David, J.
. . . For three hours, Bond consistently and adamantly denied being involved in the murder. The detective’s interrogation approach was to convince Bond that the police knew he was guilty and the only thing Bond could do to mitigate this was to admit guilt. The detective implied he could help Bond achieve a better outcome if he confessed—hinted that he might get a lesser-included charge than murder—and that Bond could see his children and talk to his mother if he cooperated. And a little over two hours into the interrogation, the detective told Bond, who is African American,
[d]on’t let twelve people who are from Schererville, Crown Point—white people, Hispanic people, other people that aren’t from Gary, from your part of the hood—judge you. Because they’re not gonna put people on there who are from your neck of the woods. You know that. They’re not gonna be the ones to decide what happens to you. You know that. I know that. Everybody knows that. All they’re gonna see is, oh, look at this, another young motherf***** who didn’t give a f***.
(Appellee’s Ex. 1.) After three hours, most of which was spent tucked into a corner of the interrogation room with the detective almost directly in his face, Bond broke. He told the detective that he committed the 2007 murder.
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But with respect to the detective’s statement that Bond might not receive a fair trial because of his race and the likely composition of a prospective jury, our sentiment goes beyond the trial court’s “great concern” and the Court of Appeals majority’s disapproval of it as being “inappropriate.” This is not a police tactic that we simply “do not condone” because it is deceptive. Instead, this was an intentional misrepresentation of rights ensconced in the very fabric of our nation’s justice system—the rights to a fair trial and an impartial jury, and the right not to be judged by or for the color of your skin—carried out as leverage to convince a suspect in a criminal case that his only recourse was to forego his claim of innocence and confess. And like Judge Kirsch, we condemn it.
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So today we do not find ourselves reviewing a case in which an officer misled or deceived a suspect as to the evidence held against him, see Kahlenbeck v. State, 719 N.E.2d 1213 (Ind. 1999), or one in which the police falsely claimed that the victim of a murder still lived, see Carter v. State, 490 N.E.2d 288 (Ind. 1986), or one in which police had a good faith basis for making a technically false statement, see Ellis v. State, 707 N.E.2d 797 (Ind. 1999). We have upheld the voluntariness of confessions despite the police deception in such cases.
Instead, in this case Bond was intentionally deceived as to the fairness of the criminal justice system itself because of the color of his skin. Regardless of the evidence held against him or the circumstances of the alleged crime, he was left with the unequivocal impression that because he was African American he would spend the rest of his life in jail. Unless he confessed. And in unfortunate days gone by, this might have been the case. But no one wants to go back to such a time or place in the courtroom, and so we will not allow even the perception of such inequality to enter the interrogation room.
We certainly do not believe that the detective is himself racist or harbors racist tendencies or beliefs. And this misconduct does not rise anywhere near to the terrible level seen in prior race-based cases in this country. See, e.g., Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278 (1936) (admissions excluded when African-American defendants were whipped until they confessed to murders). But as Judge Kirsch said, “each time courts allow such conduct, they implicitly sanction it and encourage the next police officer in the next interrogation to go a bit further, to be more offensive, more racist and more deceptive.” Bond, 2013 WL 2404071 at *6. We agree.
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Thus, in considering the totality of the circumstances surrounding Bond’s interrogation, despite the otherwise permissible conduct by the detective, and despite Bond’s apparent maturity, health, education, and the favorable conditions of the interrogation, this deception by the detective tips the scale to involuntariness. We cannot tacitly countenance the erosion of everything so many have worked so hard to achieve in the realm of racial equality in the justice system—and continue to work to achieve—by disapproving of the statement but finding Bond’s confession nevertheless admissible.
Dickson, C.J., Rucker, Massa, and Rush, JJ., concur.