Green v. U.S.

315 A.3d 680

Sean Tyler GREEN, Appellant,

v.UNITED STATES, Appellee.

No. 19-CF-0546

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued December 5, 2023

Decided May 23, 2024

Appeal from the Superior Court of the District of Columbia (2015-CF1-014494), (Hon. Judith Bartnoff, Trial Judge)

Gregory M. Lipper for appellant.

Daniel J. Lenerz, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Matthew M. Graves, United States Attorney, and Chrisellen R. Kolb, John P. Mannarino, and Michelle D. Jackson, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief, for appellee.

Before Easterly, McLeese, and Shanker,^* Associate Judges.

McLeese, Associate Judge:

Appellant Sean Tyler Green challenges his convictions for first-degree murder and related offenses. We hold that Mr. Green’s post-arrest statements were obtained in violation of the requirements of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). We therefore vacate Mr. Green’s convictions and remand the case for further proceedings.

I. Factual and Procedural Background

A. Mr. Green’s Motion to Suppress

Before trial, Mr. Green moved to suppress evidence of videotaped statements he made to the police after his arrest, arguing that the statements were taken in violation of Miranda. The evidence at the hearing on the motion to suppress included the following.

Detective Anthony Patterson questioned Mr. Green. After explaining the charges to Mr. Green, Detective Patterson gave Mr. Green advice about Miranda rights. Those rights were accurately stated in writing on a standard police-department form ("PD-47") that Detective Patterson provided to Mr. Green. See generally, e.g., Henson v. United States, 563 A.2d 1096, 1097 (D.C. 1989) (PD-47 is standard advice-of-rights form). Detective Patterson also orally advised Mr. Green of his rights. Detective Patterson’s initial oral advice for the most part followed the wording of the written advice, with two important differences that are italicized in the following quote:

You have the right to talk to a lawyer for advice before we question you and to have [a lawyer] with you during questioning. That does not happen here. You know, there is not a lawyer out there. We’re not going to bring a lawyer in here to talk to you. That happens when you get down to court, okay? If you cannot afford a lawyer and want one, a lawyer will be provided for you. That also happens when you get to court. They’ll, you know -- they have a court-appointed lawyer unless you have your family -- if they want to pay for a lawyer, you can do that as well. All right? If you want to answer questions now, without a lawyer present, you still have the right to stop answering at any time. You also have the right to stop answering at any time until you talk to a lawyer, okay?

Detective Patterson then asked Mr. Green the first question on the PD-47:

Detective: Okay? Now, have you read, or had read to you, the warning as to your rights?

Mr. Green: Was it this paper?

Detective: That’s what I just did.

Mr. Green: Uh-huh.

Detective: I read it to you, okay?

Mr. Green: I mean, you just gave me a whole lot all in one.

Detective: Okay, all light. But this is -- I am referring to your warning -- your rights.

Mr. Green checked a box on the PD-47 to indicate that he had read his rights or had them read to him. Detective Patterson then asked Mr. Green the second and third questions on the PD-47: whether Mr. Green understood his rights and whether he wished to answer any questions. Mr. Green eventually replied in the affirmative to both questions, after some back-and-forth in which Mr. Green expressed confusion and Detective Patterson further explained the reasons for Mr. Green’s arrest.

Another detective who was present, Detective Garner, interjected the following:

You can read it over. Because you can answer questions and you still have -- it says right there -- that you still have to stop answering any questions until you talk to a lawyer. So, if you want to talk to us and then, eventually, you just say, "Okay, I don’t want to talk anymore", that’s what that’s saying.

Detective Patterson also said. "At any point -- we’re talking to you -- at any point during our conversation about this, if you decide, ‘Hey, Detective Patterson, Detective Garner, I don’t want to talk about it anymore’, you have that right."

Finally, Detective Patterson asked Mr. Green the last question on the PD-47, adding the material italicized in the following quote:

And, the last question is, are you willing to answer questions without having an attorney present? And, again, we don’t -- there’s not going to -- we don’t bring attorneys in here. So, that’s -- you aren’t going to have an attorney present anyway.

Mr. Green waived his Miranda rights and so indicated in writing on the PD-47.

The trial judge denied the motion to suppress, ruling that Mr. Green had knowingly and voluntarily waived his Miranda rights.

B. The Evidence at Trial

The legal issue that we decide in this appeal does not turn on the evidence introduced at trial, so we only briefly summarize that evidence.

Derrick Black was shot and killed in July 2015. A witness saw two individuals running across a street, pursued by a man who fired several shots. One of the men being chased fell in the middle of the street. The shooter ran up to that man, who was Mr. Black, shot him twice more as he lay on the ground, and then ran away. A police surveillance camera positioned about a block away recorded the shooting, and an enhanced version of the recording was shown at trial.

Police recovered from the scene a cellphone, a magazine containing several rounds of ammunition, and several cartridge casings. A search revealed that the phone had been set up with an email address and phone number associated with Mr. Green. Additionally, DNA on the magazine matched Mr. Green’s DNA.

Mr. Green was arrested several months after the shooting and was questioned by the police. During his interview, Mr. Green made several false exculpatory statements, including that he had been in drug treatment from July 2015 to September 2015 and that his phone had been stolen before the shooting. Mr. Green at one point admitted to committing the shooting, but he claimed that he did so because someone had threatened to kill him unless he killed Mr. Black. Eventually, Mr. Green said that he did not recall the shooting but that he believed that another person had committed the shooting.

II. Analysis

The focus of the briefing in this case, and of the trial court’s ruling, was on whether Mr. Green’s waiver of his Miranda rights was knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. At oral argument, however, much of the discussion focused on a related but antecedent question: whether the advice of rights given to Mr. Green was legally adequate. See generally, e.g., Mi- randa, 384 U.S. at 467, 86 S.Ct. 1602 ("The accused must be adequately and effectively advised of his [or her] rights …."); id. at 470, 86 S.Ct. 1602 ("No effective waiver of the right to counsel during interrogation can be recognized unless specifically made after the warnings we here delineate have been given.").

[1, 2] The brief of the United States acknowledges the requirement that adequate advice of rights must be provided and discusses cases interpreting the requirement. The United States did not explicitly contend at oral argument that the question whether that requirement was met in this case was not properly before this court for decision. Nor did the United States request an opportunity to file a supplemental brief more fully addressing the question. Moreover, because the advice of rights in this case was videotaped, there is no factual dispute as to what advice the police gave Mr. Green. With the exception of one factual point that we discuss infra, whether the advice of rights provided in this case was adequate is therefore a pure question of law that we can decide de novo. See, e.g., United States v. Crumpton, 824 F.3d 593, 604-05 (6th Cir. 2016) ("[T]he question before us is a legal one: Given the undisputed words that were said and the undisputed recording of them, were the [warnings] legally sufficient?") (citing cases). Under the circumstances, and seeing no procedural unfairness, we exercise our discretion to consider the issue. See generally, e.g., Outlaw v. United, States, 632 A.2d 408, 410 n.7 (D.C. 1993) ("[A] court may consider an issue antecedent to and ultimately dispositive of the dispute before it, even an issue the parties fail to identify and brief.") (ellipsis and internal quotation marks omitted).

[3] The Supreme Court held in Miranda that "statements made by an accused while in police custody are inadmissible unless the police[,] prior to questioning, warn [the accused] that [the accused] has the right to the presence of an attorney." Di Giovanni v. United States, 810 A.2d 887, 891 (D.C. 2002) (ellipses and internal quotation marks omitted). That warning, like the other warnings required by Miranda, is necessary because "interrogation in certain custodial circumstances is inherently coercive." New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649, 654, 104 S.Ct. 2626, 81 L.Ed.2d 550 (1984) (footnote omitted).

[4] Miranda warnings need not be provided in the precise words used by the Supreme Court in Miranda in order to be valid. See, e.g., Henson v. United, States, 563 A.2d 1096, 1097 (D.C. 1989) (Supreme Court "has never insisted that the warnings be given in the exact words of [Miranda]"). Nevertheless, in cases reaching back nearly fifty years, this court has emphasized the risk created when officers depart from the wording approved by the Supreme Court in Miranda. See id. ("We take this occasion, however, to repeat an admonition expressed by us over a decade ago in reviewing another case in which an officer expanded upon the language of the standard Miranda warning. We noted that ‘the recurrence of this question in the decisions, however, points up the unnecessary litigation that is created by embellishments on the essentials...