Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
Appeal from a judgment of the Superior Court of Orange County Super. Ct. No. 05HF0548, Patrick Donahue, Judge.
Laura P. Gordon, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Gary W. Schons, Assistant Attorney General, Jeffrey J. Koch and Kelley Johnson, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
OPINION
SILLS, P. J.
James Paul Snider appeals from a judgment entered upon his conviction by a jury of second degree murder. He was sentenced to serve an indeterminate term of 15 years to life in prison.
On appeal, Snider contends the trial court erroneously denied his pretrial motion to suppress evidence of statements he made to two California detectives who were investigating the crime, and statements he made during a telephone call to his mother that took place after he was interrogated by a Michigan deputy sheriff. He claims these statements were obtained in violation of the privilege against self-incrimination guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and the procedural safeguards of this privilege elucidated in Miranda v. Arizona (1966) 384 U.S. 436 (Miranda). We conclude the trial court properly admitted Snider’s statements at trial and affirm the judgment.
I
FACTS
The Investigation
Employees of the Laguna Beach Inn discovered Ronald Murphy’s lifeless body in his hotel room at approximately 3:40 p.m. on December 11, 1983. The overturned chair with blood-stained cushions, numerous large and small pieces of blood-stained porcelain from a toilet tank lid, and blood-stained bed sheets and pillows suggested a struggle had occurred. Crime scene investigators collected two sets of fingerprints from the telephone, and DNA samples from beer bottles, tobacco and marijuana cigarette butts, plastic and Styrofoam cups, the bathroom sink, and a towel.
A bartender at the Main Street Bar and Cabaret in Laguna Beach, which in 1983 catered to a predominately gay clientele, remembered seeing Murphy meet and talk to another male bar patron on the evening of December 10. The bartender described Murphy’s companion as approximately 5 feet, 11 inches tall, with “blondish” shoulder length hair and a mustache, and a slight Southern accent. The man was dressed in jeans, a plaid shirt, and a cowboy hat. Murphy bought a couple of rounds of drinks and the men left the bar together after about an hour.
Earlier in the day, Murphy made arrangements to have dinner with his childhood friend, Dickie Florez. Florez met Murphy at Murphy’s Laguna Beach Inn hotel room. He brought his then-pregnant girlfriend, Theresa Morse, and another couple, Robert Bowers and Lori Beech. When the foursome arrived at Murphy’s hotel room, they noticed Murphy was not alone. Murphy told his friends that he had just met “Joe” in the bar of a well-known Laguna Beach restaurant. Florez and Morse described Joe as a quiet, cigarette smoker, with long scraggly hair and a beard, and wearing a cowboy hat. After a few minutes, Bowers and Beech, who had decided to go out on their own, left the hotel room. Florez and Morse waited for Murphy to change clothes for dinner. Murphy asked Joe to accompany him, Florez, and Morse for dinner, but Joe declined and said he would wait for them in the room. True to his word, Joe was waiting when they returned after dinner. The group shared a marijuana cigarette. When they finished, Florez and Morse decided to go home.
The following morning, a taxi driver, Gregory Hayes, picked up a fare across the street from the Laguna Beach Inn. Hayes described a young man, perhaps in his 30’s, with medium length dark hair and a moustache. Hayes particularly remembered that the young man was missing a front tooth. He said the man dressed like a transient or backpacker, was wearing a loose “Australian” hat, and spoke with a “southern accent like a Texan.” Although the man was not very talkative, Hayes recalled that he did say “he was a roustabout or whatever they call these guys on oil rigs.” The man asked Hayes to drive him from Laguna Beach to Hollywood. When Hayes told him Hollywood was “very far away and not worth that kind of money,” the man asked to be taken to Huntington Beach. Hayes made two stops during the trip at the man’s request. The first stop was at gas station in Corona del Mar for cigarettes. The second was at the Huntington Beach pier where the man retrieved a duffle bag.
Despite the witnesses’ statements and other forensic evidence left at the scene, Murphy’s murder remained unsolved for many years. An autopsy revealed that Murphy died as the result of blunt force trauma to the back of his head. There was evidence of manual strangulation, which could have contributed to Murphy’s death, and bruises on Murphy’s left cheek and eye, small cuts on his lips and a bruise under his chin. There were also minor cuts on the top of Murphy’s left foot, knee, and shoulder.
The Arrest
In 2003, Snider was paroled in Michigan after serving time for bank robbery. In 2004, the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) matched a DNA sample taken from one of the beer bottles found in Murphy’s hotel room with a sample of Snider’s DNA. In June 2004, two Laguna Beach detectives contacted Snider’s Michigan parole agent and asked if they could speak to Snider about an unsolved case. The parole agent told the detectives that Snider would be in her office on June 8 for his regular interview.
On June 8, 2004, Detectives Kravetz and Litchenberg arrived at the Michigan parole agent’s office. At the conclusion of Snider’s regularly scheduled parole interview, his parole agent told him there were a couple of detectives that wanted to talk to him. Snider was shown into an interview room where Kravetz and Litchenberg were waiting. Within approximately 15 minutes, Snider confessed that he had been in California in 1983, that he had struggled with a man in a hotel room after the man raped him, and that he left the room without knowing how badly the man was injured. Snider answered a few more questions before he said, “No, I probably need a lawyer.” Litchenberg immediately advised Snider of his Miranda rights and placed him under arrest for Murphy’s murder.
During the booking process at the Ottawa County jail, a deputy sheriff questioned Snider about unsolved Michigan crimes. At the conclusion of this interview, Snider asked to make a telephone call. The deputy sheriff arranged for Snider to use the telephone in the jail’s video conference room. While two deputies stood nearby, Snider told his mother he had been arrested for murdering a man in California in the 1980s and that he would be extradited.
Pretrial Hearing
On May 24, 2005, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office filed an information charging Snider with the December 11, 1983 murder of Ronald Murphy. On March 3, 2006, Snider filed a pretrial motion to suppress three sets of statements: (1) his confession to Litchenberg and Kravetz, (2) statements he made to the Michigan deputy sheriff after his arrest, and (3) statements he made during the telephone call to his mother that were overheard by the deputies.
On March 13, the court held an Evidence Code section 402 hearing. Chrystal Shulist, Snider’s Michigan parole agent, testified that she had supervised Snider for the first time in 1991 and most recently in 2003. As of April 2003, Snider was placed on maximum supervision, which meant Snider could be called in for an interview as often as once a week. Shulist acknowledged that Kravetz and Litchenberg contacted her and asked to talk to Snider, and said she told them Snider’s next regularly scheduled appointment was on June 8, 2004.
On June 8, Shulist talked to Snider for approximately 10 minutes. At the end of her interview, Shulist told Snider, “We are done, and there are some people out here who would like to speak with you.” Snider said, “Okay.” Shulist got up and escorted Snider to a nearby interview room where Kravetz and Litchenberg were waiting. Once Snider entered the interview room, the California detectives introduced themselves and said they wanted to talk about a California case. Snider shook hands with the detectives and sat down in a chair they provided. He was not handcuffed or otherwise restrained. One detective stood up and closed the interview room, he said to avoid being “bothered.” The interview was recorded on a digital versatile disc (DVD) and later transcribed.
Shulist testified that Kravetz and Litchenberg met Snider in the hallway and led him into the interview room. However, the DVD recording shows that the detectives waited in the interview room for Snider.
The DVD reflects that the detectives told Snider they were hoping he could help them with a case in California. Snider, who was 49 years old on June 8, 2004, said he had hitchhiked through California in the 1960s as a young kid, and that he had been arrested for hitchhiking in Sacramento at the age of 13. Litchenberg switched the conversation to Snider’s 9-month stint in the Navy before bringing the subject back to Snider’s trip to California in the 1960s. Snider said he spent almost two weeks living in Berkeley, San Francisco, and Sacramento before his arrest. He also said he hitchhiked from Norfolk, Virginia to Spokane, Washington before his discharge from the Navy. Snider repeated that his first trip through California occurred in the late sixties, but he suggested the detectives ask his mother and father to get the correct dates.
Litchenberg asked Snider, “Do you have any idea why a couple of detectives from California would be talking to you?” Snider replied, “I have no idea.” Litchenberg explained, “We’re just trying to figure out . . . when it was that you were in the state of California.” After Snider claimed he could not remember exactly, he said, “I went to Berkeley, and I went over to San Francisco first, to Fisherman’s Wharf, and the guy who I was — got a ride with, it was kind of cold there, and so the guy then said — I got a ride with, said, ‘You should probably go to Berkeley. It’s cool there.’ So I went to Berkeley, California. And then when I was hitchhiking back, I was on the highway. And that’s when my folks sent a plane ticket for me to get back.”
Litchenberg switched subjects and asked Snider, “Tell me about your time in, uh, Texas.” Snider said he lived in Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Alameda, Texas and worked as a roughneck on an oil rigs. Litchenberg changed the topic again, this time asking about Snider’s current parole status. Snider said, “I’m doing good, and I’m straightening up my life.” The subject turned to Snider’s family life and relationships before Litchenberg asked, “Is there a possibility, Jim, that you hitchhiked through California in the ‘80s?” Snider replied, “No.” Litchenberg then asked Snider, “What would you say if I told you that there are people that have seen you in the state of California after the ‘60s?” Snider replied, “People have called me John Lennon before. And they called me. What was the latest one? Steven Tyler. I heard that.” Litchenberg stated, “Kind of same build.” Snider replied, “And I don’t understand why you’re here.” Litchenberg explained, “Okay, Well, that’s what I’m trying to figure out, why people are telling me this then. Why — what — for what reason would somebody tell me that you were in the state of California in the ‘80s?” Snider answered, “I have no idea.” He also specifically denied ever having been in San Diego or Los Angeles, California.
Litchenberg finally told Snider, “Okay, Well, the reason that we’re here is we’re investigating an incident that took place in the early ‘80s in California, okay? And we have reason to believe that you might have been there and been a witness to this. And so that’s why we’re trying to straighten up.” Snider again denied being in California during the 1980s, at which point Litchenberg said, “All the new advancements in DNA technology these days, you’re aware of that?” Snider mumbled a response before Snider continued, “So would there be any reason that your DNA would have been found in an area where an incident took place in the state of California in the ’80?” Snider said he could not think of a reason. Litchenberg continued, “Okay, but if I told you that we did find your DNA, and it does positively come back to you, is that a possibility?” Snider said, “No” and “Not that I recall.” But Litchenberg persisted, “Not that you recall? Okay, well, that — that’s — I’m just trying to straighten this up. I mean, I think you have information that I need, and you could help me out on this thing. All I’m looking for is some help here. Why I want you to help me understand why it is that — that we came across this.”
Snider shook his head to indicate no, but for the first time he looked away from Litchenberg’s face and bowed his head. Kravetz said, “We just want to know what happened, Jim.” Snider raised his head, looked into Kravetz’s face, and said, “I spent all of my life . . . forget about that, or not worry, but sorry. The guy [expletive deleted] molested me when I was drunk. And I woke up, he was on the phone and I just hit him over the head with a toilet seat. And then he grabbed me as I was going out the door, so I just tried to stop him. I wasn’t trying to hurt him. All these years I’ve prayed that I didn’t hurt him. I didn’t know.”
After making this statement, Snider explained that he met Murphy in a bar and decided to go with him because Murphy offered him a place to stay. Snider said he drank beer and whiskey while he was waiting for Murphy and his friends to return to the hotel room after dinner. He said, “I went to sleep out on the floor after a while, after . . . I passed out on the floor. And when I woke up, I was hurting.” Kravetz asked two more questions about the incident before Snider said, “I probably need a lawyer.” Litchenberg read the standard Miranda advisement. Snider said he understood his rights and he needed a lawyer. His conversation with the detectives did not completely cease, however. Snider continued to make incriminating statements up to the time he was arrested and handcuffed.
After his arrest, Lieutenant Steve Crumb of the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Department arrived to transport Snider to the Ottawa County jail. Lieutenant Crumb knew Snider had stopped talking to the California detectives and asked for a lawyer. Nevertheless, once Lieutenant Crumb got to the Ottawa County jail he took Snider into an interview room, read the standard Miranda advisement, asked if Snider understood his rights, and asked him if he would be willing to answer some questions about unsolved homicides in Michigan. Lieutenant Crumb told Snider that he would not talk about the California homicide unless Snider initiated the conversation. Although their conversation initially focused on the unsolved Michigan crimes, it soon drifted to the California homicide. Thereafter, Snider restated much of what he had said to Kravetz and Lichtenberg.
After Lieutenant Crumb stopped questioning Snider, Snider asked to make a telephone call to his mother. Crumb made arrangements for Snider to call his mother from the jail’s video arraignment room. Lieutenant Crumb and Ottawa County Sheriff’s Deputy Steven McCarthy were in the video arraignment room throughout Snider’s telephone call. They overheard Snider tell his mother that he was going to be extradited to California for murder. He also made a reference to being raped, something about hitting the guy, a reference to why he bleeds now, and something like, “What I get is what [I] deserve having held this for years.” Snider also asked his mother to collect his payroll check.
The Trial Court’s Ruling
After considering the evidence, the briefs, and the arguments of counsel, the trial court ruled that Snider had not been subjected to a custodial interrogation by Kravetz and Litchenberg. The court relied on several factors in reaching this conclusion. First, the court noted that Snider came to his parole agent’s office for a regularly scheduled appointment, not for an appointment orchestrated or contrived at the behest of the California detectives to suit their own purposes. Although his parole agent said it would be a good idea to cooperate, she did not direct Snider to talk to the detectives or threaten any type of retaliatory action if he did not. The interview took place in a regular interview room, not the parole agent’s office, and Snider was not physically restrained. As the court noted, “The parole officer never told [Snider] to speak to the police, the door was closed, but it was an office, had two windows, three chairs and a desk.” The court also pointed out that the detectives did not use coercive interrogation methods. As the court stated, “this was not a coercive interview, the questioning went on for only about ten pages, and then it was as if Mr. Snider, with a great deal of relief, said, ‘I did this in California.’”
However, the court ruled Snider’s statements to Lieutenant Crumb inadmissible because they were made after “a clear invocation” of the right to counsel. Nevertheless, the court concluded Snider’s telephone conversation occurred after the conclusion of Lieutenant Crumb’s interview and was not part and parcel of Crumb’s improper interrogation. Under the circumstances, Snider was no longer being subjected to an interrogation, but was simply talking to his mother under his own free will in an area with little or no privacy. Ultimately, the court admitted a redacted DVD and transcript of Kravetz and Litchenberg’s interview with Snider that ended with his request for a lawyer, excluded all evidence of Snider’s interview with Lieutenant Crumb, and admitted Deputy McCarthy’s testimony regarding Snider’s telephone call.
II
DISCUSSION
Snider contends the trial court erroneously admitted evidence of his pretrial statements to Kravetz and Litchenberg and evidence of the telephone conversation he had with his mother. He argues Kravetz and Litchenberg subjected him to a custodial interrogation without advising him of his rights as required under Miranda, and that his telephone call to his mother was a continuation of Lieutenant Crumb’s interrogation. We disagree.
“Miranda requires that a criminal suspect be admonished of specified Fifth Amendment rights. But in order to invoke its protections, a suspect must be subjected to custodial interrogation . . . .” (People v. Morris (1991) 53 Cal.3d 152, 197, overruled on another ground in People v. Stansbury (1995) 9 Cal.4th 824, 830, fn. 1.) The prosecution has the burden of proving the statement was not the product of a custodial interrogation. (People v. Rucker (1980) 26 Cal.3d 368, 386; People v. Whitfield (1996) 46 Cal.App.4th 947, 953.) When reviewing a trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress evidence obtained in violation of a defendant’s Fifth Amendment rights, we accept the trial court’s resolution of disputed facts and inferences, and its evaluation of credibility, if supported by substantial evidence. We independently determine whether, from the undisputed facts and those properly found by the trial court, the challenged statements were illegally obtained. (People v. Wash (1993) 6 Cal.4th 215, 235-236; People v. Haley (2004) 34 Cal.4th 283, 299 .)
“In determining whether an individual was in custody, a court must examine all of the circumstances surrounding the interrogation, but ‘the ultimate inquiry is simply whether there [was] a “formal arrest or restraint on freedom of movement” of the degree associated with formal arrest.’ [Citations.]” (Stansbury v. California (1994) 511 U.S. 318, 322.) It is an objective test, not dependant on the subject views of the interrogating officer or the person being questioned. (Id. at p. 323.)
In People v. Aguilera (1996) 51 Cal.App.4th 1151 (Aguilera), the court referred to 13 factors it used to determine whether the defendant was in custody during an interrogation. (Id. at p. 1162.) Snider relies on these factors and argues he was compelled to report to his parole agent’s office and the parole agent directed him to talk to Kravetz and Litchenberg. He argues that the detectives did not specifically tell him he was free to leave or that he could terminate the interview at any time. In fact, he points out that one of the detectives shut the door. He characterizes the interview as one dominated by police officers who subjectively believed he was a suspect in the murder not just a witness.
Without addressing each and every one of the 13 factors mentioned in the Aguilera opinion, we believe several factors are dispositive. First, the interview took place after Snider appeared for his regularly scheduled parole meeting. The parole interview was brief and non-confrontational. Shulist testified that she had no basis for violating Snider’s parole and spent 10 minutes or less talking to him. At the end of her interview, Shulist told Snider that there were two California police officers that wanted to talk to him and she simply suggested it would be a good idea to cooperate with them. There was no threat associated with talking to the officers. From the DVD it is clear Snider voluntarily entered a separate interview room, greeted the detectives, and accepted Litchenberg’s offer of a chair. The interview room itself was unremarkable in that it had a table and several chairs, windows, and a door, which Kravetz closed, not to restrain Snider but to ensure privacy.
Although the detectives failed to mention that Snider was free to leave, they took no positive steps to restrain him. He was not handcuffed, and the door to the interview room was left unlocked, as is apparent when another officer briefly opened the door to look inside. Litchenberg asked rather innocuous questions about Snider’s youth, experience in the Navy, and travels throughout California. He did not use coercive interview techniques, accuse Snider of a crime, or attempt to dominate the conversation by using the typical “good cop/bad cop” routine or any other aggressive behavior to overcome Snider’s will. To the contrary, Litchenberg’s questions gave Snider every opportunity to explain how and why certain facts appeared to be true. Under the totality of the circumstances, we conclude no reasonable person would have believed they were under arrest or compelled to continue the interview against their will.
Snider’s reliance on People v. Moore (1980) 79 A.D.2d 619, is misplaced. In Moore, a parolee was asked to remain in the parole agent’s office so that two detectives could question him. The defendant immediately asked his parole agent for an attorney, but the agent said he could not have one. When police detectives arrived, the parole agent did not tell them the defendant had already requested an attorney. After the detectives questioned the defendant, they transported him to a county jail for a lineup where he was indentified by the victim of a robbery. The Supreme Court of Suffolk County denied the defendant’s motion to suppress the many incriminatory statements he made before, during and after the lineup. (Id. at p. 619.) However, the appellate court concluded, “Once a suspect in a custodial situation requests the assistance of an attorney, he may not be questioned further in the absence of counsel. [Citations.]” (Id. at pp. 619-620.) The court found one item of evidence in particular tended to show the defendant was not free to leave his parole agent’s office. The parole agent testified that he told the defendant that it would have been a technical violation of parole to leave before the officers arrived. (Id. at p. 620.)
We have no such testimony here. To the contrary, Shulist testified that she had no reason to violate Snider’s parole on June 8, 2004, and that she merely told him it would be a good idea to cooperate with the California detectives. Nothing in the record suggests Snider faced an immediate violation of parole, or any other legal repercussion for that matter, had he decided to refuse to talk to the California detectives.
With respect to Snider’s telephone call, we agree with the trial court’s decision to admit these statements into evidence. Lieutenant Crumb testified that after he concluded his interview Snider asked to make a telephone call. Lieutenant Crumb took Snider to a telephone in the jail’s video arraignment room. As was his custom, Lieutenant Crumb stayed in the video conference room to watch the prisoner. On this particular occasion, another deputy was also present. The two officers were only a few feet away from Snider during the telephone call. Consequently, they overheard his side of the conversation. They did not interrogate Snider as much as eavesdrop.
Snider contends Lieutenant Crumb’s interrogation did not end when he was moved into the video conference room, and that the officers knew it was reasonably likely he was going to further incriminate himself during the telephone call with his mother. We disagree.
In Arizona v. Mauro (1987) 481 U.S. 520 (Mauro), the defendant Mauro was taken into custody and read his Miranda rights. He refused to answer any questions until a lawyer was present. Mauro’s wife, who was being questioned in another room, asked to speak with him. The officers brought Mrs. Mauro into the interrogation room and turned on a tape recorder. Mauro then made incriminating statements to his wife, which the prosecution later sought to introduce at trial. Relying on Rhode Island v. Innis (1980) 446 U.S. 291, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled the statements were inadmissible, reasoning that allowing Mauro to speak with his wife the was the “functional equivalent” of interrogation because the officers knew that “‘if the conversation took place, incriminating statements were likely to be made.’” (Mauro, supra, 481 U.S. at p. 525.)
The United States Supreme Court reversed the decision. The high court pointed out that Mrs. Mauro requested to speak to her husband and there was no evidence the officers allowed the visit for the purpose of eliciting incriminating statements or as a coercive tool to extract information. (Mauro, supra, 481 U.S. at p. 529.) The high court observed: “Officers do not interrogate a suspect simply by hoping that he will incriminate himself . . . . [¶] . . . [¶] . . . Mauro was not subjected to compelling influences, psychological ploys, or direct questioning. Thus, his volunteered statements cannot properly be considered the result of police interrogation.” (Ibid.)
Similarly, in People v. Mayfield (1997) 14 Cal.4th 668 (Mayfield), police detectives put defendant Mayfield in an interview room and read him his Miranda rights, which he refused to waive. Mayfield requested a lawyer and asked to see his father. The detectives allowed Mayfield’s father into the interview room and recorded their conversation with a hidden microphone. Relying on Rhode Island v. Innis, supra, 446 U.S. 291, Mayfield argued that allowing his father to come into the interview room alone with him constituted a form of custodial interrogation because it was “conduct that was ‘reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response.’” (Mayfield, supra, 14 Cal.4th at p. 758.)
The California Supreme Court disagreed: “We reject this argument ‘because it is clear that defendant’s conversations with his own visitors are not the constitutional equivalent of police interrogation.’ [Citations.] This is particularly true here because defendant had specifically and repeatedly asked to be allowed to speak with his father. The meeting occurred on defendant’s initiative, not that of the police. Granting defendant’s request cannot be equated with custodial interrogation.” (Mayfield, supra, 14 Cal.4th at p. 758, quoting People v. Gallego (1990) 52 Cal.3d 115, 170.) Mauro and Mayfield closely parallel the facts of this case and compel rejection of Snider’s claim that the telephone conversation with his mother constituted a continuation of Lieutenant Crumb’s custodial interrogation.
Snider requested permission to make a telephone call after Lieutenant Crumb finished his interrogation. Lieutenant Crumb arranged for Snider to place his call from the video conference room, which meant Snider had to be moved from the interview room to the video conference room to make his call.Two deputies stood by while Snider talked to his mother, but they did not ask questions or interject into the conversation. Under the circumstances, Snider’s statements were voluntary and independent from Lieutenant Crumb’s interrogation. The trial court’s ruling was correct.
III
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
WE CONCUR: ARONSON, J., FYBEL, J.