Defendant's Statement Was the Fruit of Her Unlawful Arrest, but it's Admission was Harmless Error

State v. McDonald-Richards, Minn.S.Ct., 1/23/2013.  Ms. McDonald-Richards drove her boyfriend, Calvin Anderson, and Anderson's friend, Johnny Perry, to Avi's Paw & Jewelry in Richfield.  While she waiting in the car, the two men went inside the store and robbed it, during which Mr. Perry shot a customer and a store clerk.  The customer died.

Police released surveillance photos from the store.  A citizen identified Mr. Anderson, as did his probation officer.  The PO told the police that Mr. Anderson lived with Ms. McDonald-Richards.  One day after the robbery, police officers saw Ms. McDonald-Richards leave his residence, drive to north Minneapolis where she picked up Mr. Anderson.  An army of officers, weapons drawn, then stopped the car, ordered Ms. McDonald-Richards out of the car, cuffed her, placed her in a squad car, and took her to jail.  After spending two hours in a locked holding cell, a police detective interrogated her.  She denied being at Avi's on the evening of the robbery and claimed that her car had been missing that evening until Mr. Anderson showed up with it late that night.  She denied either recognizing or knowing Mr. Perry, and said that Mr. Anderson instructed her to tell anyone who asked that he'd been fishing all day on the day of the robbery.  At the end of the interrogation police released her.

Meantime, officers interrogated Mr. Anderson, who gave up Mr. Perry, who gave up Ms. McDonald-Richards.  Two days later, officers enticed Ms. McDonald-Richards back down to the police station, purportedly so that she could get her car back.  Instead, after a Miranda warning, officers again interrogated  her.  Eventually, she made various admissions about her participation in the events of the robbery and homicide, including that she drove both men to and from the robbery.  For that the state charged her with aiding and abetting first degree murder and attempted first degree murder.  At trial, she claimed that she had not knowingly and intentionally assisted the two men in committing the murder and attempted murder.

Ms. McDonald-Richards moved to suppress both statements as the fruit of her unlawful arrest during the traffic stop.  The trial judge denied that motion and admitted both statements.  On appeal, she only challenged the admission of the first statement.  The state agreed that the arrest had been unlawful but admissible nonetheless because any taint from that unlawful arrest had been sufficiently purged.  Chief Justice Gildea, for six members of the court (Justice Wright not participating), held that intervening events following the unlawful arrest had not undone the taint from it.  The court employed the factors identified in Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590 (1975) and adopted by the Minnesota Supreme Court in State v. Weeks, 312 Minn. 1, 250 N.W.2d 590 (1977), which include: "whether the police provided a Miranda warning, the time between arrest and confession, “the presence of intervening circumstances,” and “particularly, the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct."  

Here's what the trial court thought had purged the effect of the unlawful arrest:

[T]he district court concluded, among other things, that McDonald-Richards’  statement  was admissible because police gave her a  Miranda warning, she was held for “a relatively short” period, the “flagrancy of the violation” was “lessened[] because there was a reason” for police to stop McDonald-Richards’ car, and police treated her well and were not “confrontative.

The chief justice goes through the Brown/Weeks factors and concludes that the trial court was wrong to have admitted the statement.  However, the court does hint ever so softly that perhaps the police could have held Ms. McDonald-Richards as a material witness instead of "arresting" her.  The court also concludes that the error in admitting the statement was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.