Intentional Miranda violations are discouraged in the law.

In the unpublished Second District Court of Appeal (Div. 4) decision of People v. Rivera (Aug. 19, 2022) 2022 Cal. App. Unpub. LEXIS 5130—a double homicide case—the Court rejected the defendant gangster Miguel Rivera’s objections to the admissibility of some incriminating statements he made during what the Court referred to as a “Perkins operation.”  (A “Perkins operation” [citing Illinois v. Perkins (1990) 496 U.S. 292.], is where an undercover operative is put into a defendant’s jail cell [pre-filing of a complaint] for the purpose of encouraging the defendant to make incriminating statements.  In the Rivera case, after the in-custody defendant Rivera initially waived his Miranda rights (per Miranda v. Arizona (1966) 384 U.S. 436.), he later—mid-interrogation—invoked his rights to counsel and to remain silent.   His interrogators, however, purposely ignored his invocation and questioned him for an additional 19 minutes.  The officers’ admitted purpose for ignoring Rivera’s attempt to invoke was so that they could get some statements out of him that they could feed to an undercover agent who they intended to insert into his jail cell to see what he might say in response; i.e., a “Perkins operation.”  Rivera fell for this tactic, hook, line, and sinker, eventually admitting to his supposed cellmate that he committed both murders.  Those statements were introduced into evidence against him at his later trial.  On appeal from his conviction, the Court of Appeal upheld this tactic despite the defendant’s earlier invocation, citing People v. Orozco (2019) 32 Cal.App.5th 802 (where it was ruled that there is no “interrogation” when the defendant is unaware that he ....

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