Highlights of This Issue

United States Supreme Court Action

Federal Statute Protecting State and Local Governments From Disclosing Certain Traffic Accident Data in Civil Cases Upheld.

Pierce County v. Guillen, 123 S.Ct. --, 2003 WL 104796, No. 01-1229 (2003).

In an unanimous decision and an opinion written by Justice Thomas, the United States Supreme Court upheld a federal statute, the Hazard Elimination Program, 23 U.S.C. 152, intended to protect state and local governments that compile highway accident data in order to apply for federal "hazard elimination" grants. Under this legislation information compiled for this purpose cannot be used as evidence at a trial. The purpose of the statute was to avoid the result that by compiling such information, state and local governments would be documenting their own safety lapses and would thus be vulnerable to suits by accident victims.

Justice Thomas wrote that by seeking to improve highway safety by encouraging candid disclosure of hazardous locations, the law fell within the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. Only data collected to comply with the statute may be withheld, however.

Traffic Stop: Expanding the Scope of Activities and Questioning From Traffic Matters

People v. White, 770 N.E.2d 261 (Ill.App. 2002).

State. It was held that while a police officer making a lawful stop of a motorist is not precluded from making reasonable inquiries concerning the purpose of the stop, the scope of activities and questioning during an investigatory detention must be reasonably related to the circumstances that initially justified the stop. Thus, an officer, during a lawful stop of the motorist, may expand the scope of his detention beyond that which is reasonably related to the circumstances, only when he or she has reasonable and articulable suspicion that other criminal activity may be afoot or where matters that arise during the course of the stop otherwise cause the officer to have reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.

". . . questioning wholly unrelated to the purposes of the [traffic] stop, which is reasonably calculated to elicit incriminating responses, is impermissible unless supported by independent, reasonable, and articulable suspicion."

Miranda: Custody; Defendant in Handcuffs

People v. Mangum, 48 P.3d 568 (Colo. 2002).

State. Defendant was chased by police officers, threatened at gunpoint, sprayed in the face with pepper spray, subdued and handcuffed. He was asked to go to the sheriff's department to speak with officers regarding a double homicide, and was told that the state human services department had requested that his son be taken into protective custody. He was then interrogated without Miranda warnings. The setting was ruled custodial and his unwarned statements were suppressed.

"While exhibiting guns or using handcuffs may at times amount to reasonable safety precautions that do not necessarily elevate a seizure based on less than probable cause to a full arrest, Fifth Amendment protections are concerned with the likely course of the affect of this degree of force on a reasonable person in the suspect's position. Neither the reasonableness of the force nor its legal justification alters its likely coercive effect. Where it would appear to a reasonable person in the defendant's position that his freedom of action or movement had been curtailed to a degree associated with the formal arrest, in terms of both severity and duration, he is entitled to a Miranda advisement before being interrogated. . . ."

Voluntariness: "False Friend Technique;" Psychological Profile

State v. Bunting, 51 P.3d 37 (Utah App. 2002).

State. This court dealt with the interrogation technique known as the "false friend technique," whereby officials purportedly represent to a defendant that they are his friends and that they are acting in his best interest. It said that standing alone, this technique is not sufficiently coercive to produce an involuntary confession, but may be significant in relation to other tactics and factors.

The court ruled that police detectives, in conducting an interview of defendant concerning a child's death, did not employ the "false friend technique" to induce defendant to make incriminating statements, and thus, incriminating statements made by defendant were not subject to suppression in a prosecution for child abuse homicide. While the detectives did suggest during the beginning of an interview that they would have acted on defendant's behalf in going to the district attorney, they did not explicitly tell defendant that they were trying to help him and were trying to make him look good until after he made his incriminating admission about introducing freon into the child's bathwater.

"Defendant additionally argues the detectives intentionally played upon his vulnerable mental and psychological condition to induce incriminating statements. '[A] confession may be suppressed in circumstances in which a police officer knows of a suspect's mental illness or deficiencies at the time of the interrogation and effectively exploits those weaknesses to obtain a confession.' [State v. Retlenberger, 984 P.2d 1009 (1999)] (emphasis added).

"Defendant focuses on the fact that the detectives developed a psychological profile of him and then used interrogation tactics based on that profile. Psychological profiling and interrogation based on that profiling are not fatal to an interrogation. Rather, the focus is on whether the interrogation was coercive [under the totality of the circumstances]. . . ."

High Speed Pursuit: Innocent Motorist's Death at Intersection; Proximate Cause

Meyer v. State of Nebraska, 650 N.W.2d 459 (Neb. 2002).

State. A state trooper's pursuit of a speeding van was ruled the proximate cause of the death of a motorist whose car was struck by the pursued vehicle and therefore the state was liable under state law for the motorist's death.

A state trooper patrolling the highway encountered a van traveling at 94 miles per hour. The trooper turned his car around, activated his siren and overhead lights, and began a pursuit that lasted approximately 27 miles through three different towns as the motorist increased his speed to over 100 miles per hour.

The pursued motorist passed through a roadblock and accelerated. At an intersection of the highway with a street, the van collided with two vehicles. The driver of one of the cars was killed. The estate of the deceased motorist filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the state.

The court ruled that the trooper's pursuit of the van, which included the use of the roadblock, was the proximate cause of the accident, so that the state was liable for the motorist's death under the state's tort claims act. The court said the act imposed "strict liability" on the state when death or injury is proximately caused by the actions of a "pursuing law enforcement officer and the claimant is an innocent third party." The court noted that the pursued driver was clearly aware that he was being pursued by the police, and increased his speed at several times during the pursuit. Despite the trial court's finding that the driver was suffering from a "psychotic" condition, the appellate court stated that it was not disputed that some of the driver's actions while driving "were for the purpose of eluding his pursuer," including swerving around the roadblock and accelerating after passing it.

Immediately after the accident, the pursued driver said that, "I knew we had to outrun that police officer because he was going to kill us." The driver's reasons for evading the police, "whether real or imagined," the court said, "are not relevant to our determination. What is important is the fact that at certain times," his "actions were a result of his attempts to evade his pursuer." His attempts to elude the police, the pursuit, and the roadblock were factors contributing to the van's arrival at the intersection at a time which resulted in the accident.

The court concluded that the trooper's actions "set in motion a series of events through which the accident occurred. These events were combined in one continuous chain which ultimately resulted in the accident." While the question of proximate cause, in the face of conflicting evidence, is ordinarily one for the trier of fact, and a court's determination will not be set aside unless it is clearly wrong, the court held that, under these circumstances, the trial court's finding of no proximate cause was clearly wrong, with the only issue remaining the amount of damages to be awarded.

Gender Discrimination: Police Physical Testing Procedures

Lanning v. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transp. Authority, 2002 WL 31303266 (3rd Cir. 2002).

Federal. In its continuing consideration of sex differences in law enforcement testing, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that sufficient evidence supported a district court's finding that a pre-hire, pre-academy training aerobic capacity of 42.5 mL/kg/min, enabling a police applicant to run 1.5 miles in 12 minutes, measured the minimum qualifications necessary for successful performance as a transit police officer. The test's disparate impact on female candidates was ruled justified by Title VII's business necessity exception. The court rejected the argument that applicants should not be tested until after they have graduated from the police academy, which could be as long as two and one-half years after they first applied for the position.