No Miranda Warning Required For Non-Custodial Interrogation

State v. Vue, Minn.S.Ct., 4/27/2011.  A jury found Mr. Vue guilty of crime committed for the benefit of a gang (first degree murder while committing drive-by shooting).  Officers focused on Mr. Vue as a possible suspect; they learned that he was in Sacramento, California so they hopped a plane to go see him.  Officers met with Mr. Vue at the local police station; the officers told him that he was not under arrest and was free to leave.  When the officers began to ask questions about the homicide Mr. Vue ended the interview.  A local officer then gave him a ride home.

Two days later, the Minnesota officers again met with Mr. Vue at the local police station.  Eight minutes into the meeting Mr. Vue confessed to the homicide.  At the end of that interview local officers again gave Mr. Vue a ride home.  Mr. Vue then disappeared and it was three years later before police arrested him on the murder.

Mr. Vue moved to suppress the statements he made during the second interview, saying that this second interview had been a custodial interrogation for which a Miranda warning was required but not given.  Mr. Vue did not claim that his statement had been involuntary.

Now for the rest of the story on this second interview.  Before this interview a bunch of cops – eight of them to be exact – stormed into Mr. Vue’s Sacramento home to execute a search warrant.  The officers found only Mr. Vue home.  The officers handcuffed Mr. Vue in the kitchen, telling him that “this is not going away.”  The officers then took the cuffs off Mr. Vue and let him walk around in the yard.  Mr. Vue agreed to be interviewed and rode in the front seat of the squad car to the police station.  The officers left him unattended in the lobby for a while during which Mr. Vue could have left.  During the interview he was told that he was not under arrest and that he would not be arrested that day.  He was not arrested then; indeed, the officers took him home afterwards.

The appellate court concluded that Mr. Vue was not in custody during this second interview and thus no Miranda warning was required.

Mr. Vue also complained of prosecutorial misconduct in closing argument.  The prosecutor said that the jury would have to believe the impossible by believing that Mr. Vue might have admitted to something that he didn’t do.  The appellate court concluded that this was close to misconduct but let it go because the prosecutor immediately linked that assertion with a discussion of the confession that made it a true confession.