The Indiana Law Blog: Ind. Decisions - Court of Appeals issues 1 today (and 8 NFP)

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Thursday, August 16, 2007

Ind. Decisions - Court of Appeals issues 1 today (and 8 NFP)

For publication opinions today (1):

In Megan Morris v. State of Indiana , a 14-page opinion, Judge Barnes writes:

Megan Morris appeals her convictions for Class A felony battery and Class A felony child neglect. We reverse.

Issue The restated issue before us is whether the trial court properly admitted Morris’s statements to police into evidence. * * *

Morris should have been advised of her Miranda rights when Sergeant Haalck began his interview of her, but she was not. Morris implicated herself in Romeo’s death, she then was Mirandized, and she repeated that confession in a taped statement. Clearly, Morris’s pre-Miranda, unrecorded statement is inadmissible. As for the post-Miranda, recorded statement, its admissibility is governed by Missouri v. Siebert, 542 U.S. 600, 124 S. Ct. 2601 (2004). Siebert disapproved of “question first-warn later” interrogation techniques whereby a person in custody is interrogated without Miranda warnings, the person confesses, and the police only then Mirandize the person and record the confession. The Supreme Court held that Miranda warnings “will be ineffective in preparing the suspect for successive interrogation, close in time and similar in content.” Siebert, 542 U.S. at 613, 124 S. Ct. at 2610. The State does not argue that Morris’s post-Miranda interrogation was not close in time or not similar in content to her pre-Miranda interrogation; it focused solely on whether Morris was in custody at the time. Having rejected the State’s argument on that point, Siebert clearly precludes the admission of Morris’s post-Miranda, recorded statements.

The State also makes no argument that admission of Morris’s statements to Sergeant Haalck constituted harmless error, nor do we see how it possibly could be. Therefore, we must reverse her convictions. Because there is no claim that there was insufficient evidence to convict, Morris may be retried. See Camm v. State, 812 N.E.2d 1127, 1138 (Ind. Ct. App. 2004), trans. denied. Conclusion The trial court improperly admitted Morris’s inculpatory statements to Sergeant Haalck into evidence. We reverse her convictions.