Opinion ID: 2188938
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the motion to suppress ducharme's confessions

Text: Ducharme argues that the three confessions which he made to the State Police and representatives of the Glocester and Burrillville police should have been suppressed. His principal argument appears to be that since Trepanier's confessions to the State Police were suppressed by reason of the fact that they had been elicited after Trepanier asserted his right to counsel, consequently Ducharme's confessions should be suppressed as the fruit of the poisoned tree. We must reject this argument mainly on the ground that Ducharme does not have standing to object to a violation of Trepanier's Fifth Amendment right, even though the violation of that right may have been instrumental in producing evidence which ultimately may have been prejudicial to Ducharme. It is in the Fourth Amendment area that the doctrine of standing has most frequently been explicated by the Supreme Court of the United States in a series of cases including United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727, 100 S.Ct. 2439, 65 L.Ed.2d 468 (1980); Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978); Alderman v. United States, 394 U.S. 165, 89 S.Ct. 961, 22 L.Ed.2d 176 (1969); and Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963). The Court has been explicit and emphatic in declaring the principle that one may complain only when his or her Fourth Amendment rights have been violated and may not seek the suppression of evidence on the ground that such evidence was produced through the violation of the Fourth Amendment rights of another, even though those violations may have been egregious as in United States v. Payner, supra . The same principle has been enunciated in respect to the assertion of a violation of a right arising under the Fifth Amendment in Fisher v. United States, 425 U.S. 391, 96 S.Ct. 1569, 48 L.Ed.2d 39 (1976). The Court observed that it has held repeatedly that the Fifth Amendment is limited to prohibiting the use of physical or moral compulsion exerted on the person who asserts the privilege and, therefore, by implication does not include compulsion which may be asserted upon someone else (such as an attorney who might be required to respond to a subpoena regarding information voluntarily placed in his possession by a taxpayer). Earlier in Couch v. United States, 409 U.S. 322, 93 S.Ct. 611, 34 L.Ed.2d 548 (1973), the Court held that the Fifth Amendment rights of a taxpayer were not violated by the enforcement of a documentary summons directed to her accountant and requiring production of the taxpayer's own records in the possession of the accountant. The Court so held with the observation: It is important to reiterate that the Fifth Amendment privilege is a personal privilege: it adheres basically to the person, not to information that may incriminate him. As Mr. Justice Holmes put it: `A party is privileged from producing the evidence but not from its production.' Johnson v. United States, 228 U.S. 457, 458 [33 S.Ct. 572, 572, 57 L.Ed 919] (1913). The Constitution explicitly prohibits compelling an accused to bear witness `against himself': it necessarily does not proscribe incriminating statements elicited from another. Compulsion upon the person asserting it is an important element of the privilege, and `prohibition of compelling a man    to be witness against himself is a prohibition of the use of physical or moral compulsion to extort communications from him, ' Holt v. United States, 218 U.S. 245, 252-253 [31 S.Ct. 2, 6, 54 L.Ed. 1021] (1910) (emphasis added). It is extortion of information from the accused himself that offends our sense of justice. 409 U.S. at 328, 93 S.Ct. at 616, 34 L.Ed.2d at 554. It cannot be made more clear that this personal privilege may be asserted only by the individual whose Fifth Amendment right has itself been violated. One may not complain about compulsion that may be applied to another, even though that application may result in the production of evidence that may be used against a defendant. Hence, Ducharme may only rely on violations committed against him personally in advancing a claim of protection under the Fifth Amendment. After examining the record, we agree with the finding of the pretrial justice that Ducharme was properly given his rights, understood them, and voluntarily, intelligently, and knowingly waived those rights in making his statements to the police without threats, promises, or coercion of any type. It is evident from the record that the police were scrupulous in advising Ducharme of his constitutional rights and that the he waived those rights knowingly and without compulsion. Accordingly we conclude that Ducharme's Fifth Amendment rights were not violated by the police in the course of taking his statements. The defendant advances a different but related argument that his statements to the police ought to be considered inadmissible. He suggests that the police only became aware of his identity as a result of statements made by Trepanier that were subsequently suppressed. He contends that the evidence which supported the probable cause leading to his arrest was derived from an invalid confession made by Trepanier. Based upon this argument he asserts that the statements made by him while detained by the police should be held inadmissible as the product of a warrantless arrest implemented without probable cause. We disagree and reiterate that Ducharme lacks standing to object to statements by Trepanier identifying defendant that are part of a confession later suppressed. See Fisher v. United States, 425 U.S. 391, 96 S.Ct. 1569, 48 L.Ed.2d 39 (1976); Couch v. United States, 409 U.S. 322, 93 S.Ct. 611, 34 L.Ed.2d 548 (1973). Even assuming, arguendo, that defendant did have such standing, we disagree with his characterization of the facts of this case. The pretrial justice found that the police first learned of Ducharme's identity from a source independent of Trepanier's suppressed statements  Paula Laliberte. After reviewing the records, we agree with the pretrial justice's findings. Just after midnight, on October 8, 1987, Trepanier told Laliberte of his involvement in a number of the snipings, housebreaks, and arsons in the course of a one-hour conversation in the parking lot of the Woonsocket Motor Inn. Trepanier told Laliberte that he and Ducharme committed all the crimes together. After divulging this information to Laliberte, a distraught Trepanier decided to turn himself in, and he did so at the Woonsocket police station. At about 3:30 p.m. on the eighth, in his final statement to the police, Trepanier first named Ducharme as his coparticipant in the crimes. All Trepanier's transcribed confessions were later suppressed as violative of his Fifth Amendment rights. However, the pretrial justice found that Laliberte informed the police, at about 5:20 a.m. on the eighth, that Trepanier told her that Ducharme was involved in all of the crimes. Hence, the police knew of defendant's identity some ten hours before Trepanier's identification of Ducharme. Laliberte was clearly an independent source  indeed the original source  of the police's knowledge that Ducharme might be involved with Trepanier in the snipings and other crimes. The exclusionary rule, which includes within its scope certain evidence derived from illegal police activity, does not apply when the government learns of evidence from a source independent of the original violation. Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963); Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385, 40 S.Ct. 182, 64 L.Ed. 319 (1920). Hence, even if Ducharme had standing to raise the sufficiency of Trepanier's identification of his coparticipant, his arrest was based on evidence untainted by any unconstitutional conduct. Laliberte's statements alone were of sufficient detail to provide the police with probable cause to arrest defendant without a warrant. She correctly identified the location of items taken from some of the breaking and enterings and recovered from Trepanier's parents' residence on the morning of the eighth. Probable cause to arrest a suspect without a warrant exists if at the time of the arrest, the arresting officer had knowledge of facts and circumstances, based on reasonable and trustworthy information, sufficient to cause a prudent officer to believe that the suspect had committed    a crime. State v. Brennan, 526 A.2d 483, 485 (R.I. 1987). The information that Laliberte provided the police clearly afforded them sufficient cause to arrest defendant. Taken with Trepanier's statements and photographic identification that implicated Ducharme, which defendant lacks standing to challenge, we readily agree with the pretrial justice that the police had probable cause to arrest defendant. We conclude that the trial justice did not err in declining to suppress defendant's three taped confessions.