Opinion ID: 2263079
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Exclusion of Certain Evidence Bearing on Voluntariness

Text: It is further our opinion that the trial justice erred in excluding certain evidence relative to the voluntariness issue in light of the strictures of the Humane Practice Rule. Specifically, the trial justice abused his discretion by excluding testimony regarding a statement that defendant said the police made to him just before he executed the waiver of rights form; he alleges that this purported statement by the police influenced his decision to give a videotaped statement. During the trial, defense counsel asked Detective Grenier on cross-examination whether he told defendant during a pre-videotape interrogation that he almost believed him. The state objected to this question, and the trial justice sustained the objection stating at a sidebar conference with counsel: That line of questioning is forbidden by Harnois. If any of those statements were made that the defendant could testify or is required to testify to through them personally not through this witness. It is our view that State v. Harnois, 638 A.2d 532 (R.I.1994), the case referred to by the trial justice, is inapposite to the situation presented here. In Harnois, this Court held that a non-testifying defendant could not introduce his own statements through the testimony of investigating officers or through other police records. Id. at 535-36. In the present case, by contrast, defendant, sought to give greater credence to the testimony that he planned to give by asking the detectives themselves about a statement that he says they made to him. The defendant argues that the detectives' statement to him that they almost believe[d] him indicates that they were employing an improper interrogation technique, the use of which he contends rendered his waiver ineffectual and his statement involuntary. Without commenting on his theory, it is our view that defendant should have been permitted to attempt to elicit this testimony from the detectives, since it might have had a bearing on the jury's assessment of voluntariness. It is also our opinion that the trial justice erred by excluding from consideration by the jury evidence pertaining to defendant's alleged guardianship status. Although the trial justice was surely within his discretion in ascribing little weight to defendant's guardianship status in making his own decision on the issue of voluntariness, defendant's guardianship status was one of the circumstances surrounding his interrogation that the jury would have had to consider if it had been given the opportunity to make a voluntariness determination, as it should have. [22] By excluding from the jury testimony about defendant's guardianship status, the trial justice kept from the jury the full context of defendant's interrogation and attendant videotaped statement. We hasten to add that the relevancy of the defendant's guardianship status has a temporal aspect: the issue to be determined at trial would be defendant's current status and not what occurred many years ago. It is incumbent upon the defense to produce evidence of defendant's guardianship status at the time of this incident.