State v. Largo

HENRIOD, Justice:

Appeal by the State from an order in arrest of judgment after a jury verdict of guilty of assault with attempt to rape as to five of the defendants and simple assault as to the sixth. Reversed and remanded for a new trial.

The defendants, young men attending the Intermountain Indian School at Brigham City, Utah, confessed to the charges, but attack the jury verdicts on the ground their confessions were inadmissible under the principles enunciated in Escobedo v. Illinois¹ and Miranda v. Arizona.²

One evening, following a basketball game, the lights went out at the school, and during the blackout, defendants allegedly entered a girls’ dormitory and committed the assault. Without detailing the voluminous record, it can be said that the counselors at the school investigated the incident, questioning dozens of students who, they believed, may have had knowledge thereof, and generally advising all of them to tell the truth. There appears to have been a genuine interest on the part of the school administrators to determine what happened and who may have participated on the occasion. There was no evidence as to any specific accusation directed specifically toward any one person, but during the course of the inquiry the defendants admitted participation in the event and signed a statement to that effect. At no time did the counselors advise them of their rights under the Miranda decision. There was no evidence of pressured coercion, inducement, undue influence or other circumstance indulged as an incentive to exact or force a false or any other kind of a confession from the students.

After this rather general and widespread investigation, an experienced police officer was employed to question some of the students. Before questioning them, he advised each one of his rights under Miranda. He questioned 60 or more of the students after giving such warning. No one was placed under arrest or taken to jail or any other place off campus. There was a counselor of the school attendant at each questioning, the record reflecting, without contradiction, that he was there to insure that nothing occurred 'hat the boys would not understand. There is nothing in the record indicating that the defendants were infantile, fearful, unintelligent, coerced, acted involuntarily, were victims of undue influence, “police brutality” or otherwise under any handicap or incapacity to know what was happening or what they were doing. After having been forewarned as stated above, none asked for counsel, but on the contrary, each waived the rights mentioned and signed a written admission of what part he had played during the power failure.

The State says the trial court erred in arresting judgment on the asserted grounds that the written statements of the defendants were inadmissible under Escobedo and Miranda, since, as the State urges, the defendants were not in custody when questioned by the counselors, and were amply warned of their rights before talking. We agree.

We find nothing showing that the interrogation by the school authorities was accusatory in the Escobedo connotation of that term. It appears to have been nothing dissimilar to that type of inquiry customarily indulged by any principal of any public or private school, military academy, church or other public or private institution whose administrators as a matter of course delve into the circumstances surrounding an incident of moment to the morals, well-being or law-abidance of its students or members. There was no evidence of focusing the injuiry on any particular suspect, in the Escobedo sense. Certainly the facts do not lend themselves to invocation of Miranda, where one might have been subjected to questioning in some sort of isolation, or in the shadow of the gaol, as it were, as suggested in the language of Miranda itself, where “compulsion to speak in the isolated setting of the police station may be greater than in courts or other official investigations where there are often impartial observers to gvard against intimidation or trickery.” The counselors in this case certainly were cast in no other role than that of such guardians against oppression or chicanery.

It would seem that the recent case of United States v. Manglona ³ is quite similar to the instant case, and consonant with our contentions and conclusions here, — to which the reader is referred.

Mr. Justice Ellett has reported some facts not recited in this opinion to most of which we subscribe.

We think the trial court was in error in arresting judgment, that the question of double jeopardy is not an issue here, and that the matter should be reversed and remanded for a new trial or other appropriate precedure not inconsistent with this decision, — and it is so ordered. (Emphasis added.)

CALLISTER and TUCKETT, JJ., concur.

1 . 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977 (1964).

2 . 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).

3 . 414 F.2d 642 (9th Cir. 1969).