Judge Invalidates Admission by Va. Slaying Suspect

A statement that a 21-year-old Great Falls man made to police in March, describing how he stabbed his mother to death, cannot be used against him, a Fairfax County judge has ruled, because detectives started their interrogation with this question:

"Do you know why we're here?"

That inquiry, by Fairfax homicide Detective David W. Allen, elicited this answer from Jayant Kadian:

"Yeah, because I stabbed my mom in the neck."

Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Kathleen H. MacKay ruled last week that Kadian should have first been told of his rights to remain silent and have an attorney present. The detective's question "makes no particular sense except as an attempt to [elicit] an incriminating response," MacKay wrote. As such, the judge concluded, everything that came after was "unwarned" and must be suppressed.

After Kadian blurted out that he had stabbed his mother, Allen said he immediately read Kadian his Miranda rights, which Kadian waived in writing. He then explained to Allen the background and circumstances of the death of his mother, Kiran V. Kadian, on March 24 in her kitchen on Thompson Ridge Court.

Kadian's trial, which was scheduled to start today, will be delayed while Fairfax Commonwealth's Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr. appeals MacKay's ruling.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that police may not "question first, warn second." And Kadian's attorney, Peter D. Greenspun, argued in a hearing last month that the high court's ruling in Seibert v. Missouri prohibited police from asking questions of suspects in custody until they are given a Miranda warning.

In that case, police officers testified that it was their department's policy in interrogations to question a suspect and obtain incriminating information, then seek a Miranda waiver and obtain the information again "on the record."

The Supreme Court said that was unacceptable.

"When Miranda warnings are inserted in the midst of coordinated and continuing interrogation," wrote Justice David H. Souter, "they are likely to mislead and deprive a defendant of knowledge essential to his ability to understand the nature of his rights and the consequences of abandoning them."

Greenspun said that appearing to first banter casually with suspects "is a time-honored technique of the police. Under Seibert, that conduct is clearly prohibited. . . . If they want to chitchat, there's a significant risk that the statement's going to be inadmissible."