Opinion ID: 2623595
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Voluntariness of Marlow's Statements

Text: As noted, whether the admission of Marlow's statements violated due process depends upon whether they were voluntarily made in the totality of the circumstances. ( People v. Neal, supra, 31 Cal.4th at pp. 79-80, 1 Cal.Rptr.3d 650, 72 P.3d 280.) Marlow, joined by Coffman, contends his November 14 statement was involuntary because (1) his interrogator, Sergeant Fitzmaurice, ignored his nine requests to speak with an attorney; (2) Fitzmaurice repeatedly assured Marlow that nothing he said could be used in court, a promise that both rendered Marlow's statement involuntary and gave rise to estoppel or use immunity; (3) the statement was induced by a promise of better jail conditions if Marlow cooperated and a threat of worse conditions if he did not; and (4) the police exercised a coordinated strategy of extracting statements first from Coffman and then from Marlow. We disagree: Marlow's interrogation, while prolonged, was not accompanied by a denial of all creature comforts or accomplished by means of physical or psychological mistreatment, threats of harsh consequences or official inducement amounting to coercion, nor were Marlow's admissions the product of coerced statements by Coffman. The record reflects that what Marlow characterizes as a promise of better jail conditions if he cooperated or a threat of worse if he did not simply amounted to Fitzmaurice's acknowledgment that the nature of the crimes of which Marlow stood accused tends to evoke negative feelings, that Marlow's cooperation could be made known to jail authorities, and that the latter might look favorably on such cooperationâ all of which Marlow evidently well knew. [13] Any coordinated strategy of confronting Marlow with Coffman's statements violated his due process rights only if doing so actually and proximately caused him to make his admissions against his will. (See People v. Musselwhite (1998) 17 Cal.4th 1216, 1240-1241, 74 Cal. Rptr.2d 212, 954 P.2d 475.) Marlow points to no evidence in the record supporting such a conclusion; his interrogators' comments that Coffman was cooperating with them surely did not render Marlow's statements involuntary. That Sergeant Fitzmaurice repeatedly ignored Marlow's requests for an attorney does give rise to concern, butâ given Marlow's maturity and criminal experience (he was over 30 years old and a convicted felon at the time of the interrogation)â it was unlikely Marlow's will was thereby overborne. Fitzmaurice's assurances that any statements Marlow might make could not be used in court similarly raise the specter of coercion, but after independently reviewing the transcripts of the interrogation and the hearing on Marlow's suppression motion, we see no reason to disturb the trial court's determination that his statements were voluntarily made. Significantly, for a considerable period after Fitzmaurice began to assure Marlow his statements would not be used, Marlow continued to resist disclosing Novis's whereabouts or admitting he committed the offenses. His resistance, far from reflecting a will overborne by official coercion, suggests instead a still operative ability to calculate his self-interest in choosing whether to disclose or withhold information. Marlow's admissions followed and appeared to be precipitated by continued confrontation with the evidence authorities possessed. (Cf. State v. Walton (1989) 159 Ariz. 571, 769 P.2d 1017, 1025-1026 [when 45 minutes elapsed between officer's assurance that it's nothing that can't be worked out and defendant's admissions, during which time officer continued to confront defendant with known evidence, court concluded admissions were not made in reliance on the assurance].) Moreover, Marlow was not promised leniency in exchange for admissions; rather, his interrogators advised him they had sufficient evidence to convict him without them. Marlow contends that under People v. Quartermain (1997) 16 Cal.4th 600, 66 Cal.Rptr.2d 609, 941 P.2d 788, the use of his statements in court violated due process. In Quartermain, this court, relying on the rationales of Santobello v. New York (1971) 404 U.S. 257, 262, 92 S.Ct. 495, 30 L.Ed.2d 427 (when a guilty plea rests in any significant degree on the prosecutor's promise or agreement, the promise must be fulfilled), Doyle v. Ohio (1976) 426 U.S. 610, 618, 96 S.Ct. 2240, 49 L.Ed.2d 91 (fundamental fairness precludes use of a defendant's post- Miranda -warning silence to impeach his trial testimony), and their progeny, concluded that when a prosecutor violated an agreement made with the defendant not to use his statement in any court proceedings against him, fundamental fairness required that the prosecutor honor the agreement, and under the circumstances the introduction of the statement to impeach the defendant resulted in prejudice requiring reversal of the judgment. ( Quartermain, supra, at pp. 618-622, 66 Cal.Rptr.2d 609, 941 P.2d 788.) We observed that the prosecutor's improper use of the defendant's statements for impeachment purposes and in closing argument, by paint[ing] defendant as a fabulist, struck at the heart of his defense, as to which the jury's assessment of his credibility was crucial. ( Id. at pp. 620, 622, 66 Cal.Rptr.2d 609, 941 P.2d 788.) Assuming the use of Marlow's statements after repeated assurances to the contrary was fundamentally unfair, here the prosecutor presented abundant other evidence of defendants' guilt, enabling us confidently to conclude the verdict was unattributable to any error in admitting the statements. ( Id. at p. 622, 66 Cal.Rptr.2d 609, 941 P.2d 788, citing Sullivan v. Louisiana (1993) 508 U.S. 275, 279, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182; cf. People v. Gutierrez (2002) 28 Cal.4th 1083, 1132-1133, 124 Cal. Rptr.2d 373, 52 P.3d 572 [defendant's statement not involuntary despite circumstance that investigating officer told him it would not be used in court for any purpose].) Marlow's further contentions that the officers' representations that any statements he might make would not be used in court estopped the prosecution to introduce them, or resulted in a kind of use immunity, are unpersuasive. The Right to Truth-in-Evidence Law (Cal. Const., art. I, § 28, subd. (d)), added to our state Constitution in 1982 when the voters passed Proposition 8, provides in pertinent part that relevant evidence shall not be excluded in any criminal proceeding. The provision was intended to abrogate judicially created rules requiring the exclusion of otherwise admissible evidence, such as voluntary admissions. (See People v. Macias (1997) 16 Cal.4th 739, 749, 66 Cal.Rptr.2d 659, 941 P.2d 838; People v. May (1988) 44 Cal.3d 309, 318, 243 Cal. Rptr. 369, 748 P.2d 307.) Marlow does not explain how a common law estoppel or immunity theory might avoid the stricture of this constitutional provision. Even were we to assume, for argument's sake, the trial court erred in finding Marlow's statements were voluntarily made and thus admissible for impeachment purposes, we would conclude the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. ( Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705; People v. Cahill (1993) 5 Cal.4th 478, 487, 20 Cal.Rptr.2d 582, 853 P.2d 1037.) As respondent observes, Marlow did not challenge the prosecution's evidence that, in concert with Coffman, he kidnapped, robbed and killed Corinna Novis, and that he entered her apartment and stole several items of property; his only defense was that he lacked the intent to kill. Yet the evidence of Marlow's intent to kill, apart from his statements, was overwhelming: Marlow, with Coffman, abducted Novis and sodomized her in the shower at the Drinkhouse residence, inducing her to disclose the PIN for her bank card in order to steal her money. Marlow sought to assuage Drinkhouse's anxiety at Novis's presence in his house by saying, How is she going to talk to anybody if she's under a pile of rocks? Defendants equipped themselves with a shovel when they drove to the vineyard where Novis was strangled. Sufficient force was employed in the strangulation to permit the pathologist to opine a second person (such as Coffman) might have assisted Marlow in the killing, or the killer might have placed his foot on Novis's back as her face was pressed into the ground, accounting for the soil inside her mouth. On this record, it appears beyond a reasonable doubt the error, if any, did not contribute to the verdict. ( Neder v. United States (1999) 527 U.S. 1, 15, 119 S.Ct. 1827, 144 L.Ed.2d 35; Chapman, supra, at p. 24, 87 S.Ct. 824.) [14]