Elizalde

Under the rule of Miranda v. Arizona (1966) 384 U.S. 436, 478-479 [ 16 L.Ed.2d 694 , 86 S.Ct. 1602 ] (Miranda), certain admonitions must be given before a suspect’s statement made during custodial interrogation can be admitted in the prosecution’s case-in-chief. Here we consider whether routine questions about gang affiliation, posed to defendant while processing him into jail on murder charges, come within Miranda’s well-recognized booking exception. We hold that the questions exceeded the scope of the exception and that officers should have known these questions were reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response because of California’s criminal gang statutes and defendant’s pending charges. While officers were permitted to ask these questions for institutional security purposes, defendant’s xm-Mirandized responses were inadmissible against him during the case-in-chief. We nonetheless find that admission of the statements was not prejudicial. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeal, which reached the same conclusions.

I. BACKGROUND

Defendant Jose Mota-Avendano was convicted of murdering Antonio Centron, Luis Perez, and Rico McIntosh on…