Opinion ID: 2167262
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: electronic recording of questioning

Text: Brashars and Johnston acknowledge that the issue of whether due process and the Commonwealth's responsibility to preserve evidence require law enforcement officials to electronically record custodial interrogations is an issue of first impression in the Commonwealth. The appellants argue that this Court should hold that trial courts should suppress alleged confessions in cases where the Commonwealth seeks to admit incriminating statements stemming from unrecorded custodial interrogations [2] because defendants otherwise must engage in a swearing contest with law enforcement officers in order to litigate issues relating to the voluntariness or substance of confessions. According to Brashars and Johnston, trial courts invariably resolve these swearing contests in favor of the law enforcement officers, and a recording requirement is necessary to adequately protect defendants and to ensure fair process. Brashars and Johnston cite to case law from a minority of jurisdictions which have either interpreted their state constitutional due process guarantees to require law enforcement officers to electronically record oral statements of the accused during custodial interrogations [3] or which have adopted such a requirement pursuant to their supervisory powers. [4] They ask this Court to adopt a similar rule for prosecutions in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Brashars and Johnston concede that the due process protections of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution do not mandate a recording requirement, and, although the United States Supreme Court has not yet directly addressed this issue, we agree with other jurisdictions [5] which have addressed this question that it is unlikely such claims could satisfy the standard of constitutional materiality adopted by the Court in California v. Trombetta. [6] Consequently, the appellants seek a basis for a recording requirement in the Kentucky Constitution, and ask this Court to interpret the due process protections of our state constitution as exceeding those in the United States Constitution. In Commonwealth v. Cooper, [7] this Court found the right against self-incrimination guaranteed by the Kentucky Constitution did not exceed the protections of the United States Constitution and cautioned that only in a handful of instances did Kentucky Constitutional protections exceed those in the United States Constitution: From time to time in recent years this Court has interpreted the Constitution of Kentucky in a manner which differs from the interpretation of parallel constitutional rights by the Supreme Court of the United States. However, when we have differed from the Supreme Court, it has been because of Kentucky constitutional text, the Debates of the Constitutional Convention, history, tradition, and relevant precedent. We have admonished against novel theories to revise well-established legal practice and principle and stated the prevailing rule as follows: While we have decided several recent cases protecting individual rights on state constitutional law grounds, our stated purpose is to do so only where the dictates of our Kentucky Constitution, tradition, and other relevant precedents call for such action. [8] While we may use, in our analysis, the jurisprudence from our sister states which have addressed this issue in the context of their own constitutional provisions, [9] our decision eventually must turn on an interpretation of the due process protections afforded criminal defendants in Kentucky Constitution Section Eleven: In all criminal prosecutions the accused has the right to be heard by himself and counsel; to demand the nature and cause of the accusation against him; to meet the witnesses face to face, and to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor. He cannot be compelled to give evidence against himself, nor can he be deprived of his life, liberty or property, unless by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land; and in prosecutions by indictment or information, he shall have a speedy public trial by an impartial jury of the vicinage; but the General Assembly may provide by a general law for a change of venue in such prosecutions for both the defendant and the Commonwealth; the change to be made to the most convenient county in which a fair trial can be obtained. [10] After reviewing the text, history, and previous precedent interpreting Section Eleven's due process protections, we hold that the Constitution of Kentucky does not mandate the electronic recording requirement advocated by the appellants. This Court has never held that the procedural due process protections of Section Eleven extend beyond the protections of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and the appellate courts of this state have interpreted other clauses of Section Eleven as co-extensive with federal protections. [11] Additionally, in Commonwealth v. Raines, [12] we implicitly found Section Eleven's protections co-extensive with federal protections when we jointly addressed, under standards adopted from federal case law, federal and state due process challenges to a statute authorizing pretrial suspension of operator's license privileges. [13] Although we could end our inquiry here, we believe that the appellants' argument fails on a more fundamental level. From the perspective of this Court, the issue before us is not exclusively a question of cost benefit analysis, or, as phrased by the appellants, whether an electronic recording requirement would enable courts to easily resolve disputes regarding what transpired during a custodial interrogation without unduly burdening law enforcement. We agree with the view that widespread electronic recording has its benefits, [14] although we stop short of finding electronic recording a panacea which could end disputes over confessions to law enforcement officers. [15] As we are asked to determine whether due process requires such a requirement, our inquiry, therefore, must focus on whether determinations of reliability traditionally made by trial courts on the basis of opposing testimony deprive defendants of fundamental fairness. Due process inquiries require us to assess [t]he risk of an erroneous deprivation of [liberty] as a consequence of the . . . procedures used. [16] Accordingly, we disagree with the appellants' contention that fundamental fairness cannot be ensured by a trial court's resolution of factual disputes regarding custodial interrogations on the basis of testimony from the persons involved. As was the case with the Supreme Court of Connecticut in State v. James : [17] We are not persuaded that determinations of admissibility traditionally made by trial courts are inherently untrustworthy or that independent corroboration of otherwise competent testimonial or documentary evidence regarding the existence and voluntariness of a confession is necessary to comport with constitutional due process requirements. [18] We depend on trial courts to resolve factual disputes, and trial judges commonly decide, without independent corroboration, disputed issues regarding whether a defendant gave consent to a search of his home or vehicle or whether a defendant's conduct gave rise to reasonable suspicion for a detention or probable cause for a search. We need not concern ourselves with the appellants' claims regarding the ability of an electronic recording requirement to solve all of the problems relating to custodial interrogations unless Brashars and Johnston first make a threshold showing that such problems exist because of inadequacies with the current procedures. The inability of the appellants to make such a showing merely reaffirms our faith in the ability of trial judges to fairly evaluate factual disputes, and, for that reason, we conclude that the due process protections in Section Eleven of the Constitution of Kentucky do not mandate the recording requirement advocated by the appellants. [19] Although we find that the Kentucky Constitution does not require electronic recording of custodial interrogations, we believe the circumstances surrounding such questioning remain appropriate grounds for defendants to explore at trial as the defendant [still] retains the right to put before the jury, as the trier of fact, all evidence, including the facts and circumstances surrounding the making of his confession, `relevant to weight or credibility.' [20] In other words, although we disagree with the appellants' contention in as much as it relates to the admissibility of statements admitted without corroboration by means of electronic recording, we believe defendants may ask the trier of fact to consider the circumstances of the confession, including any lack of corroboration, in determining the weight, if any, to be afforded that particular piece of evidence. [21] Indeed, in Crane v. Kentucky, [22] the United States Supreme Court held that the United States Constitution protects a defendant's right to introduce at trial evidence relating to the reliability of a confession: Whether rooted directly in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment . . . or in the Compulsory Process or Confrontation clauses of the Sixth Amendment, the Constitution guarantees criminal defendants a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense. We break no new ground in observing that an essential component of procedural fairness is an opportunity to be heard. That opportunity would be an empty one if the State were permitted to exclude competent, reliable evidence bearing on the credibility of a confession when such evidence is central to the defendant's claim of innocence. In the absence of any valid state justification, exclusion of this kind of exculpatory evidence deprives a defendant of the basic right to have the prosecutor's case encounter and survive the crucible of meaningful adversarial testing. [23]