Opinion ID: 379222
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Purposefulness Of The Conduct Of The State Officials In

Text: Obtaining The Second Confession 266 In distinguishing between the two confessions, Judge Garza also emphasized that while the circumstances surrounding the first confession gave little to indicate that the prosecutors were striving for any result other than the solution of the crime and the recovery of Wendy Adams' remains, Garza Op. at p. 940, the second confession was undertaken with the purpose of amending (the first) confession to secure the death penalty. Id. at p. 941. 267 In Spano v. New York, 360 U.S. 315, 79 S.Ct. 1202, 3 L.Ed.2d 1265 (1959), the Supreme Court stated: 268 The police were not . . . merely trying to solve a crime, or even to absolve a suspect. . . . They were rather concerned primarily with securing a statement from the defendant on which they could convict him. The undeviating intent of the officers to extract a confession from petitioner is therefore patent. When such an intent is shown, this Court has held that the confession must be examined with the most careful scrutiny . . . . 269 Id. at 324, 79 S.Ct. at 1207, 3 L.Ed.2d at 1272. Relying on Spano, see Garza Op., p. 939, Judge Garza apparently reasons that the second confession is particularly suspect because the prosecuting attorneys were motivated solely to get the death penalty while, when eliciting the first confession from Jurek, they were carrying out legitimate law enforcement aims. 270 While the considerations expressed in Spano may in some circumstances be decisive, 25 we believe that Judge Garza has misapplied the reasoning of that case. To begin with, Judge Garza's extremely liberal interpretation of Spano, even if we were to accept it which we decline to do would seem to apply equally to the first written confession as well as to the second. In Austin, Jurek made an oral confession 26 that led to the finding of Wendy's body. 27 Thus, Judge Garza was incorrect in stating that the first written confession was essential for the solution of the crime and the recovery of Wendy Adams' remains. Garza Op., p. 940. Moreover, District Attorney Cheatham, who prosecuted the case, believed that the oral confession was admissible. 28 Thus, before obtaining the first confession, the prosecuting attorneys had what they thought they needed, not only to locate the victim but to help convict Jurek. Sure, a written confession would be less risky from the standpoint of admissibility and would also be more persuasive to the jury, but these are precisely the considerations which the Court in Spano arguably had in mind when writing the above-quoted language. 29 271 We emphasize that we are not trying to argue that the first confession was coercive under Spano, but simply that the circumstances surrounding the two confessions were not that different. Indeed, as we indicate below, we believe that Judge Garza's reading of Spano (which we are merely applying to the first confession as well as the second) is incorrect and is, as a practical matter, unworkable. 272 Perhaps Judge Garza intends to argue that while Spano considerations apply even with respect to the first confession, they apply more heavily with respect to the second, because the prosecutors were driven in obtaining the second confession by a desire to secure the death penalty, not merely to convict Jurek. Yet, in our view, Judge Garza's (and the panel's) suspicion that the prosecutors were motivated by death penalty considerations at the time of the second confession is based not on evidence in the record but on the surmise of these Judges. Indeed, the evidence rebuts a drive on the part of the State to ensure that the death penalty was obtained. Nowhere does any witness testify that Jurek's second statement was essential to get the death penalty. On the contrary, District Attorney Cheatham testified that, in his view, there was clearly enough evidence for the death penalty without the second confession because kidnapping, like rape, is an aggravating factor under Texas law: 30 273 To me there was, from my view, from a legal standpoint, and I might be wrong, but from my view there wasn't any question of whether he had admitted a capital case. You had kidnapping and you had murder and if there is one of those elements, if they have its murder committed in the course of either attempting or kidnapping so under the second statement I think you had another aspect of it but in my opinion this was it, this was capital murder in the first statement. In fact, it was capital murder before I ever took it from what he told them up in Austin. Cheatham Dep., 65. 31 274 What the prosecuting attorneys were trying to do was not necessarily to secure the death penalty but to solve the crime by establishing just what the true circumstances were surrounding Wendy's death. The reasons given by Jurek in the first confession for killing Wendy that Wendy made nasty comments about Jurek's brother and told Jurek he should not be drinking, are incredulous on their face. As District Attorney Cheatham testified: 275 I can't conceive of somebody going out and snatching up a girl, a little girl in a bikini, racing all through town, hollering, screaming for help, to ask her how she liked his kinfolks. Just being perfectly blunt about it, I just can't conceive of a man doing that under those circumstances without some further ulterior motive. Cheatham Dep., 63. 32 276 Judge Garza's approach to Spano would mean that once the police have identified the person who committed the act that caused the death, they must cease all interrogation or risk that any confession obtained will be held inadmissible. Spano does not stand for any such unrealistic proposition. What if Jurek had stated that he was responsible for Wendy's death but that it was an accident? What if he stated that Wendy was dying of cancer and asked him to kill her as an act of mercy? In the interest of law enforcement, Spano must permit law enforcement officers to secure a plausible, and hopefully true, version of the events surrounding a crime before subsequent confessions are subject to the sort of rigid scrutiny to produce inadmissibility. Thus we would hold that at the time of the second confession, the prosecuting attorneys were still merely trying to solve a crime and were not concerned primarily with securing a statement from defendant on which they could convict him. Spano, supra, 360 U.S. at 324, 79 S.Ct. at 1207, 3 L.Ed.2d at 1272. 33 277