4th District Court of Appeal gives law enforcement agents the green light to coerce Miranda waivers

It has been nearly 60 years since the United States Supreme Court issued its seminal ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, 84 U.S. 436 (1966). The principles of the holding in Miranda and its progeny are clearly established: a person who is accused and in custody must knowingly and voluntarily give up his constitutional rights before law enforcement officials can begin questioning.

Of course, prosecutors and police officers yearn for a confession in every case. In instances where a Miranda invocation prevents questioning there is sometimes another option: the jailhouse informant or police officer pretending to be an inmate who elicits an incriminating statement.

The First Division of the 4th District Court of Appeal in People v. Goehner, 2025 Cal. App. Unpub. LEXIS 4850, recently addressed a case in which the prosecution team utilized undercover police agents within the jail to not only obtain incriminating statements but to convince their target to waive his Miranda rights. The specific issue was whether it was permissible for these agents to spend hours attempting to convince the accused to speak with officers, or whether such conduct was coercive. Unfortunately, it turns out the answer is not self-evident.

Over the past decade, there has been a significant shift in California's informant landscape -- a movement toward operations that are initiated before counsel is appointed and charges are filed. In Illinois v. Perkins, 496 U.S. 292, the Supreme Court held that these operations do not implicate the 6th Amendment right to counsel. As a result, the government-directed informants and undercover police officers are able to question suspects about uncharged crimes.

Despite the advantages of Perkins Operations over informant operations initiated after the defendant is charged, some prosecution teams remained resistant to any form of legal restraint. Just one year after its ruling in Perkins, the Supreme Court offered what should have been an unneeded reminder that threats of physical harm cannot be used to convince targets to speak about the crime. Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279 (1991). Yet, to a remarkable extent, this ruling would also go unheeded.

Orange County's recent jailhouse informant scandal brought to light long-hidden misconduct that infected informant operations. Among the revelations was that two decades after the Fulminante ruling, police-orchestrated Perkins operations continued to include informants threatening targeted suspects with violence to cajole them into speaking about their role in investigated crimes. In one unearthed recording, a paid informant was captured telling the target that if he chose not to speak about the crime Mexican Mafia leaders might order the target's murder: "If they tell me to whack you, I'm gonna have to whack you, bro."

That brings us back to Goehner. After Goehner was arrested for a killing at a local trailer park, he was transported to a jail holding cell where four Perkins agents were waiting for him. Goehner told them he was going to soon be interviewed and asked whether they thought he should answer officers' questions. The opinion states that "...for their part, the agents consistently discouraged Goehner from asking to speak with an attorney, telling him that if he did, a murder charge would surely be filed and he would not get another opportunity to talk to the investigators." Their operation, which relied on persistent deception and compelling acting performances, eventually succeeded in convincing Goehner to speak with investigators.

Police officers can attempt to persuade defendants to waive their Miranda rights, as long as those efforts are not deemed coercive. Of course, when a defendant sits across an identified investigating officer he can evaluate the motives behind those persuasive efforts. Here, though, Goehner was misled into believing that the four Perkins agents were allies acting in good faith to help him make perhaps the most important decision of his life. Goehner believed that all four "inmates" concluded that the best and only option was to waive his Miranda rights and speak. Goehner had no idea that their unified interest was actually to convince him to speak regardless of what was best for him. Hour after hour they worked Goehner toward concluding that the only option was to waive his constitutional rights.

The decision of the trial court permitting introduction of Goehner's post-Miranda statements seemed destined for appellate correction. After all, the "relinquishment of the right [to silence] must have been voluntary in the sense that it was the product of a free and deliberate choice rather than intimidation, coercion or deception..."  Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412 (1986). Goehner's case offered the Court of Appeal an invaluable opportunity to remind the prosecution, law enforcement and the trial court that the constitution must always reign supreme, even if doing so makes the pursuit of a conviction slightly more difficult. Instead, it chose to turn common sense on its head. The opinion asserts, "[N]othing in the record suggests that the agents did anything that actually caused Goehner to waive his Miranda rights." 

Again, the principles of Miranda are clear: a person has the right to make a free and voluntary decision whether to talk to law enforcement. The ruling in Goehner is directly contrary to those principles and is therefore not only a disservice to the law and logic but to the public's faith that when police and prosecutors brazenly overreach the judiciary will set them straight.