Criminal Practice – Constitutional – Attorneys – Ineffective Assistance Claim – Search & Seizure – Automobile Exception – Miranda Warnings – Spontaneous Statement

State v. Burton (Lawyers Weekly No. 011-025-17, 15 pp.) (Mark Davis, J.) Appealed from Buncombe County Superior Court (Marvin Pope Jr., J.) N.C. App.

Holding: There was no evidence that defendant’s vehicle was incapable of movement at the time it was the subject of a warrantless search by Officer Joshua Kingry (after he saw marijuana in the lap of a passenger in the parked car), so trial counsel was not ineffective when he failed to object to the search on the grounds that it was not within the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.

We find no error in defendant’s conviction of felony possession of cocaine.

During the search of defendant’s vehicle, Officer Kingry found what appeared to be crack cocaine. At the detention center, arrest warrants were issued for defendant and the passenger, Cortez Duff, and Officer Kingry read the warrants aloud to the two men. Defendant said the cocaine belonged to him and not to Duff.

Although defendant was in custody and had not been Mirandized at the time the warrants were read to him and Duff, spontaneous statements made by an individual while in custody are admissible despite the absence of Miranda warnings.

While defendant argues that it is not a common practice for an officer to inform multiple arrestees of the charges against them in the presence of one another, he has failed to cite any legal authority condemning this practice as unlawful. Moreover, defendant has also failed to show (1) any awareness by Officer Kingry of a personal relationship between defendant and Duff so as to have led him to believe that upon hearing the charges against Duff, defendant was likely to make an inculpatory statement or (2) that his reading of the charges in this manner was a practice designed to improperly elicit incriminating statements from defendants. Therefore, no Miranda warning was required under these circumstances, and defendant has failed to show any prejudice arising from trial counsel’s failure to object.

No error.