Opinion ID: 1836255
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The voluntariness of the statements

Text: ¶ 74 A determination of a statement's voluntariness is made based on the totality of the circumstances, balancing ... the personal characteristics of the defendant against the pressures imposed upon the defendant by law enforcement officers. State v. Hoppe, 2003 WI 43, ¶ 38, 261 Wis.2d 294, 661 N.W.2d 407. ¶ 75 While I agree that Ward's characteristics tend to weigh in favor of a finding of voluntariness, the tactics of the police should give us all pause. The statements at issue here were obtained through a troubling mix of deceptive and manipulative methods, employed on a suspect who was at every turn blocked from contact with anyone, including a lawyer and family members who were present and waiting just outside a door. This methodical isolation began at the hospital before Ward was even in custody and continued throughout the remainder of a day, a night, and the next morning, for a total of more than 24 hours until the third interrogation produced the statements the police were seeking. ¶ 76 The first questioning of Ward began at approximately 9:30 a.m. in her hospital room. It would be well into the next day before she spoke to anyone besides her interrogators or the jailer. When Detective Glenn Schaepe (Schaepe) arrived at the hospital, he sent Ward's daughter out of the room. He later turned away a friend of Ward who asked to speak to her in the hospital room. He turned Ward's husband away. He turned her attorney away on one occasion and ignored him when he made a second attempt to see Ward at the jail. ¶ 77 The United States Supreme Court has acknowledged that holding a suspect incommunicado is problematic. When the Court addressed a situation in which the suspect in police custody had been told that he could not make a call to his wife until he had signed a confession, the Court noted, We cannot blind ourselves to what experience unmistakably teaches: that even apart from the express threat, the basic techniques present herethe secret and incommunicado detention and interrogationare devices adapted and used to extort confessions from suspects. Haynes v. Washington, 373 U.S. 503, 514, 83 S.Ct. 1336, 10 L.Ed.2d 513 (1963). ¶ 78 Haynes gave in only after consistent denials of his requests to call his wife, and the conditioning of such outside contact upon his accession to police demands. Id. Similarly, it was only at the beginning of the third interrogation session, on the second day, that Ward had the first indication from Schaepe that she could contact her husband. The first words out of her mouth were, [Can I] make a phone call and talk to my husband? Schaepe's response: Yeah. Yeah. As soon as we're done here. An hour later, at the end of the interrogation, she asked again, The call thing[] are you gonna [?] He then responded, Yeah. That's lifted. It was then 11:17 a.m., almost 26 hours after Schaepe had begun the initial questioning of Ward. She had been held incommunicado until that point in time. ¶ 79 In Darwin v. Connecticut, 391 U.S. 346, 88 S.Ct. 1488, 20 L.Ed.2d 630 (1968), the United States Supreme Court again addressed the tactic of holding a suspect without contact until a confession is extracted: The inference is inescapable that the officers kept petitioner incommunicado for the 30 to 48 hours during which they sought and finally obtained his confession. Considering the totality of the circumstances[,] we conclude that the court erred in holding that the confession and the partial re-enactment were voluntary. The denial of access to counsel and the outside world continued throughout, and there was no break in the stream of events from arrest throughout the concededly invalid confessions of [the first day] to the confession and re-enactment of [the second day] sufficient to insulate the final events from the effect of all that went before. Id. at 349, 88 S.Ct. 1488 (citations omitted). ¶ 80 In dissent in Moran v. Burbine , Justice Stevens decried the majority's willingness to accept the incommunicado questioning of a suspect in the service of obtaining a confession where the police failed to notify the suspect of the presence of an attorney retained on his behalf: The core of the Court's holding is that police interference with an attorney's access to her client during that period is not unconstitutional. The Court reasons that a State has a compelling interest, not simply in custodial interrogation, but in lawyer-free, incommunicado custodial interrogation. Such incommunicado interrogation is so important that a lawyer may be given false information that prevents her presence and representation; it is so important that police may refuse to inform a suspect of his attorney's communications and immediate availability. This conclusion flies in the face of this Court's repeated expressions of deep concern about incommunicado questioning. Until today, incommunicado questioning has been viewed with the strictest scrutiny by this Court; today, incommunicado questioning is embraced as a societal goal of the highest order that justifies police deception of the shabbiest kind. Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412, 437-439, 106 S.Ct. 1135, 89 L.Ed.2d 410 (1986) (Stevens, J. dissenting). ¶ 81 Our court has had occasion to discuss similar police tactics as well. In Phillips v. State, 29 Wis.2d 521, 139 N.W.2d 41 (1966), we addressed, among other things, the propriety of holding a suspect incommunicado from 4:45 p.m. one day until the next morning. While the court's strong language was made in the context of a discussion of how long a person could be detained before being brought before a magistrate, the opinion made some trenchant observations about the discretion of police to hold suspects incommunicado: The usual investigatory methods of the police lend themselves to the search for a confession and we point out again as we did in Pulaski v. State (1964), 23 Wis.2d 138, 126 N.W.2d 625, that long detentions are looked upon with disfavor by this court and seriously impair the voluntariness of the confession from the standpoint of psychological aspect of the usual police-station hazards. We find no justification in holding a person under investigation incommunicado no matter for what length of time. Such device smacks of the star chamber and is an indication in itself of overbearing on the part of the police. Delaying of a request of an accused to talk to his family or friends or his attorney should be considered strong evidence of overbearing pressure to obtain a confession or inculpatory statements. Id. at 535-536, 139 N.W.2d 41 (emphasis added). ¶ 82 The pattern of coercion undoubtedly began at the hospital. For example, it is clear that Schaepe had already decided that Ward would be going to the Sheriff's Department for further questioning even before he asked her whether she would be willing to do so. Near the end of the interview, when only the two of them were in the room, Schaepe stated that Ward had not admitted what specifically occurred: [Y]ou don't want to take responsibility for what happened. You're talking you know general in general terms you are that you were the caretaker, but as far as what [ ] specifically occurred, I don't think you want to get into that. And that's why I believe you're having a hard time remembering things and you're having [ ] pain in your head. I'll make one more phone call here. And then maybe we can get on our way. ... (Emphasis added.) ¶ 83 Only later did Schaepe tell Ward that he would like to go over to the Sheriff's Department and that someone can give [Ward] a ride over to the Sheriff's Department because he knew she didn't have a ride now. He knew that because he had sent away the person who had come to drive her home. While I note that no party specifically identifies at what point Ward was taken into custody, the State concedes that Ward was in custody by the second interrogation. Majority op., ¶ 12. Ward made no inculpatory statements while in the hospital room. The statements Ward made in that interrogation were consistent: she repeatedly said that she had not shaken the baby. (Even when Schaepe falsely stated that Ward's daughter had told police that the child was crying hard and she saw you shake the baby, Ward responded, I don't remember shaking him though. [3] ) While the pattern that would continue throughout the next day did begin there, nothing that Schaepe did at the hospital, standing alone, rose to the level of coercion that would render those statements involuntary. ¶ 84 I am satisfied under the totality of the circumstances that the tactics used here, including holding Ward incommunicado and using deceit, rendered the statements given by Ward in the two subsequent interrogations and the many reenactments involuntary; such statements thus should have been suppressed. [4]