Opinion ID: 1222793
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the environment

Text: First, it is to be noted that defendant was in a sheriff's van, being transported to Raleigh for safekeeping without the issuance of a judicial order authorizing the transfer. N.C.G.S. § 15A-521 (1983). Although an officer testified that warrants were served on defendant while in the van, no warrants appear in the record on appeal. The crime occurred and defendant was taken to Raleigh on 22 December 1984. The order of arrest in the record on appeal was served on defendant on 24 January 1985. So we have a defendant being unlawfully transported in a van through the black of night by hostile officers, alone, with no way to contact anyone outside the van as a witness or otherwise. The trial court failed to consider the actions of the officers in removing defendant from the hospital and interrogating him in the isolated and coercive environment of a moving police van. Compelling a suspect to travel during interrogation, or interrogating a suspect during travel, is a factor which suggests involuntariness. Clewis v. Texas, 386 U.S. 707, 87 S.Ct. 1338, 18 L.Ed. 2d 423 (1967). Here, the defendant was completely incommunicado and isolated from the police station or the jail. This was obviously done for the purpose of interrogating the defendant in an environment conducive to producing inculpatory statements. These are factors indicating involuntariness. This is particularly true when the defendant is susceptible to coercion. Vernon v. Alabama, 313 U.S. 547, 61 S.Ct. 1092, 85 L.Ed. 1513 (1941) (per curiam); White v. Texas, 310 U.S. 530, 60 S.Ct. 1032, 84 L.Ed. 1342 (1940). The officers were fully aware that the defendant had been badly wounded by gunfire shortly before the interrogation. They knew that defendant had been extremely intoxicated when he was brought to the hospital. They knew he was blind and in a severely weakened physical condition. Having this knowledge, the officers took the defendant from the hospital on a gurney, placed him into a police van containing three officers, and commenced the nighttime ride from Wadesboro to Raleigh. In so doing, the officers deliberately cut defendant off from the outside world, leaving him in a position of extreme vulnerability to their interrogation. It is difficult to conceive of a fact situation more conducive to overbearing a defendant's will than the one existing in this case.