Court Opinion

ID: 9589854
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:49:39.133422+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:04.539212
License: Public Domain

Justice Lake
dissenting.
In this case the majority takes a position not required by any decision of the Supreme Court of the United States or by any previous decision of this Court.
There is not the slightest suggestion that the defendant’s confession was obtained by coercion, inducement, intimidation or persuasion. Nothing in the record indicates any involuntariness whatsoever. Nothing in the record indicates falsity or the slightest inaccuracy in the confession. There is no indication whatsoever that this eighteen year old Marine, apparently intelligent and not inexperienced, did not understand his right to have counsel present at the interrogation or that he was unaware that, if by reason of indigency he could not obtain counsel, the court would appoint counsel for him. He was expressly so advised, both by the military and by the civilian officers present, before he made the confession. In writing, clear and unmistakable, he stated he did not want counsel “present during this interview.”
Subsequently, after he was formally charged and formal judicial proceedings were a certainty, he asserted for the first time that he wanted counsel and that, by reason of his indigency, he was unable to employ such counsel for the proceedings then imminent. .Thereupon, counsel for those proceedings was appointed and he has been diligently and ably represented throughout those proceedings, including this appeal, by such counsel.
The trial court found, “The defendant had adequate resources with which to employ counsel at the in-custody interrogation stage of the proceeding in this case.” This Court now says that finding is not supported by the evidence and was error.
The evidence is that this eighteen-year-old man had a regular job which paid him $149.00 per month over and above all expense for food, lodging, clothing, medical care and every other *46necessary expense. There is no suggestion that he had any dependents: Obviously, the bulk, if not all, of his indebtedness represented the balance due on an automobile owned by him. This Court now says that he was an indigent because he did not have, in ready cash, enough funds to enable him to employ a lawyer, not just for the interrogation proceeding but for his trial, including appeal to the highest court available, and because his family could not help him do so without giving up some other things. If this be indigency, then to be self supporting is a condition rare in this the richest country in the world.
G.S. 7A-450(a) provides: “An indigent person is a person who is financially unable to secure legal representation and to provide all other necessary expenses of representation in an action or proceeding enumerated in this subchapter.” Subsection (c) provides: “The question of indigency may be determined or redetermined by the court at any stage of the action or proceeding at which an indigent is entitled to representation.”
Indigency, at least in this sense, means financial inability to employ the legal assistance needed at the time. Surely, we may take judicial notice of the fact that a relatively small fee would be charged by competent counsel for appearance at a police investigation. This is all the defendant needed at that time. With full knowledge of his right to such counsel, and without the slightest suggestion of his inability to employ such counsel, he elected to represent himself. No one has suggested that he was coerced, intimidated or induced to reach that decision. When a suspected criminal, known to have the above mentioned employment and income, does not even suggest to the officers interrogating him that he is an indigent but expressly tells them he does not want counsel present, why must the officers inquire further into his financial condition?
Assuming this defendant was an indigent, within the meaning of G.S. 7A-457, for the purposes of the police interrogation, this statute does not declare that evidence obtained in disregard of it is not admissible. Neither Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed. 2d 694, nor Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed. 2d 1081, nor any other decision of the Supreme Court of the United States which has come to my attention holds that state courts may not admit evidence obtained in violation of a state statute. The effect of those cases *47is limited to the admissibility of evidence obtained in violation of the defendant’s rights guaranteed by the Federal Constitution. No denial of any such constitutional right is involved in this case. Consequently, the admissibility of this defendant’s voluntary confession must be determined by the law of this State.
We have held repeatedly that the common law of North Carolina does not forbid the admission of evidence unlawfully obtained but otherwise competent. State v. Colson, 274 N.C. 295, 305, 163 S.E. 2d 376, cert. den., 393 U.S. 1087, 89 S.Ct. 876, 21 L.Ed. 2d 780; State v. Smith, 251 N.C. 328, 111 S.E. 2d 188; State v. Vanhoy, 230 N.C. 162, 52 S.E. 2d 278; State v. McGee, 214 N.C. 184, 198 S.E. 616. See also: Stansbury, North Carolina Evidence, 2d Ed., § 121; Wigmore on Evidence, 3d Ed., §§ 2183-2184a; McCormick on Evidence, § 137; 29 Am. Jur. 2d, Evidence, § 408. In State v. McGee, supra, this Court refused to extend, to evidence obtained by a search without any warrant at all, a statute declaring incompetent evidence obtained by a search under an illegally issued warrant. Pursuant to the rule so established, we should not interpolate into G.S. 7A-457 a change in the rules so established in this State.
If, however, G.S. 7A-457 should be construed as a legislative declaration that a voluntary confession made under the circumstances of this case is not admissible, the statute should not be given that effect because the statute, itself, is an unconstitutional enactment. The State had no opportunity to raise this question since the lower court ruled in its favor on the question of the admissibility of the confession. In State v. Bines, 263 N.C. 48, 138 S.E. 2d 797, this Court said, “The constitutional right to counsel, of course, does not justify forcing counsel upon an accused who wants none.” To the same effect are: State v. Morgan, 272 N.C. 97, 157 S.E. 2d 606, and State v. McNeil, 263 N.C. 260, 139 S.E. 2d 667, and in State v. Williams, 276 N.C. 703, 174 S.E. 2d 503, this Court affirmed a death sentence imposed upon a defendant tried without counsel, pursuant to his declaration that he did not want counsel. All of these cases involved a defendant who elected to proceed without counsel through the formal trial of the charge against him. If a defendant may not be denied the right to do that, surely he may not be denied the right to represent himself at a police interrogation prior to the filing of a formal charge against him. Having *48elected to do so, voluntarily and with full knowledge of his rights, he should not now be given a new trial because he so elected and confessed to the offense charged.
Furthermore, G.S. 7A-450 et seq. is invalid in that it discriminates between indigent and non-indigent defendants. If this defendant, at the time of the police interrogation, had had in his pocket $10,000 in cash and had been free from debt the majority would apparently hold he had the right to represent himself at the police interrogation and the confession would be held properly admitted. Neither intelligence, education, nor skill in matters of police or courtroom procedure has any relation to the amount of money one has in his pocket or in a bank account. Neither the Legislature nor the courts of this State may make the right to represent one’s self without counsel depend upon such a circumstance.
Justices Huskins and Moore join in this dissenting opinion.