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02-5636 Kaupp v. Texas

By: dmc-admin//May 20, 2003//

02-5636 Kaupp v. Texas

By: dmc-admin//May 20, 2003//

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“A 17-year-old boy was awakened in his bedroom at three in the morning by at least three police officers, one of whom stated ‘we need to go and talk.’ He was taken out in handcuffs, without shoes, dressed only in his underwear in January, placed in a patrol car, driven to the scene of a crime and then to the sheriff’s offices, where he was taken into an interrogation room and questioned. This evidence points to arrest even more starkly than the facts in Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200, 212 (1979), where the petitioner ‘was taken from a neighbor’s home to a police car, transported to a police station, and placed in an interrogation room.’

“Contrary reasons mentioned by the state courts are no answer to the facts. Kaupp’s ‘Okay’ in response to Pinkins’s statement is no showing of consent under the circumstances. Pinkins offered Kaupp no choice, and a group of police officers rousing an adolescent out of bed in the middle of the night with the words ‘we need to go and talk’ presents no option but ‘to go.’ There is no reason to think Kaupp’s answer was anything more than ‘a mere submission to a claim of lawful authority.’

“It cannot seriously be suggested that when the detectives began to question Kaupp, a reasonable person in his situation would have thought he was sitting in the interview room as a matter of choice, free to change his mind and go home to bed.

“Since Kaupp was arrested before he was questioned, and because the state does not even claim that the sheriff’s department had probable cause to detain him at that point, well-established precedent requires suppression of the confession unless that confession was ‘an act of free will [sufficient] to purge the primary taint of the unlawful invasion.’ Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471, 486 (1963). Demonstrating such purgation is, of course, a function of circumstantial evidence, with the burden of persuasion on the state. See Brown, 422 U. S., at 604. Relevant considerations include observance of Miranda, ‘[t]he temporal proximity of the arrest and the confession, the presence of intervening circumstances, and, particularly, the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct.’ 422 U. S., at 603- 604 (footnotes and citation omitted). The record before us shows that only one of these considerations, the giving of Miranda warnings, supports the state, and we held in Brown that ‘Miranda warnings, alone and per se, cannot always . . . break, for Fourth Amendment purposes, the causal connection between the illegality and the confession.’ 422 U. S., at 603 (emphasis in original); see also Taylor v. Alabama, 457 U. S. 687, 699 (1982).”

(O’CONNOR, J., dissenting) (noting that, although Miranda warnings are an important factor, ‘they are, standing alone, insufficient’). “All other factors point the opposite way. There is no indication from the record that any substantial time passed between Kaupp’s removal from his home in handcuffs and his confession after only 10 or 15 minutes of interrogation. In the interim, he remained in his partially clothed state in the physical custody of a number of officers, some of whom, at least, were conscious that they lacked probable cause to arrest. See Brown, supra, at 604-605. In fact, the state has not even alleged ‘any meaningful intervening event’ between the illegal arrest and Kaupp’s confession. Taylor, supra, at 691. Unless, on remand, the state can point to testimony undisclosed on the record before us, and weighty enough to carry the state’s burden despite the clear force of the evidence shown here, the confession must be suppressed.”

Reversed.

Per Curiam

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