Opinion ID: 1796517
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: whether the trial court abused its discretion when it denied tina hunt funds to employ an investigator, denying hunt her constitutional rights?

Text: Hunt made a motion for funds to hire an investigator to interview persons on the State's witness list, since the State provided only partial information on thirty anticipated witnesses of the sixty-seven to seventy-two witnesses listed by the State. The State acknowledged that several witnesses they listed lacked addresses or phone numbers. On November 21, 1991, when Hunt's counsel motioned for an investigator to interview the State's witnesses, he noted he had forty-five to fifty witnesses left to interview, and that he could not complete those interviews before the trial began. The trial court denied Hunt's motion and ruled that it could not find a sufficient need to justify an investigator. The standard of review in Mississippi on this issue is as follows: to reverse, the trial court's denial of expert assistance must be an abuse of discretion so egregious as to deny him due process and where his trial was thereby rendered fundamentally unfair. Fisher v. City of Eupora, 587 So.2d 878, 883 (Miss. 1991). See Johnson v. State, 529 So.2d 577, 590 (Miss. 1988). Hunt did more than present a mere request; her counsel placed in the record the fact that the State had sixty-seven to seventy-two witnesses on its potential witness list, and that he had only interviewed between sixteen and eighteen witnesses by November 21, 1991, only nine days before trial. The issue dealing with funds for an investigator is troubling since a continuance or an order compelling the State to separate from among the witnesses revealed, those who would actually be used, would have been all that was necessary. Since the State only called nine witnesses, Hunt could have interviewed these witnesses in the nine days it had left before the trial. I understand that the State may not have had a firm commitment on the exact witnesses it planned to call for the trial, but narrowing down the potential witness list would have resolved the problems that have occurred in this case, and Hunt's counsel would not have needed to move for an investigator. Saying that funds for an investigator should have been required is vexatious, when the much more expeditious manner would have been a continuance or a more accurate witness list. Considering my opinion on the above issue, I find that the appropriate action for the trial judge to have taken would have been to grant a continuance or order the State to narrow its witness list. Based on the foregoing, the lower court should have suppressed Hunt's written statement because it was the product of an illegal custodial interrogation; one that occurred without the presence of counsel after the right to counsel had been invoked. Also, because the trial judge refused to grant Hunt a reasonable continuance under the circumstances, this conviction must be reversed and the case remanded for a new trial. PITTMAN, BANKS and McRAE, JJ., join this Opinion.