The Court of Appeals decided two Miranda cases last week: In re J.D.B, available here, and State v. Rooks, available here. The former is a very close juvenile case that produced three separate opinions. I'll save my thoughts about it for after we hear from the Supreme Court of North Carolina. But there's an argument in Rooks that is worth discussing now. The facts of Rooks are as follows. Mr. Rooks's wife called the police after she saw Mr. Rooks sexually abusing their daughter. Detective Kivett went to the Rooks' residence where he found Mr. Rooks talking to a relative. Detective Kivett asked introduced himself to Mr. Rooks and asked him to come to his patrol car. Mr. Rooks agreed. He sat in the front seat of the patrol car. He wasn't handcuffed, and the doors were unlocked. Deputy Kivett told him that he wasn't under arrest. Almost immediately, Mr. Rooks admitted molesting his daughter. Over the course of the next hour, Deputy Kivett questioned Mr. Rooks, and Mr. Rooks made incriminating statements. Eventually, he signed a written confession. At no time did Deputy Kivett read Mr. Rooks his Miranda rights. Mr. Rooks was charged with a number of sex-related offenses. He moved to suppress both his oral statements and the written confession on the grounds that they were the product of custodial interrogation conducted without Miranda warnings. A superior court judge largely agreed, and ordered most of the oral statements suppressed, together with the written confession. The state appealed, and [...]
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