Miranda waiver; Knowing & intelligent waiver; Voluntary intoxication; LSD; Miranda v Arizona; People v Daoud; People v Cipriano; Harmless error; People v Sammons; Assault with intent to commit criminal sexual conduct (CSC) involving penetration; MCL 750.520g(1); Specific intent

The court held that defendant’s Miranda waiver was invalid because it was not knowing and intelligent, and that admission of his hospital statement was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Defendant, who was 18, had taken six tabs of LSD before allegedly assaulting someone. He was hospitalized after police found him partially unclothed and hallucinating, and later told a deputy, “I am a rapist and I am fucked.” The court first held that voluntary intoxication does not make a Miranda waiver “per se invalid,” but is part of the totality of the circumstances. It reasoned that the question was not whether defendant was still hallucinating when warned, but whether he had “the mental capacity to understand his rights and the import of waiving” them. The court emphasized that the deputy described defendant as “confused,” that defendant gave mostly yes-or-no answers after “long pauses,” that he testified time was “moving at a weird pace,” and that the deputy later told defendant’s stepfather he was “too out of it” for a conversation. The court also relied on defendant’s age, lack of prior law-enforcement experience, and lack of sleep or food, concluding the prosecution failed to prove a knowing and intelligent waiver by a preponderance of the evidence. The court next held that the error was not harmless because defendant was convicted of a specific-intent offense requiring proof that he intended CSC involving penetration. It reasoned that his statement that he was “a rapist” was “tantamount to an admission” of intent and “the strongest evidence” on that element, so an average jury would have found the prosecution’s case “significantly less persuasive” without it. Reversed, vacated, and remanded.

Justice Bernstein concurred in part and dissented in part. He agreed that defendant’s Miranda waiver was invalid, that the statements should have been excluded, and that the error was not harmless, but would have held the waiver invalid because it was involuntary rather than because it was not knowing and intelligent. He reasoned that Daoud requires only “a very basic understanding” for a knowing and intelligent waiver, and that the better analysis was voluntariness under the circumstances here.