Opinion ID: 1967394
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: denise lamoureux's testimony

Text: The majority opinion, which finds no error in the admission of Denise Lamoureux's testimony, appears to me to directly conflict with what this court said only two months ago in State v. Mattatall, 525 A.2d 49 (R.I. 1987). In the case at bar, the majority has decided that testimony by Ms. Lamoureux, based on surreptitious recordings she had made of defendants at police request, was admissible because defendant Burke had made an implicit threat to Ms. Lamoureux, then a potential witness in the case. Because Burke was tampering with a witness, the majority reasons, he was not entitled to the assistance of counsel. In Mattatall, however, this court, relying on Maine v. Moulton, 474 U.S. 159, 106 S.Ct. 477, 88 L.Ed.2d 481 (1985), stated that the fact that the police were present in the [codefendant's] home because of possible threats from [the] defendant against the codefendant was noncontrolling, hence the defendant was still entitled to the assistance of counsel as a protection against surreptitious police recordings. 525 A.2d at 52. This court's opinion on this issue in Mattatall was dictated by the United States Supreme Court's opinion in Moulton. In Moulton the police surreptitiously recorded the defendant by wiring codefendant Gary Colson's telephone and person after the defendant had threatened to kill a witness named Gary Elwell. The Supreme Court held that, notwithstanding the fact that the surreptitious recordings had been found by the trial justice to have been made in order to gather information concerning the anonymous threats that Mr. Colson had been receiving, to protect Mr. Colson and to gather information concerning defendant Moulton's plans to kill Gary Elwell, the statements were inadmissible at trial because the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel had been violated. Moulton, 474 U.S. at 180, 106 S.Ct. at 482, 489, 88 L.Ed.2d at 490, 498. The Supreme Court said that [t]o allow the admission of evidence obtained from the accused in violation of his Sixth Amendment rights whenever the police assert an alternative, legitimate reason for their surveillance invites abuse by law enforcement personnel in the form of fabricated investigations and risks the evisceration of the Sixth Amendment right   . Id. at 180, 106 S.Ct. at 489, 88 L.Ed.2d at 498. Thus, even though in Moulton, as in the case at bar, the defendant's lawyer would have been ethically precluded from assisting in the tampering with or killing of a witness, the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel during police interrogations (which is what surreptitious recordings in which the defendant is asked questions by a police informant amount to) remained intact. Since it appears to me that the majority's opinion on this issue is inapposite of what this court said recently in Mattatall, and since, according to Moulton, which is binding upon this court, defendant Burke's Sixth Amendment rights to counsel were violated, I do not agree with the majority's conclusion. Because it cannot be said that the admission of incriminating statements made by Burke was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, it is my view that he is entitled to a new trial.