Booking Questions & Miranda

Booking Questions & Miranda

Robert C. Phillips

Deputy District Attorney (Ret.)

October, 2021

            Some four years ago, the Fourth District Court of Appeal (Div. 2) seemingly resolved an often-debated issue when it published an opinion on the trial admissibility of a jail inmate’s responses to so-called “booking questions.”  In People v Gomez,[1] it was held that despite the lack of a prior Miranda[2] admonishment and waiver, an inmate’s admissions relative to his criminal street gang affiliation, made in response to routine booking questions posed to the inmate for purposes of jail security and the inmate’s own safety, were admissible against him at his later trial.[3]

Recognizing that the rule is not absolute, and seeking to weed out instances where the booking question exception to Miranda might be used as a ploy for tricking a defendant into incriminating himself, the Gomez court provided a list of factors, gleaned from a host of prior case decisions, to consider in determining when such un-Mirandized responses might be admissible.  Those factors were listed as:

(1) The nature of the questions, such as whether they seek merely identifying data necessary for booking;

(2) The context of the interrogation, such as whether the questions were asked during a non-investigative, clerical booking process and pursuant to a standard booking form or questionnaire; ....

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