State v. Petitjean

In State v. Petitjean (2000), 140 Ohio App.3d 517, 748 N.E.2d 133, this court provided that "false promises made by police to a criminal suspect that he can obtain lenient treatment in exchange for waiving his Fifth Amendment privilege so undermines the suspect's capacity for self-determination that his election to waive the right and incriminate himself in criminal conduct is fatally impaired. His resulting waiver and statement are thus involuntary for Fifth Amendment purposes. These issues must be resolved on a totality-of-the-circumstances test, which places both equivocal language and technical possibilities in context." Id. at 534. In Petitjean, interrogating officers told the defendant that he would probably get probation if he confessed to murder, where the crime itself was so violent in nature that the defendant would inevitably have been charged with voluntary manslaughter or murder. Id. at 532. The penalties under both of these charges did not include probation. Id. The Court held that the officers' promise "specifically conditioned the availability of probation on the defendant's waiver of his Fifth Amendment privilege." Id. When considered together with the defendant's prior experience, the duration and tone of the investigation, the threats of punishment and the source of the promises, the officers' misstatement of the law equated to a grave misrepresentation of leniency that frustrated the voluntariness of the defendant's confession. Id. at 533-34.