{"id":670,"date":"2011-03-04T11:05:32","date_gmt":"2011-03-04T16:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richardhornsby.com\/?p=670"},"modified":"2011-03-04T11:05:32","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T16:05:32","slug":"a-favorable-appellate-case-for-the-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hornsby.com\/blog\/a-favorable-appellate-case-for-the-state\/","title":{"rendered":"A Favorable Appellate Case for the State?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As many of you know, the focus of the hearings over the last three days has been on whether Casey Anthony was “in custody” and, if so, at what point was she “in custody.”<\/p>\n

And as has been discussed at \u00a0WebSleuths<\/a> by AZLawyer, Judge Perry’s decision will hinge on the following four factor analysis used in Florida and outlined in\u00a0Ramirez v. State, 739 So. 2d 568 (Fla. 1999)<\/a>:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The manner in which police summon the suspect for questioning;<\/li>\n
  2. The purpose, place, and manner of the interrogation;<\/li>\n
  3. The extent to which the suspect is confronted with evidence of his or her guilt; and<\/li>\n
  4. Whether the suspect is informed that he or she is free to leave the place of questioning..<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The reason this analysis is so important is that if \u00a0it is determined that a reasonable person in the defendant’s \u00a0position (here, Casey Anthony)\u00a0would have believed herself to be in custody, law enforcement would have been required to administer proper Miranda warnings at the point a\u00a0reasonable\u00a0person would have felt\u00a0them self\u00a0in custody. And any statements made after that point, without the benefit of Miranda, would have been illegally obtained and will, therefore, be suppressed.<\/p>\n

    On the other hand, if it was determined that Casey Anthony was not in custody, then law enforcement would not have had to administer Miranda warnings and all of Casey Anthony’s statements come in.<\/p>\n

    Miranda Warnings are no\u00a0Guaranty<\/h2>\n

    But even Miranda Warnings are no Guaranty. An excellent example of how easily law enforcement can hurt a case, even though it seemingly appeared they were doing everything by the book, is\u00a0Ross v. State, 45 So. 3d 403 (Fla. 2010)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    In Ross’ case, the Florida Supreme Court reversed a conviction for First Degree Murder and found his right against self-incrimination was violated.<\/p>\n

    In doing so, the Florida Supreme Court provided more specific guidance for determining when <\/strong>a person is in custody – as it is at this point a person must be Mirandized, not before.<\/p>\n

    In making this determination, the Court laid out a two-factor analysis for the Court to use:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. The circumstances surrounding the interrogation; and<\/li>\n
    2. Given those circumstances, would a reasonable person have felt he or she was not at liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      In using this analysis, along with the Ramirez framework, the Florida Supreme Court found that even though Law Enforcement administered Miranda “the timing and circumstances of the warnings undermined the intent and effectiveness of Miranda,<\/em> particularly in light of the following:”<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. The initial\u00a0Miranda\u00a0warnings were deliberately delayed and no warnings were given until after Ross made incriminating statements;<\/li>\n
      2. Police downplayed the significance of the Miranda\u00a0rights and misled Ross by assuring him that he was not being arrested “at the time” despite the incriminating evidence and Ross’s prior statements;<\/li>\n
      3. Before continuing the post-warning interrogation, the police reminded Ross about his earlier admissions;<\/li>\n
      4. Police did nothing to counter the probable mis-impression that Ross’s prior incriminating statements could be used against him; and<\/li>\n
      5. Police treated the pre- and post-warning interrogation as one continuing round of questioning with only a minimal break but no change in circumstances.<\/li>\n
      6. In addition, we also take into account that Ross was only twenty-one at the time with no indication of any prior experience with the criminal justice system.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        The Focus of the Anthony Defense Questioning<\/h2>\n

        And as you know, there were no Miranda warnings given in the Casey Anthony case at her house or during the walking tour she provided to law enforcement at Universal.<\/p>\n

        So if Custody is determined to have occurred at her house or at Universal Studios with no Miranda warnings ever given, you can be assured that\u00a0the\u00a0Florida Supreme Court will surely frown on the tactics used by Detectives Melich and Allen as in many ways, they mirror the law enforcement tactics used in Ross.<\/p>\n

        A Ray of Hope for the State<\/h2>\n

        However, just today, the Fifth District Court of Appeals issue State v. Perez, 58 So. 3d 309 (Fla. 5th DCA 2011)<\/a>, that is favorable to the State and might provide Judge Perry with some guidance on how to rule.<\/p>\n

        In Perez, the defendant was interviewed by law enforcement at his home, the law enforcement officer went there under the pretext of investigation one crime when it appears he was really investigating another crime and told the defendant’s\u00a0mother\u00a0to leave when he started asking about the second crime.<\/p>\n

        The trial court initially found that the officer’s lack of candor about his purpose along with telling the mother to leave indicated a Miranda violation under the Ramirez framework. However, just today, the Fifth DCA issued a ruling reversing the trial court’s findings, saying that<\/p>\n

        “Balancing all\u00a0the facts in light of the four-part test in Ramirez leads us to conclude that a reasonable\u00a0person in Perez’s situation would not have believed himself to be in custody. \u00a0Accordingly, we reverse the order suppressing Perez’s confession and remand to the\u00a0trial court for further proceedings.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

        Interestingly, the decision makes no mention of the Ross decision, which leads me to believe that Perez was written before the Ross decision came out. Nonetheless, while not as involved as Casey Anthony’s case, it does provide some favorable direction if Judge Perry wanted to find in favor of the state.<\/p>\n

        On the other hand, I am not sure it is favorable enough to overcome Ross…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        As many of you know, the focus of the hearings over the last three days has been on whether Casey Anthony was “in custody” and, if so, at what point was she “in custody.” And as has been discussed at \u00a0WebSleuths by AZLawyer, Judge Perry’s decision will hinge on the following four factor analysis used […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}