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Spontaneous Utterances Have Family Ties
On May 16, 2014, the Seventh Circuit ruled in U.S. v. Wallace that voluntary statements, more commonly known as spontaneous utterances, are admissible evidence.
The Defendant was a drug dealer; there was bad blood between him and his nephew, a paid DEA informant. On two different occasions the DEA conducted “controlled buys” using the nephew to buy crack cocaine from his uncle. After the controlled buys, they executed a search warrant on the uncle’s house where they found large quantities of illegal drugs. During a raid, standard procedure is to have the occupants of the house contained in a neutral area of the house previously searched. The officer in charge of containing the uncle and his nephew overheard the defendant tell the other detainees, “don’t worry, everything in that room is mine.” The officer reported this to the agent in charge, who then took the Defendant out of the room to talk to him about the illegal drugs. The Defendant again stated, “I don’t want to waste your time, everything in there is mine.”
At trial, the Defendant moved to suppress his statements citing he was not read his Miranda rights, and his responses were given during a “custodial interrogation.” The Court held that the agent was merely asking the Defendant if he wanted to make a statement, to which he expected a proper answer of yes or no. The fact that the Defendant blurted out incriminating statements was not the fault of the agent or the context in which the statements were made. Secondly, the Court held that even if theDefendant did not make the above statements, the agent who overheard the Defendant talking to the other detainees could have testified to what he heard during the execution of the search warrant.
Why is this important? Day-in day-out law enforcement hit the streets to fight crime, but they cannot control what the suspects in any case say. Law enforcement cannot be expected to read Miranda to each suspect before asking him or her questions, or as in this case, the suspect makes incriminating statements voluntarily. If the courts stop allowing suspects’ spontaneous utterances as evidence, it could undermine the adversarial criminal justice system. It also means that defendant’s right to cross-examine witnesses is still very much fundamental and that will not be changing any time soon.
