OPINION OF THE COURT
Defendant Julius Lynes was convicted, after a jury trial, of rape in the first degree, sodomy in the first degree, robbery in the first degree and burglary in the first degree. His conviction was affirmed by the Appellate Division. The issues on which the present appeal turns аre the admissibility at trial of (1) a telephone conversation between a police detective and a caller who identified himself as the defendant and (2) oral statements made to another police officer by the defendant purportedly without first having been advised of his constitutional rights. For the reasons which follow, we hold both were properly received in evidence.
Police attention in this case was directed at defendant after the complainant, hаppening to observe him with a group of young men on a congested street in the Harlem section of Manhattan, recognized him as her assailant. When the defendant ran into a nearby tenement house, other people who had been standing with him told the complainant that the man was nicknamed Speedy. Acting on her relay of this information to the police, a detective, Donald Longo, repaired to the building into which the man had disappeared, where, in the course оf his inquiries of tenants, he came upon a man who identified himself as Speedy’s brother and provided the information that defendant’s formal name was Julius Lynes. However, the man denied knowing where Speedy was at the time and, when he asked why the detective was seeking his brother, was advised that it was in connection with the investigation of an old warrant. Before departing, Longo re
For, only hours later, Longo picked up a telephone rеceiver at the other end of which was an unfamiliar male voice that asked for him by name. According to the record, the detective, having then inquired who was calling, received the response, "Speedy — Julius Lynes” and then, "What are you loоking for me for?” In reply, the detective said, "Your knife was found in an apartment”, to which the voice was then heard to say "Oh no, oh no”. When the detective thereupon asked if the man who had identified himself as Julius Lynes would come in and talk to the police, the caller refused, saying "you are going to have to find me” and then hung up. It is this conversation which was introduced at trial over the defense’s vigorous objection that Longo admittedly was unfamiliar with the voice and therefore could not рersonally identify it as that of the defendant. The trial court’s ruling was based generally on the rationale that other circumstances provided sufficient corroboration of the identity of the caller.
Prefatory to focusing on the question so rаised, we note that the problem was fundamentally one of authentication, i.e., not merely whether the sound of the voice was recognizable as that of the defendant, but, more broadly, whether a sufficient foundation had been laid to permit a finding that the conversation was one with the party against whom it was offered. Putting the issue another way, in this case was the proof such that a jury could find that defendant was indeed the caller? (See People v Dunbar Contr. Co.,
The question of authentication, of coursе, presents no great legal difficulty when the witness testifies that he recognizes the voice of the caller, and that is irrespective of whether the familiarity was acquired before or after the conversation (People v Dunbar Contr. Co., supra, p 422; People v Strollo,
Thus, in part on the theory that the customary mode of operation of telephone users provides some assurance of reliability, in some instances the placing of a call to a number listed in a directory or other similarly responsible index of subscribers, coupled with an unforced acknowledgment by the one answering that he or she is the one so listed, has been held to constitute an adequate showing (see, e.g., Mankes v Fishman,
So measured, it was not error for the court to overrule the objection. The call was made to the detective after he had made a specific request that the defеndant call and had left his name and telephone number for that very purpose with a man purporting to be defendant’s brother. The promptness of the call — within a few hours of this invitation — can be said to impart a quality of reflexiveness that tends to undermine the chance that the invitation and the response are connected by only a post hoc ergo propter hoc rationalization (see People v Conway, 3 111 App 3d 69; People v Kroeger, 61 Cal 2d 236). Moreover, aside from the immediacy of the response, the court could weigh such factors as the caller’s seeming ability to track thе message left for the defendant, specifically in asking
Moreover, the question here was whether the conversation was admissible and not whethеr, standing alone, it would suffice to support a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In that connection, it is well to remember that the complainant directly described the details of the criminal event and identified the defendant as its perpеtrator on the basis of her personal observations at the time of its commission.
In sum, taking these facts and inferences in various combinations or in concert, it cannot be said as a matter of law that the Trial Judge erred in leaving it to the jury — aidеd as it could be by the instruments of cross-examination, counsels’ arguments and other fact-finding tools available at the trial level — to decide whether, as Learned Hand put it, "The chance that these circumstances should unite in the case оf some one [other than the defendant] seems * * * so improbable that the speaker was sufficiently identified” (Van Riper v United States, 13 F2d 961, 968, supra).
We turn now to defendant’s second contention, that inculpatory remarks he made to a second police officer, Thomаs Czfwzyk, while Lynes was being held on an unrelated charge, should have been suppressed because he had not been advised of his Miranda rights.
It was right after this court appearance, and while Czfwzyk, who until then had no knowledge of or connection with the case Detective Longo was investigating, was escorting Lynes into his cell, that defendant asked generally whether he could speak to him and, when the officer said yes, the defendant continued, "What is this warrant about?” The police officer, possessed of no more information than that which could be gathered from the rеmark which he had just heard the arraigning Judge make to the defendant, responded, "You should know, they are looking for you”. It was at this juncture, and without any invitation, much less urging or coaxing, that defendant poured out an incriminatory comment in the course оf which he boasted that he had "taken care of’ a woman in an episode for which he knew the detective who was looking for him.
At an ensuing suppression hearing, the Trial Judge found beyond a reasonable doubt that the statement was one máde voluntarily and spontaneously, and nоt as the product of any police interrogation. In the affirmed posture of the case now, this determination of spontaneity is beyond our power to review unless no possible reading of the facts supports it (People v Anderson,
From that perspective, although wе have noted that incriminatory statements are not rendered spontaneous simply because they are precipitated by subtle forms of interrogation rather than blatantly coercive techniques (see People v Garofolo,
The test in such situations cannot be whether, through hindsight, the defendant professes to believe the police intended to provoke an inсriminating response. Were that so, virtually any police remark, no matter how innocuous, would constitute an interrogation as long as it was followed by an inculpatory statement. Instead, fully sensitive to the defendant’s rights, yet using an objective standard, thе Trial Judge must determine whether the defendant’s statement can be said to have been triggered by police conduct which should reasonably have been anticipated to evoke a declaration from the defendant (see People v Howard,
We therefore conclude that the order of the Appellate Division should be аffirmed.
Chief Judge Cooke and Judges Jasen, Gabrielli, Jones, Wachtler and Meyer concur.
Order affirmed.
Notes
[2] We note from his testimony at the suppression hearing that the officer was apparently aware that Lynes had retained counsel on the unrelated сharge, and so the defendant should properly be considered to have invoked the right to counsel, thus foreclosing any police questioning on the rape incident as well (see People v