People of Michigan v. Matthew Lewinski ( 2024 )

If this opinion indicates that it is “FOR PUBLICATION,” it is subject to
revision until final publication in the Michigan Appeals Reports.
STATE OF MICHIGAN
COURT OF APPEALS
PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, FOR PUBLICATION
October 28, 2024
Plaintiff-Appellant, 12:30 PM
v No. 365350
Macomb Circuit Court
MATTHEW LEWINSKI, LC No. 2022-001230-FC
Defendant-Appellee.
Before: RIORDAN, P.J., and YOUNG and WALLACE, JJ.
RIORDAN, P.J. (concurring).
I concur with the result reached by the majority that the trial court erred by suppressing the
incriminating statements at issue. I write separately, however, because I would apply a different
analysis for reaching that result.
As the majority recognizes, the fundamental issue here is whether defendant was subject
to “custodial interrogation” when he was a hospitalized patient and questioned by the police.
In Miranda v Arizona, 384 US 436, 444; 86 S Ct 1602; 16 L Ed 2d 694 (1966), the United
States Supreme Court held that “[p]rior to any questioning, the person must be warned that he has
a right to remain silent, that any statement he does make may be used as evidence against him, and
that he has a right to the presence of an attorney, either retained or appointed.” However, “Miranda
warnings are not required unless the accused is subject to custodial interrogation.” People v Elliott,
494 Mich 292, 302; 833 NW2d 284 (2013). “Custodial interrogation” means “questioning initiated
by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of
his freedom of action in any significant way.” Id. at 305 (quotation marks and citation omitted).
“In determining whether a person is in custody in this sense, the initial step is to ascertain
whether, in light of the objective circumstances of the interrogation, a reasonable person would
have felt he or she was not at liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave.” Howes v Fields,
565 US 499, 509; 132 S Ct 1181; 182 L Ed 2d 17 (2012) (cleaned up). Ordinarily, resolving this
question requires considering whether “an individual’s freedom of movement was curtailed.” See
Elliott, 494 Mich at 307 (quotation marks and citation omitted). In other cases, however, an
individual’s “freedom of movement [may be] restricted by a factor independent of police conduct.”
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Florida v Bostick, 501 US 429, 436; 111 S Ct 2382; 115 L Ed 2d 389 (1991). In Bostick, for
example, the defendant’s freedom of movement was restricted by the fact that he was “a passenger
on a bus,” not by the fact that the police attempted to communicate with him. See id.Consequently, “when a person has no desire to leave for reasons unrelated to the police presence,
the coercive effect of the encounter can be measured better by asking whether a reasonable person
would feel free to decline the officers’ requests or otherwise terminate the encounter.” Brendlin v
California, 551 US 249, 255; 127 S Ct 2400; 168 L Ed 2d 132 (2007) (quotation marks and
citations omitted).
So too here. While the majority correctly observes that defendant had his freedom of
movement restrained because “[he] was actively being treated in the hospital” and “he was lying
in a hospital bed and hooked up to IV and oxygen tubes,” these facts are not significant for
determining whether he was subject to police-imposed restraint. In other words, defendant had his
freedom of movement restrained because of background circumstances, not police-imposed
circumstances. As explained by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, when
a hospitalized patient is questioned by the police, the attendant restraint on the freedom of
movement by virtue of the hospitalization is not police-imposed restraint for the purposes of
determining “custodial interrogation”:
Analysis of whether Jamison was in custody when he made the statements
describing the shooting depends on whether a reasonable person would have felt
free to decline the officers’ requests or otherwise terminate the encounter. In
dissecting the perceptions of such a reasonable person, however, we must be careful
to separate the restrictions on his freedom arising from police interrogation and
those incident to his background circumstances. That is, to the extent Jamison felt
constrained by his injuries, the medical exigencies they created (e.g., the donning
of a hospital gown and the insertion of an I.V. line), or the routine police
investigation they initiated, such limitations on his freedom should not factor into
our reasonable-person analysis. It is this careful differentiation between police-
imposed restraint and circumstantial restraint that leads us to conclude that Jamison
was not in custody when he described the shooting during his hospital interview.
***
At bottom, Jamison was certainly inconvenienced by the circumstances of
his hospitalization. Trading one’s street clothes for a gown, sacrificing one’s
privacy as countless nurses, nursing assistants, and physicians perform
examinations, and suffering the insertion of an I.V. line into one’s arm are all
intrusions borne by those in need of urgent medical care. These circumstances
served to compound the primary restriction on Jamison’s freedom to leave: twin
wounds from a bullet entering near his groin and exiting his outer thigh. The fact
of Jamison’s injury, the trappings of his treatment, and the routine aspects of the
investigation he initiated provided the most substantial restrictions of Jamison’s
freedom of movement, far outstripping whatever additional impingement on his
freedom to leave was presented by the officers during the ongoing police
investigation into his shooting. [United States v Jamison, 509 F3d 623, 629-633
(CA 4, 2007) (cleaned up).]
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Other state courts are in accord. See State v LaCouture, 146 NM 649, 653; 213 P3d 799
(NM Ct App, 2009) (“Our appellate courts have never considered whether the interrogation of a
hospital patient constitutes a custodial interrogation. . . . Based on the out-of-state authority the
determination that a defendant was subjected to custodial interrogation most often turns on the
distinction between circumstantial restraints and direct police-imposed limitations on a
defendant’s freedom.”).
As applied to the case before us, defendant’s freedom of movement was restrained because
of background circumstances—the fact of hospitalization—not police-imposed restraint.1
Moreover, the video recording of the police conversation with defendant does not reveal any
overbearing, aggressive, or unusual police conduct during that conversation. Rather, the police
calmly and respectfully questioned defendant about the underlying apparent crime in a manner
that was no different than a typical police interaction with a member of the general public.
Defendant therefore was not subject to “custodial interrogation,” as a reasonable person in his
position would have felt free to terminate the police encounter. See Brendlin, 551 US at 255. As
a result, Miranda does not require suppression of the incriminating statements at issue.2
Accordingly, for the reasons explained herein, I agree with the result reached by the
majority reversing the trial court’s suppression of the incriminating statements made by defendant
to the police in the hospital.
/s/ Michael J. Riordan
1
There is nothing to suggest that defendant was detained in his hospital room by the presence of
one or more police officers guarding the door during his hospitalization. Further, testimony below
indicates that defendant originally was admitted to the hospital after “EMS” was contacted because
he was acting erratically in public, and according to a treating doctor, “initial presentation there
was concern this might be, you know, possibly related to a drug overdose, possibility of central
nervous system infection, and things like that.” Consequently, the circumstances surrounding
defendant’s hospitalization were not caused by the police and, in my view, cannot reasonably be
attributed to the police.
2
The majority correctly observes in footnote one that our Supreme Court remanded this case to
this Court for reconsideration as on leave granted. See People v Lewinski, ___ Mich ___ (2024)
(Docket No. 165606). However, before remanding this case, our Supreme Court originally held
this case in abeyance for People v Ghunaim, Docket No. 165109. In Ghunaim, our Supreme Court
ordered oral argument on the application, directing the parties to address “whether the defendant
was subjected to a ‘custodial interrogation’ without being advised of his rights under [Miranda]
when he was a hospitalized patient.” People v Ghunaim, 511 Mich 978 (2023). Ultimately, our
Supreme Court denied leave to appeal in Ghunaim, People v Ghunaim, 513 Mich 1036 (2024),
leaving unaffected this Court’s unpublished opinion affirming the trial court’s denial of the
defendant’s “motion to suppress statements he made to police while in the hospital,” People v
Ghunaim, unpublished per curiam opinion of the Court of Appeals, issued November 17, 2022
(Docket No. 359167), at 1.
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