# Stansbury v. California

> Supreme Court of the United States · April 26, 1994 · 511 U.S. 318

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9432993

## Case

- **Full name:** Stansbury v. California
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** April 26, 1994
- **Citations:** 511 U.S. 318; 114 S. Ct. 1526; 128 L. Ed. 2d 293; 1994 U.S. LEXIS 3293
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Blackmun
- **Judges:** Blackmun
- **Cited by:** 2,202 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9432993

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- explaining that, “in determining whether an individual was in custody, a court must examine all of the circumstances surrounding the interrogation, but ‘the ultimate inquiry is simply whether there [was] a ‘formal arrest or restraint on freedom of movement’ of the degree assoc…
- stating that even when an officer clearly tells a person under interrogation that he is a prime suspect such is not, in itself, dispositive of the custody issue, because some suspects are free to come and go until the police decide to make an arrest; rather, the weight and per…
- stating that an officer's suspicion regarding a defendant and purpose for conducting an interview bear on the custody determination "only if the officer's views or beliefs . . . would have affected how a reasonable person in that position would perceive his or her freedom to l…
- concluding that in determining whether a person is “in custody” for Miranda purposes, a court must determine whether there had been either a formal arrest or a “restraint on freedom of movement of the degree associated with a formal arrest” (internal quota- tion marks omitted)
- holding that a law enforcement officer’s unarticulated subjective belief as to whether the person being questioned is a criminal suspect is irrelevant to the custody determination because a custody assessment depends on the objective circumstances of an interrogation

## Opinion text

Justice Blackmun,
concurring.
I join the Court’s per curiam opinion and merely add that, even if I were not persuaded that the judgment must be reversed for the reasons stated in that opinion, I would adhere to my view that the death penalty cannot be imposed fairly within the constraints of our Constitution. See my dissent in Callins v. Collins, 510 U. S. 1141, 1143 (1994). I therefore would vacate the death sentence on that ground, too.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9432993. Public record. Not legal advice.