Title: State v. Powers

State: vermont

Issuer: Vermont Supreme Court

Document:

State v. Powers (2003-195); 176 Vt. 444; 852 A.2d 605

2004 VT 39

[Filed 07-May-2004]

       NOTICE:  This opinion is subject to motions for reargument under
  V.R.A.P. 40 as well as formal revision before publication in the Vermont
  Reports.  Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions,
  Vermont Supreme Court, 109 State Street, Montpelier, Vermont 05609-0801 of
  any errors in order that corrections may be made before this opinion goes
  to press.

                                 2004 VT 39

                                No. 2003-195

  State of Vermont	                         Supreme Court

                                                 On Appeal from
       v.	                                 District Court of Vermont,
                                                 Unit No. 1, Windham Circuit

  Edmund J. Powers	                         January Term, 2004	

  Karen R. Carroll, J.

  Dan M. Davis, State's Attorney, and Tracy Kelly Schriver, Windham County
    Deputy State's Attorney, Brattleboro, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

  Michael J. Hertz of Hertz and Lloyd, Brattleboro, for Defendant-Appellant.

  PRESENT:  Amestoy, C.J., Dooley, Johnson, Skoglund and Reiber, JJ.

        
       ¶  1.  SKOGLUND, J.  Defendant Edmund J. Powers appeals from a
  Windham District Court judgment for the State in a civil suspension
  hearing.  Defendant believed that his conversation with an attorney during
  a DUI processing was being recorded, and this belief prevented him from
  asking whether his prior arrests would affect his current charges.  He
  claims that because of this belief,  he was denied his statutory right to a
  meaningful consultation with an attorney before submitting to an
  evidentiary breath test.   The district court ruled that even if defendant
  was inhibited, this inhibition did not prejudice his case.  We conclude
  that defendant reasonably believed his conversation with an attorney was
  being unjustifiably monitored, and that this belief inhibited his
  conversation.  We therefore hold that defendant demonstrated the necessary
  causal nexus between the illegal police action and the evidence he sought
  to suppress.  As  a result, we reverse.
   
       ¶  2.  The trial court  made the following findings.  On August 18,
  2002, at approximately 12:30 a.m., defendant was arrested and processed in
  Windham County for suspected driving under the influence.   When defendant
  arrived in the processing room at the police station, he asked the officer
  conducting the processing if the interview was being recorded on audio or
  video tape.  The officer responded yes to both questions.  Neither
  defendant nor the officer mentioned the recordings again.  After receiving
  his Miranda warning, defendant waived his right to have an attorney
  present.  The officer then read defendant his statutory rights as required
  by 23 V.S.A. § 1202(d). (FN1)  Defendant asked to consult with an attorney
  before submitting to an evidentiary breath test.  The officer dialed the
  public defender, handed the telephone to defendant, and left the room.  The
  officer left the processing room immediately, went to the room containing
  the recording device, and turned off the audio tape, but not the video
  tape.  Because the officer could not turn off the sound until he reached
  the recording device in the other room, the first twenty-seven seconds of
  defendant's conversation were captured on tape.  These twenty-seven seconds
  were twice admitted into evidence by the trial court, and the court
  incorporated the contents of the conversation into its ruling. (FN2)  The
  officer never told defendant that he had turned off the recording.  After
  approximately seven minutes, the telephone conversation ended.  Defendant
  refused to provide an evidentiary breath sample.
   
       ¶  3.  The State filed criminal DUI charges against defendant, and
  defendant moved to suppress evidence of his refusal.  Defendant argued that
  his belief  that the police were recording his conversation with the public
  defender prevented him from asking the attorney whether his prior arrests
  for DUI would affect the potential charges he faced.  At the suppression
  hearing he stated, "I didn't feel comfortable discussing my situation
  because I wasn't sure if there was something I would say that could be held
  against  me."  This inhibition, he argued, violated his right to a
  meaningful consultation with an attorney under 23 V.S.A. § 1202(c).   He
  testified, "I had no clue about whether or not the fact that I had been
  arrested would impact me in the current situation and I hadn't been able to
  discuss it with the lawyer . . . I had no idea if it would, so I decided
  again that it would be safer not to take the test."

       ¶  4.  The district court denied the motion to suppress on the grounds
  that defendant had failed to demonstrate a connection between defendant's
  inhibition and his subsequent decision to refuse the evidentiary breath
  test.  The court stated that defendant had not provided any information
  about why his inability to ask certain questions caused him to refuse the
  test.  The court also found that the public defender's question about
  previous convictions should have signaled to "an obviously intelligent
  defendant" that convictions, not arrests, were of concern.  The court then
  discussed whether the inhibition prejudiced defendant and ruled that, even
  if the attorney had known about defendant's prior arrests, it would not
  have changed the advice that the attorney gave defendant.  "So the Court
  can't see any underlying prejudice from the defendant not providing that
  information to the attorney on the phone."  At trial, a jury found
  defendant not guilty of driving under the influence.

       ¶  5.  In a civil suspension hearing held after the suppression
  hearing, defendant again moved to suppress the evidence of his refusal to
  submit to the evidentiary breath test.  Defendant testified again.  At the
  hearing, the court also took judicial notice of the testimony that
  defendant had given at the suppression hearing.  The district court ruled
  that:

    prejudice . . . seems to be the pivotal question[,] and I
    understand the defendant's argument that he was inhibited in
    speaking with the attorney regarding all the questions that he
    needed to ask the attorney, but it seems to me that he was able to
    ask him or at least give him, pursuant to the attorney's
    questions, the relevant information[,] and that was whether he had
    ever been convicted before. And so, therefore, his feeling
    inhibited about whether he could reveal to the attorney the fact
    [that] he'd been processed before[,] The Court finds[,] isn't
    prejudicial to him.

  The trial court emphasized that defendant held both a bachelor's and a
  master's degree and ruled that "any reasonable person in his position would
  know that the relevant question is whether he's been convicted of an
  offense, not processed, because that's what the attorney asked him." 
  Finding no violation of defendant's right to a meaningful consultation with
  an attorney under § 1202, the court ordered judgment for the State.  The
  district court stayed suspension of defendant's license pending the outcome
  of this appeal.
   
       ¶  6.  Section 1202(c) gives suspects a limited right to consult
  with an attorney before either submitting to an evidentiary breath test or
  refusing and being subject to a civil suspension  hearing.  Over nearly
  thirty years, our cases have refined what constitutes a meaningful
  consultation with an attorney under these circumstances.  In 1978, this
  Court determined that having a statutory right to consult with an attorney
  was completely ineffective unless police informed defendants of that right
  before administering an evidentiary breath test.  State v. Duff, 136 Vt.
  537, 539-40,