator to complete after interviewing a suspect."
The
investigator simply filled out the form, which did not call for the suspect to
answer any questions or supply any information.
As the investigator was
completing the form, however, the suspect started to converse with him
regarding "how serious of an incident this was," and made incriminating
statements.
MP1020
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