Opinion ID: 853247
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Pierce's Confession

Text: Pierce first challenges the admission of his confession, claiming that police deception rendered it involuntary. Specifically, he contends that a police officer, Detective Frazier, lied to him about a preliminary DNA match in the other investigation and this caused him to confess to both this crime and the other crime. The decision to admit Pierce's statement is a matter of discretion of the trial court after considering the totality of the circumstances. Ellis v. State, 707 N.E.2d 797, 801 (Ind.1999). In reviewing a trial court's ruling as to the voluntariness of a confession, we examine the record for substantial, probative evidence of voluntariness; we do not reweigh the evidence. Horan v. State, 682 N.E.2d 502, 510 (Ind.1997). Pierce's taped statement was given after an officer informed Pierce of his Miranda rights and Pierce signed a waiver form. Pierce's taped interview lasted two and one-half hours. The trial court ruled: [B]ased on the record that I have in front of me, and taking the statements as offers to prove, I find that this court in a different case has already ruled upon all of these issues after a thorough hearing, and the fact that this is an effort to suppress a statement that the alleged falsehoods did not actually pertain to, I think the original ruling of this court was accurate, and I am again going to deny the motion to suppress the Defendant's statements to the investigators during his custodial interrogation. The determination that Pierce's statement should be admitted is supported by substantial evidence and is consistent with precedent. Pierce makes substantially the same argument in this appeal as he made in his appeal of the earlier case. His claim here is somewhat weaker because the police deceptionfalse claim of DNA identificationis related to the other crimes, not these. For that reason, as well as those given in Pierce's other appeal, see Pierce v. State, 761 N.E.2d 821, 2002 WL 118259 (Ind.2002), we find no reversible error in the admission of his confession.