Opinion ID: 1657998
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Motion to Suppress Post-Arrest Statement.

Text: Vincik first assigns as error the refusal to sustain his motion to suppress an inculpatory statement allegedly given to police officers two weeks after his wife had been shot and killed. He contends he did not voluntarily waive his Miranda rights and did not voluntarily give the police officers an inculpatory statement which later was admitted in evidence against him at trial. He contends the prosecution's use of that statement violated his rights under the fifth and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 467, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1624, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, 719 (1966). (Vincik in this appeal has abandoned a sixth amendment challenge presented to the trial court.) We review de novo the record concerning such constitutional issues, making our own independent evaluation of the totality of the relevant circumstances. State v. Nelsen, 390 N.W.2d 589, 591 (Iowa 1986); State v. Whitsel, 339 N.W.2d 149, 152 (Iowa 1983). The burden of proof was on the State to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Vincik's waiver of constitutional rights was knowingly, voluntarily and intelligently given. See State v. Reid, 394 N.W.2d 399, 402 (Iowa 1986). An express written waiver alone is not enough to establish waiver. Fryer v. State, 325 N.W.2d 400, 409 (Iowa 1982). The State also has the burden of establishing by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant's inculpatory statement was made voluntarily. State v. Hodges, 326 N.W.2d 345, 347 (Iowa 1982). Thus, the voluntariness of both the waiver and the statement is at issue. The test for voluntariness is whether the totality of circumstances demonstrates that the statement was the product of an essentially free and unconstrained choice, made by the defendant at a time when his will was not overborne nor his capacity for self-determination critically impaired. Id. (quoting State v. Snethen, 245 N.W.2d 308, 311 (Iowa 1976)). Other factors to be considered include: The defendant's knowledge and waiver of his Miranda rights, the defendant's age, experience, prior record, level of education and intelligence, the length of time defendant is detained and interrogated, whether physical punishment was used, including the deprivation of food or sleep, defendant's ability to understand the questions, the defendant's physical and emotional condition and his reaction to the interrogation, whether any deceit or improper promises were used in gaining the admissions, and any mental weakness the defendant may possess. State v. Whitsel, 339 N.W.2d at 153. It is also now clear that coercive police activity is a necessary predicate to the finding that a confession is not `voluntary' under the fourteenth amendment. Colorado v. Connelly, ___ U.S. ___, ____, 107 S.Ct. 515, 522, 93 L.Ed.2d 473, 484 (1986). A few of the background facts on this issue are undisputed. Shortly after noon on June 26, 1984 the Cedar Rapids Police Department received a 911 call from a person who identified himself as Bill Vincik and reported that he had been shot. Ambulance and police cars were dispatched to Vincik's home, where Vincik and his wife Inez were discovered lying on a bed, with bullet wounds to the head. Inez was dead and Vincik unconscious. Vincik was taken to a Cedar Rapids hospital where he underwent major surgery. On July 9, 1984, at about 4:30 p.m., Vincik was arrested by two Cedar Rapids police officers at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Iowa City where he had been taken to recuperate from brain and eye surgeries. Hospital personnel released Vincik, in a wheelchair, into the custody of the two police officers, and they transported him to the Cedar Rapids police station. There, in a windowless room ten feet square, from about 5:45 p.m. to 8:45 p.m., the two police officers interrogated Vincik. In the first few minutes Vincik was read and then signed a standard rights waiver form. About three hours later Vincik signed a typewritten statement which first had to be read to him because he could not see very well. No notes were taken and no audio or video tape was made of the questioning. The two-page typewritten statement Vincik signed referred to his recollections of violent Vietnam war experiences, recent suicidal thoughts brought on by those experiences, and recollection of the events on the day his wife Inez and he were shot. Included are three blunt statements: I got this gun out of the dresser and while Inez was sleeping I shot her twice in the head. The reason I shot her twice is I did not want her to suffer. I laid down next to her in the bed and then shot myself. Before Vincik was questioned, he was charged by trial information with murder in the first degree. After the typewritten statement was signed Vincik spent the night in jail. The following day he was arraigned on the murder charge, then readmitted to the Veterans Administration Hospital. The critical detailed facts relevant to the question of voluntariness are very much in dispute. The State's version, based almost entirely on testimony of the two police officers and their secretary, focuses on Vincik's apparent understanding of what was taking place from the time he was arrested until he signed the statement. The officers testified that they arrested Vincik only after receiving a phone call from hospital personnel notifying them that Vincik would be released from the hospital that afternoon. They maintain that Vincik was alert throughout the time he was with them, even joking while they slowly climbed the thirty steps into the police station. Although conceding that defendant had obvious physical problemsa head wound, visible catheter, and difficulty with eyesightthey emphasized that his verbalizations were appropriate and understandable and that he stated he understood the waiver form when it was read to him. They said they made no threats or promises and that Vincik never requested that the questioning cease but complained only that his eyes were dry. They said they administered eyedrops when requested, provided soda pop, and allowed Vincik to use the restroom on one occasion. They both testified the words in the typewritten statement were taken directly from Vincik's answers to their questions, then dictated by one of the officers at the completion of the questioning and typed by a secretary. Finally, the officers emphasized that they not only read the typed statement to Vincik before he signed it, but they made corrections at his request and had him initial those corrections. Vincik's version of the facts on this issue, based largely on testimony of medical personnel, emphasizes overreaching by the police officers given Vincik's infirm mental and physical condition just before and during the hours when he was being interrogated. The hospital chief of ward administration who phoned the officers on the morning of July 9 testified that she phoned to notify them of Vincik's discharge only because they earlier had asked her to phone when the neurosurgeons were ready to release him from the hospital. She told them he still was in need of a psychiatric evaluation, and she understood that the police officers were planning to take Vincik to the care facility at Oakdale for a necessary psychiatric evaluation. When discharged, Vincik had only enough medicine for that night and the next morning. Doctors and nurses at the hospital all testified that they assumed from what the police officers told them that Vincik was merely being moved to Oakdale for further treatment. The officers did not tell hospital personnel they had a warrant for his arrest and were going to drive him straight to Cedar Rapids for interrogation. Although hospital personnel turned over to the police officers Vincik's medical records, the officers neither read those reports nor discussed Vincik's condition with qualified medical personnel when they took him into custody. The officers testified they were not aware he had just undergone a surgical procedure and been injected with the drug valium, a sedative. Indeed, one of the officers described as excellent Vincik's medical and mental condition upon discharge into their custody. The officers' testimony concerning Vincik's mental and physical condition is not credible when all of the evidence in this record is considered. A neurosurgeon testified that the type of brain damage suffered by Vincik frequently results in a lack of inhibition and a lack of appropriate response to questions and situations. Hospital records disclosed that medicationphenobarbital and dilantinhad been and was to be administered to Vincik three times daily. The neurosurgeon testified that phenobarbital is a sedative. He testified further that Vincik's emotional status was variable during his hospitalization prior to and including July 9, and that while Vincik was able to recall on the morning of July 9 his full name, where he was, and that he suffered from a gunshot wound, there were times that he could not state his age correctly. A psychologist testified that on the morning of July 9 when he tried to interview Vincik, Vincik became fatigued after twenty or thirty minutes of conversation and began misstating words. The hospital records show that on the afternoon of July 9 a surgical procedure was performed in connection with a catheter that had been inserted through Vincik's abdominal wall. A total of twenty milligrams of valium was given Vincik in graded doses intravenously between 2:40 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. According to the medical testimony the mental status of one who has been given valium would not be as good as it had been prior to being given the drug. The neurosurgeon testified that the average adult male given twenty milligrams of intravenous valium would probably be considered not responsible for his actions or responses for a period of approximately six hours. Moreover, he explained that valium, when combined with phenobarbital, tends to increase the sedative properties of each drug. He said that Vincik was not in any physical or mental condition on July 9 to be interrogated, and he would not have discharged Vincik if he had known that the officers planned to interrogate him. Hospital employees and family members testified that following his surgery on July 9, Vincik was difficult to arouse, was incapable of intelligent conversation, and needed the assistance of two nurses in using the restroom. The discharge summary, written prior to Vincik's release to the police at approximately 4:30 that afternoon, indicated that his verbalizations were inappropriate and he appeared disoriented and unaware of what is going on. The psychologist asserted, I have virtually no confidence in that confession. An attorney retained by Vincik's family testified that he talked with him on the phone soon after the police had completed their interrogation. He said he had difficulty understanding Vincik's responses to his questions. He asked Vincik if he understood what he had signed, and Vincik indicated he had not. The jail nurse, who saw Vincik on the morning of July 10 after his night in jail, testified that Vincik complained to her of the discomfort the catheter was causing him. She noted an abnormally low urine output in his catheter bag, consistent with evidence that when Vincik was readmitted to the hospital his catheter was not working properly. Defendant testified at trial that he did not remember leaving the hospital before being questioned and did not know where he was going or who was talking to him. He remembered signing something but denied the accuracy of numerous details in the typewritten statement and said, Those are not my words nor my statement. He denied that he had shot his wife and testified that on the day in question two men had entered his home and shot both his wife and himself. From our de novo review of the record we conclude that the State did not sustain its burden to prove that Vincik voluntarily waived his Miranda rights and voluntarily gave the statement which was used against him. See State v. Cullison, 227 N.W.2d 121, 127 (Iowa 1975). We find credible the medical evidence concerning the adverse effect the valium injections had on Vincik's capacity to know and understand what he was saying. The last injection occurred less than three hours before the police obtained the signed waiver and began interrogating him. Clearly Vincik was not alert and capable of giving meaningful answers to questions during the six hours after the valium had been administered to him at the hospital, the period when he signed both the waiver and the inculpatory statement. The circumstances of this case also satisfy the Connelly requirement that a confession, to be suppressed as involuntary, must be the product of coercive police activity. Colorado v. Connelly, ___ U.S. at ____, 107 S.Ct. at 522, 93 L.Ed.2d at 484. We cannot divorce Vincik's infirm mental and physical condition from the police officers' actions here. Vincik did not walk up to these two officers and offer to talk about a crime; he was arrested at the hospital and hauled to the Cedar Rapids police station for interrogation. Compare Connelly, id. at ____, 107 S.Ct. at 518, 93 L.Ed.2d at 479 (defendant approached uniformed police officer and, unprompted, stated that he had murdered someone and wanted to talk about it). When the interrogation began, the officers knew Vincik had been charged with murder and that no counsel was present to represent him during the interrogation. They also knew enough about his infirm mental and physical condition to raise serious doubts in their minds whether the custodial circumstances of the questioning would produce voluntary and meaningful statements. We conclude Vincik's capacity for self-determination was critically impaired by the drugs' effect on his already debilitated condition, and his reduced resistance was overborne by the officers. See Cullison, 227 N.W.2d at 127. Courts in other jurisdictions have excluded from evidence confessions given by patients following the administration of drugs as part of medical treatment, when the effects of the drug have not worn off prior to the questioning. See, e.g., In re Cameron, 68 Cal.2d 487, 502-03, 439 P.2d 633, 641-42, 67 Cal.Rptr. 529, 538 (1968); Reddish v. State, 167 So.2d 858, 863 (Fla.1964); State v. Graffam, 202 La. 869, 890, 13 So.2d 249, 256 (1943). The mere fact that one is under the influence of a drug while making an inculpatory statement does not render the statement involuntary. State v. Wilson, 264 N.W.2d 614, 614-15 (Iowa 1978). This case, however, is unlike those in which medical testimony established that the effects of the drug had worn off prior to questioning, and those where the drugs had no adverse effect on the ability of the patient to think rationally. See, e.g., People v. Dacy, 5 Cal.App.3d 216, 220, 85 Cal.Rptr. 57, 58 (1970); People v. Kincaid, 87 Ill.2d 107, 120, 57 Ill.Dec. 610, 615, 429 N.E.2d 508, 513 (1981), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 1024, 102 S.Ct. 1726, 72 L.Ed.2d 144 (1982); People v. Pote, 5 Ill.App.3d 856, 858, 284 N.E.2d 366, 368 (1972); People v. Long, 119 Ill.App.2d 75, 83, 255 N.E.2d 491, 495 (1970); State v. Hoskins, 292 Minn. 111, 131, 193 N.W.2d 802, 815 (1972); State v. Wade, 40 N.J. 27, 35-36, 190 A.2d 657, 661-62, cert. denied, 375 U.S. 846, 84 S.Ct. 100, 11 L.Ed.2d 73 (1963). Vincik's confession was the product of tough police interrogation and a mind enfeebled by brain damage, a surgical procedure, fatigue, medication and drugs. We find credible the medical testimony concerning the severity of Vincik's brain damage, the adverse effects upon him of the medication and drugs administered during the surgery that afternoon, and his infirm and fatigued mental and physical condition that evening. Vincik was not capable of giving to the interrogating police officers, and did not give, the kind of knowing and voluntary statement that could constitutionally be used in evidence against him. The signed waiver and inculpatory statement should have been suppressed and excluded from evidence at trial. Defendant's conviction therefore must be reversed and the case remanded for a new trial.