Opinion ID: 2264062
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Sgt Elwood Johnson

Text: The defendant first argues that the trial justice improperly limited his cross-examination of Sgt. Elwood Johnson (Sgt. Johnson) about the nature of his interrogation of defendant. On direct examination, the state elicited testimony from Sgt. Johnson, over defendant's objection, that he never threatened defendant with physical harm during the interrogation. The defendant, on cross-examination, sought to introduce portions of the statement we suppressed in our earlier decision, Briggs, 756 A.2d at 739, to prove that Sgt. Johnson's testimony was false. The defendant also voiced objection to the trial justice's warning that if defendant introduced portions of the statement, that would open[ ] the door and allow the state to introduce the suppressed statement in its entirety. The trial justice ultimately denied defendant's motion to introduce portions of the suppressed statement. Prior to trial, we held that defendant's statements after question 1261, on page 186 of the interrogation transcript, were not voluntary and, therefore, inadmissible at trial. Briggs, 756 A.2d at 739. The trial justice, based on our holding, confined the inquiries of both defendant and the state to the portion of the statement that we held to be admissible. We decline to hold that the trial justice's strict adherence to our holding constitutes a clear abuse of discretion, especially in light of defendant's efforts to admit only selected portions of the suppressed statement. Furthermore, we are skeptical about whether defendant would have been able to prove that Sgt. Johnson's testimony lacked veracity. [A]fter reviewing the record and after carefully listening to the recorded tapes, id. at 738, we held that defendant's statements no longer were voluntary at the point when, in response to a question the defendant informed the officers that ` I'm so tired now, I can't really think, ' and, when the officers thereafter escalated the tone of their questioning and began to ask increasingly sexually explicit questions of little or no relevance. Id. at 739 (emphases added). The defendant's argument on this point erroneously conflates physical threats with any and all coercive conduct. Put more simply, fatigue and sexually explicit questions are not physical threats. Since Sgt. Johnson's testimony is consistent with our reasons for suppressing the balance of defendant's statement, the trial justice was within her discretion to limit the scope of defendant's cross-examination of Sgt. Johnson to the admissible portions of defendant's statement in accordance with this Court's holding in Briggs, 756 A.2d at 739. The defendant next assigns as error the trial justice's refusal to allow him to impeach the testimony of Sergeant Johnson with a previous statement made by the husband of the victim, Cooper Jacques (Cooper). The defendant asked Sgt. Johnson on cross-examination whether he had performed the necessary investigation to corroborate Cooper's statement that he had been watching the television program Law & Order on the night of the murder. Sergeant Johnson responded that he had asked fellow officers about the content of the episode that aired the night of the murder, and that their memory of the episode concurred with Cooper's. The defendant attempted to impeach Sgt. Johnson with Cooper's sworn testimony at the bail hearing stating that he could not remember the content of the episode that aired that night. The trial justice sustained the state's objection. Prior statements may be used to impeach a witness only when they are sufficiently inconsistent. State v. Tempest, 651 A.2d 1198, 1208 (R.I.1995); see also State v. Morey, 722 A.2d 1185, 1191 (R.I.1999) (holding that a witness's prior statement was not sufficiently inconsistent when he later clarified the discrepancy). The trial justice must determine whether the prior statement is, in fact, inconsistent with the in-court testimony, and we will reverse such a determination only if the decision clearly was wrong. Tempest, 651 A.2d at 1208. The trial justice would have been within her discretion in this instance to determine that Sgt. Johnson's testimony, implying that Cooper had at one time remembered the content of the episode, was not at all inconsistent with Cooper's later statement that he no longer could remember that same episode. The defendant also argues that the trial justice improperly curtailed the cross-examination of Sgt. Johnson as it related to defendant's theory of the case that the police had rushed to judgment in the course of their investigation. The defendant identifies multiple points on which the trial justice sustained objections to defendant's questions, none of which constitutes reversible error. For example, the trial justice foreclosed defendant's right to cross-examine Sgt. Johnson concerning his knowledge of, and involvement with, items that were removed during a search of the home next to defendant's. The trial justice ostensibly did so because Sgt. Johnson had just testified that he was not involved in the search of that home. The trial justice's rulings do not amount to a clear abuse of discretion. B