Colorado Supreme Court McCall v. People 79SC298

Decided 2-2-81.

   In 1977, David Raley went missing.  He had last been seen with McCall, McCarthy, and Steenbarger.  At some point during the investigation, Raley's body was found in an isolated field in Arapahoe County and the Coroner determined that the cause of death was strangulation.  In a recorded meeting between the Arapahoe County DA and representatives of several nearby agencies, it was decided that a team of officers and deputies would go to the suspect's houses and pretend to interview them as witnesses rather than as suspects in the hopes of getting incriminating statements.  The point of this plan was to elicit incriminating statements before taking the suspects into custody.  Although everyone agreed that there was PC to arrest McCall & Co, they did not obtain warrants for their arrest.  Incidentally, McCall was 18 and lived with his parents, and McCarthy lived with McCall.  So a team of deputies and officers went to McCall's house, and another team went to Steenbarger's house.

   At McCall's house, the cops gained consent from McCall's parents to come inside and talk to the kids by falsely assuring them that McCall and McCarthy were not suspects and were only going to be interviewed as witnesses.  Meanwhile, they ordered McCall and McCarthy to sit on a couch, and wouldn't let them leave the living room.  Eventually, the parents agreed to let the cops do their interview in private, and they headed off to another part of the house.  The cops separated McCall and McCarthy by taking McCall out to the police car.  They read McCall his rights, and he agreed to talk to them.  The interrogation lasted about 40 minutes, and McCall denied any involvement in the murder.

   Meanwhile, another team of cops was trying the same approach with Steenbarger.  Steenbarger confessed, and also incriminated McCall.  The cops interrogating Steenbarger informed the cops who were interrogating McCall.  They stopped the interrogation and took McCall to jail (his parents were still hanging out in the basement, unaware of the arrest).  At the jail, McCall was interrogated again and informed that Steenbarger had confessed.  Faced with that, McCall confessed too.

   When Mccall's parents realized that he had been arrested, they called a lawyer.  He called the station and told McCall to shut up.

   McCall was convicted of the murder, and appealed his conviction (arguing that his confession should have been suppressed).  The Colorado Supreme Court reversed the conviction and remanded the case back to the district court for a new trial.  In its decision, the court spelled out two possible justifications for a warrantless arrest in a suspect's home: exigent circumstances, and consent.

   Exigent circumstances: The court referred to Payton v. New York and Warden v. Hayden for an explanation of this requirement, and held that the record in this case was devoid of any suggestion of exigency.  The decision not to apply for a warrant wasn't based on any emergency, but as part of a plan to elicit incriminating statements.

   Consent: The court held that " A voluntary consent by an occupant of premises authorizing entry by the police for the purpose of effecting an arrest inside the home may constitute, under appropriate circumstances, a valid waiver of the warrant requirement."  Unfortunately for the police, that's not what happened in this case.  "Where, as here, entry into the home is gained by a preconceived deception as to purpose, consent in the constitutional sense is lacking."  In other words, you can't trick someone into waiving their rights by telling them that you're there for something else.

   Since there was neither exigency nor consent, the arrest was unlawful.  Since the confession was a direct result of the unlawful arrest, it had to be suppressed as the fruit of the poisonous tree (it didn't matter that McCall had been read his rights and waived them).  So the case was sent back to the district court for a new trial without the confession.