We granted certiorari in this case to review the Court of Appeals’s holding that a statement that the appellee, Robert Aiken, a probation officer, gave as part of a criminal investigation into his conduct could not be used at trial against him.1 More specifically, the case concerns the appropriate test by which to determine whether an incriminating statement made by a government employee during an investigation into his conduct is coerced and inadmissible based on allegations by the employee that he was impliedly threatened with the loss of his job if he did not answer questions during the investigation. The Court of Appeals adopted the test for admissibility of statements by public employees set forth in United States v. Friedrick ,2 rather than the test articulated in United States v. Indorato .3 For the reasons that follow, however, we decline to adopt either test specifically, but conclude that trial courts should evaluate the totality of the circumstances surrounding the public employee’s statement to determine whether it was voluntary. Moreover, in the present case, under a de novo review of the undisputed facts, we conclude that Aiken’s statement was coerced. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals excluding the statement from use by the State. 1. The Friedrick and Indorato cases are progeny of the Supreme Court’s decision in Garrity v. New Jersey .4 In Garrity , several police officers were the target of an investigation concerning the fixing of traffic tickets. Before being questioned by investigators, each appellant was warned “1 that anything he said might be used against him in any state criminal proceeding; 2 that he had the privilege to refuse to answer if the disclosure would tend to incriminate him; but 3 that if he refused to answer he would be subject to removal from office.”5 These warnings were apparently based on a New Jersey forfeiture-of-office statute that provided that, if an employee refused to answer questions during an investigation, he could lose his job.6 The officers answered the investigator’s questions, and the answers were used against the officers in subsequent criminal prosecutions. Before the Supreme Court, the officers contended that their statements were coerced and involuntary “by reason of the fact that, if they refused to answer the investigator’s questions, they could lose their positions with the police department.”7 In resolving this issue, the Court relied, among other things, on cases that have examined the totality of the circumstances surrounding a defendant’s statement to determine whether a statement was coerced.8 The Supreme Court concluded that the express threat of a job loss was sufficient to render the statement involuntary, holding “the protection of the individual under the Fourteenth Amendment against coerced statements prohibits use in subsequent criminal proceedings of statements obtained under threat of removal from office, and that it extends to all, whether they are policemen or other members of our body politic.”9 The Court did not base its ruling on the New Jersey forfeiture-of-office statute, and a review of the New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision shows that the investigator who interviewed the officers did not refer to or quote from the statute.10
2. After Garrity , cases arose in which there was not, as in Garrity , an express threat of termination made to the employee, but in which the employee claimed, as does Aiken in the present case, that incriminating statements that he made during an official investigation were coerced because there was an implied threat that, if he did not cooperate in the investigation in question, he would lose his job.
