Opinion ID: 1122767
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Trial Court's Ruling and Order

Text: On May 12, 1983, Manning filed a motion to dismiss the charges against her. She argued that Bailey's statements on April 8 and 9 represented a conscious decision to treat Defendant as a witness and not a suspect in the disappearance and death of her son. She concluded that [a]n agreement was reached between a law enforcement official, speaking on behalf of and as an agent for the prosecuting authority and the Defendant, to wit: If the Defendant provided said authority with information as to the whereabouts of her son and what happened to him, the Defendant would be a witness in any potential criminal prosecution and would not and could not herself be prosecuted for crimes with which she might be charged as a consequence of the evidence provided. The parties stipulated that the court should rule on the motion to dismiss before it conducted a preliminary hearing. The trial court therefore scheduled a hearing on Manning's motion for June 13. At that hearing, the court heard extensive testimony from Bailey about the three-month investigation and about his conversations with Manning. It also heard testimony from two prisoners who were in the county jail with Manning on April 9. Realizing that the decision on this issue ... could... be dispositive of a large portion of this case or all of it, the trial judge issued his Ruling and Order on June 20, 1983, and this appeal followed. The trial court relied almost exclusively on the principles outlined by this court in People v. Fisher, 657 P.2d 922 (Colo.1983), for determining the effect of government promises to criminal suspects or defendants. In Fisher, the police in Oklahoma City asked the defendant if he would agree to be interviewed on videotape about burglaries he had committed. The videotape was intended as an instructional device for police cadets. The defendant agreed to the interview and signed a release which included the statement: I further refuse to give my permission for this video tape to be used in any criminal procedings [sic] against myself.... Id. at 924 & n. 2. Two years later, after the defendant was arrested in Colorado, the prosecution attempted to introduce the Oklahoma videotape into evidence. The trial court ordered its suppression, concluding that the defendant was entitled to enforcement of the government's promise not to use the videotape in any criminal proceeding. Id. at 925 n. 5. On appeal, we affirmed stating: We hold that because the officer's promise implicated [the] constitutional rights of the defendant, because the defendant took detrimental action in reasonable reliance upon the promise, and because no other remedy short of enforcement of the promise would secure fundamental fairness to the defendant, the Due Process Clauses of the United States and Colorado Constitutions, U.S. Const. Amend. XIV; Colo. Const. Art. II, Sec. 25, require suppression of the Oklahoma videotape in the pending Colorado prosecution. Fisher, 657 P.2d at 925. The constitutional rights implicated by the defendant's statement were the right against self-incrimination, U.S. Const. amend. V; Colo. Const. art. II, sec. 18, and the right to counsel, U.S. Const. amend. VI; Colo. Const. art II, sec. 16. The defendant relied to his detriment by performing his part of the bargain and revealing incriminating information to the government. The remedy of specific performance was the only remedy, in our view, which rendered substantial justice to the defendant. As a result, after analogizing to the law of contracts, we concluded that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment furnishes the basis for the enforcement of a governmental promise made to an accused during the pendency of a criminal prosecution against him. Fisher, 657 P.2d at 927. In his Ruling and Order, the trial judge incorporated the three Fisher criteria for enforcement of government promises. He decided that Manning's cooperation in making statements in response to and in reliance upon Officer Bailey's commitments specifically impacted and implicated her privilege against self incrimination and her right to effective assistance of counsel. In addition, her actions exhibited detrimental reliance, since she clearly made no statement and volunteered no factual information before receiving the officer's assurances she would not be prosecuted. There was clearly reliance upon Officer Bailey's commitment in making the statements and the evidence establishes that, but for those assurances the statements would not have been made. Lastly, the court held that specific performance of the promise not to prosecute was the appropriate remedy. At stake is the honor of the Government, the trial judge concluded; Detective Greg Bailey made a reasonable, conscious, investigative decision to treat the Defendant as a witness and the fact that others may, in hindsight, find it inconvenient to support that decision does not justify the Court's withholding judicial enforcement of his commitment. To hold otherwise would involve the Court in an artifice perpetrated upon the Defendant. The prosecution argued that any commitment by Bailey was ambiguous and conditional and is therefore unenforceable. The trial court disagreed, however, and repeated that, in light of the surrounding circumstances, Bailey's words were clear and unambiguous. Furthermore, the request for information was not conditioned upon the production of Michael Manning alive and healthy.... Officer Bailey did not state or imply any conditions in his request to treat the Defendant as a witness rather than a Defendant.... (emphasis in original). The court quoted Fisher, 657 P.2d at 930, where we indicated that the government should not make broad promises to an accused and then seek to attribute a narrow scope or significance to those promises in an effort to escape resulting obligations. The prosecution also argued that the urgent need to locate and help Michael justified the alleged impropriety on the part of Bailey. The government, as a result, should be excused from any promise made to Manning under the emergency or rescue doctrine. Again the trial court disagreed: It is clear here that there was no continued emergency situation.... The supervising police authorities had concluded that no further productive purpose could be served by continuing the investigation. Officer Bailey made his commitment to the Defendant as a last effort to bring his investigation to closure without the earlier pressing urgency to find and protect Michael Manning. None of the elements necessary to application of the rescue doctrine are present in this case. After concluding that Bailey made a promise to treat Manning as a witness, and that his commitment was governed by Fisher, [6] the trial court fashioned a suppression remedy that was not, in its words, as drastic as the order of dismissal requested by Manning. It decided that outright dismissal was not the appropriate remedy, since [t]he commitment of the detective falls short of a promise that the Defendant would not be prosecuted. At the same time, [t]he Court must give effect to the promise made to the Defendant ..., that, upon the evidence then available, the statements she might make and the product of those statements, she would be treated as a witness and could not be prosecuted. It therefore ordered that (1) All evidence gathered in the police investigation and known to Detective Bailey prior to April 10, 1983, shall be inadmissible in the proceedings against the Defendant, because that information formed the basis for Officer Bailey's decision to treat the Defendant as a witness. (2) All statements made by the Defendant to Officer Bailey or others between April 9, 1983, and April 22, 1983, shall be inadmissible as made during the period Defendant was assured she would be treated as a witness. (3) All evidence, whether testimony or exhibits, discovered with the assistance of Defendant's statements shall be inadmissible as a fruit of the breach of the enforceable commitment made to the Defendant.