On Point: b. Functional equivalent

State v. Kale K. Keding, 2022AP1373-CR & 2022AP1374-CR, District IV, 8/31/23, 1-judge decision ineligible for publication; case activity (briefs not available)

In an eminently readable and refreshing opinion, COA methodically works through a battery of counterarguments to hold that police could not use statements Keding made after having been asked about a tissue he discarded into a wastebasket while in police custody.

State v. Timothy E. Dobbs, 2020 WI 64, 7/3/20, affirming an unpublished per curiam court of appeals opinion, 2018AP319; case activity (including briefs)

There’s really only one important holding here: despite adoption of the Daubert standard, Wisconsin continues to permit expert testimony in the form of “dissertation or exposition.” That is, an expert can educate the jury about the principles or findings of his or her field without talking about the facts of the case, and an expert who does so is not subject to the requirement that he or she “appl[y] the principles and methods” of that field “reliably to the facts of the case.” Though the court also decides a separate Miranda issue, the discussion is fact-intensive and breaks no legal ground. What’s notable (and regrettable) about the Miranda decision is a meandering three-justice concurrence that repeats the court’s error in State v. Bartelt, 2018 WI 16, 379 Wis. 2d 588, 906 N.W.2d 684, by grafting a third step onto the familiar two-part Miranda-custody inquiry.

State v. Ulanda M. Green, 2018AP1350-CR, petition for review granted 9/3/19; case activity (including briefs)

Issues:

1. Whether law enforcement’s “dialogue” with Green amounted to an “interrogation” that should have been preceded by a Miranda warning?

2. Whether Green invoked her right to remain silent when law enforcement asked her if she would like to make a statement and she responded: “No. I don’t know nothing.”

State v. Ulanda M. Green, 2018AP1350-CR, District 1, 5/29/19 (not recommended for publication), petition for review granted, 9/3/19; case activity (including briefs)

Green sought to suppress incriminating statements she made to police both before and after being given the Miranda warnings. The court of appeals holds that the pre-Miranda statement Green made was not the product of interrogation, so it’s admissible. As for the statements she made after the warnings, the court rejects her argument that she invoked her right to remain silent and so interrogation should have ceased.

State v. Peter J. Hanson, 2016AP2058-CR, petition for review of per curiam opinion granted 1/15/19; case activity (including briefs)

Issues (from the petition for review):

Whether the admission of hearsay statements of a defendant’s deceased wife inculpating him in murder violates his right to confrontation?

Whether trial counsel is ineffective in failing to move to suppress inculpatory statements that the defendant made at a John Doe hearing where he was in custody and not properly Mirandized?

State v. Brian Harris, 2017 WI 31, 4/7/17, affirming a published court of appeals opinion, 2016 WI App 2; case activity (including briefs)

“This freedom from compelled self-incrimination is one of the nation’s ‘most cherished principles.’ Miranda, 384 U.S. at 458. We are sufficiently solicitous of this protection that we guard it by patrolling a generous buffer zone around the central prohibition.” Majority Op. ¶12. That’s the principle in theory. Here’s how it applies in practice.

State v. Brian I. Harris, 2016 WI App 2, petition for review granted 4/6/16, affirmed 2017 WI 31; case activity (including briefs)

Incriminating statements Harris made while he was in custody were admissible despite the lack of Miranda warnings because the statements were either sufficiently attenuated from the taint of police questioning or were not made in response to police interrogation.

State v. Antoine Leshawn Douglas, 2013 WI App 52; case activity

Miranda violation — interrogation by police

After a lawful arrest, but before being given Miranda warnings, Douglas initiated a conversation with the arresting officer in which he stated he wanted “to work” for the police by offering information about some marijuana dealers. After the officer declined that offer there was a “pause,” followed by Douglas changing the subject and volunteering information about a gun;

State v. Lee Yang, 2012AP1126-CR, Districts 1/4, 2/28/13; court of appeals decision (not recommended for publication); case activity

Yang was being interrogated about the shooting death of his ex-wife’s boyfriend when he invoked his right to counsel. Interrogation ceased and he was taken to jail. (¶¶3, 5). Several hours later, Gomez, a homicide detective, visited Yang in jail. (¶7). Gomez had not been involved in the earlier interrogation, but he did help execute a search warrant at Yang’s home,

State v. Scott M. Hambly, 2008 WI 10, affirming 2006 WI App 256
For Hambly: Martha K. Askins, SPD, Madison Appellate

Issue: Whether, following his in-custody invocation of right to counsel, Hambly’s subsequent statements that he didn’t know what was going on (eliciting the officer’s response that he’d sold cocaine to an informant) and wanted to talk to find out what his options were amounted to a initiation of contact authorizing interrogation within the Edwards rule.