Title: State v. Cleary

State: vermont

Issuer: Vermont Supreme Court

Document:

STATE_V_CLEARY.91-569; 161 Vt. 102; 641 A.2d 102

[Filed 28-Feb-1994]

 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.


                                 No. 91-569


 State of Vermont                             Supreme Court

                                              On Appeal from
      v.                                      District Court of Vermont,
                                              Unit No. 3, Lamoille Circuit

 Donald Cleary                                October Term, 1992



 Shireen Avis Fisher, J. (competency) and John P. Meaker, J. (motion to
    suppress)

 Joel Page, Lamoille County State's Attorney, Hyde Park, for plaintiff-
    appellee

 Charles S. Martin and Helena Quinn, Law Clerk, of Martin & Paolini, Barre,
    for defendant-appellant



 PRESENT:  Allen, C.J., Gibson, Dooley, Morse and Johnson, JJ.



      MORSE, J.   Defendant pled guilty to charges of unlawful trespass,
 simple assault, and attempted sexual assault.  He now appeals the order
 declaring him competent to stand trial on grounds that the judge making that
 ruling had a conflict of interest.  He additionally appeals the denial of
 his motion to suppress his confession on the ground that he waived his
 Miranda rights.  We affirm.
      Defendant forced his way into a home in Wolcott, struggled with the
 occupant, held her at gun point, and fled.  About an hour later, an
 investigator from the Lamoille state's attorney's office and a sergeant from

 

 the Lamoille sheriff's department stopped defendant as he was driving his
 truck in Wolcott because he fit the general description of the assailant.
 The sergeant read defendant his Miranda rights twice, and defendant signed a
 statement purporting to waive those rights.  Defendant then confessed,
 admitting that he had entered the victim's house and accosted her, and that
 he had intended to rape her.  At arraignment, Judge Fisher asked defendant
 if she had ever represented him as his public defender, and defendant's
 attorney responded that "he doesn't think so."  Judge Fisher presided at a
 subsequent competency hearing and, after two days of testimony, found
 defendant competent to stand trial.  Shortly thereafter, based on discovery
 of a 1983 docket sheet indicating that Judge Fisher had been assigned to
 represent him on a misdemeanor unlawful trespass charge, defendant moved for
 her recusal and requested her to strike the competency order.  Judge Fisher
 recused herself from future proceedings, but declined to strike her
 competency order, stating that she had not recollected representing
 defendant when she heard and decided the competency issue.
      Later, Judge Meaker heard and denied defendant's motion to suppress the
 statements given to the investigator on grounds that defendant had not
 intelligently and voluntarily waived his Miranda rights.  Thereafter,
 defendant pled nolo contendere to the three charges under V.R.Cr.P.
 11(a)(2), reserving the right to appeal the competency determination, the
 denial of the motion to strike the competency determination based on Judge
 Fisher's 1983 representation of defendant, and the denial of the Miranda
 waiver suppression motion.
      Defendant's claim that Judge Fisher should have struck the competency
 order when she discovered, after issuing the order, that she had represented

 

 defendant in 1983 is not cause for reversal.  Canon 3C(2)(a) of the Code of
 Judicial Conduct, A.O. 10, states:
           A judge shall disqualify [herself] in a proceeding in
           which [she] has a personal bias or prejudice concerning
           a party, or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary
           facts concerning the proceeding.

     Judge Fisher stated plainly that she had "no recollection of any prior
 representation, at the time of hearing and deciding the competency issue, or
 at the present time."  Defendant has made no showing that the judge's recol-
 lection was faulty or that her former representation actually caused bias or
 prejudice against him in the present case.  See Cliche v. Fair, 145 Vt. 258,
 262,