Court Opinion

ID: 9757191
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:23:38.072975+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:32.203492
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Joslin,
dissenting. I would reverse Knott’s conviction because in my judgment his confession to Captain Hilton was constitutionally inadmissible.
My starting point is the confessions obtained from Knott at the Pawtucket police headquarters.1 I agree with the *262Chief Justice that .those confessions were not ■the .product of either physical or psychological coercion in the traditional sense. Nonetheless, they were neither voluntary nor the confessor’s “free choice,” because the “compulsion inherent in the custodial surroundings” of the Pawtucket police headquarters had not been dispelled by an adequate and appropriate threshold warning to Knott that he had a right to counsel and an absolute constitutional right to remain silent. Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977 (1964), as explicated in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).
Whether the Pawtucket confessions were illegal because of physical or psychological coercion or by reason of some other kind of compulsion is of apparent concern to the Chief Justice. It is not to me for Miranda teaches that “compulsion” in the constitutional sense does not demand “overt physical coercion or patent psychological ploys”; the environment of an incommunicado custodial interrogation will suffice. Miranda v. Arizona, supra at 457, 86 S.Ct. at 1619, 16 L.Ed.2d at 713-14. While such an atmosphere may not have been considered physically intimidating prior to Escobedo and Miranda, it now “carries its own badge of intimidation,” and “is equally destructive of human dignity.” Miranda v. Arizona, supra at 457, 86 S.Ct. at 1619, 16 L.Ed.2d at 714. Moreover, the taint produced by the “compulsion inherent in custodial surroundings” is no less contagious than that generated by physical or psychological coercion. Westover v. United States, 384 U. S. 436, 494-97, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1638-39, 16 *263L.Ed.2d 694, 735-36 (1966), one of the companion cases to Miranda.2
Once it is accepted that the illegality of the Pawtucket confessions can be infectious, the legal issue becomes whether Knott’s subsequent confession to Captain Hilton was tainted by those which preceded. The procedures for •seeking the answer to that' question are clear and settled.3 They call first for a careful and wide-ranging ■ inquiry into all the attendant circumstances, Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U. S. 199, 206, 80 S.Ct. 274, 279-80, 4 L.Ed.2d 242, 247-48 (1960); then for a determination generally of whether “compulsion, of whatever nature or however infused, propel[led] or help[ed] to propel” the Hilton confession, Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U. S. 568, 602, 81 S.Ct. 1860, 1879, 6 L.Ed.2d 1037, 1058 (1961) (Opinion of Mr. Justice Frankfurter); and particularly “for a determination” or “for the establishing” of whether that confession was sufficiently removed in time, place and atmosphere from the compulsion responsible for the Pawtucket confessions to immunize it from the taint of the others. Westover v. United States, supra.
On the basis of the facts found by the trial justice, supplemented by the uncontradicted evidence, the following can be taken as the significant circumstances. Shortly after the Pawtucket confessions' were obtained, Knott, while still held incommunicado in an interrogation room at the Pawtucket police headquarters, went into a “sort *264of catatonic trance” from which, he did not emerge until about 5 o’clock the next morning.
About three quarters of an hour later he was turned over to Captain Hilton of the East Providence Police Department.4 During the previous night he had been in and out of the Pawtucket police headquarters and knew that Knott had already incriminated himself.
For reasons not here material, Captain Hilton decided to leave Pawtucket and to continue the investigation and further interrogation of Knott at the Scituate State Police Barracks. Accordingly, he, together with two other police officers and Knott, drove there in a state police vehicle. The trip took about half an hour, and en route Knott was handcuffed to a police officer. Upon arrival at the barracks Captain Hilton took Knott to an office, uncuffed him and asked him to sit down. At that moment, and without further ado, Knott stated, “I’d like to speak to you alone.” Captain Hilton requested the other police officer then in the room to leave. During the next twenty to thirty minutes Knott, without prompting or interruption from Captain Hilton, confessed in detail to the Frenier killing.
At no time during the interval which started with his original apprehension and terminated with the “volunteered” statement to Captain Hilton was Knott informed of his Escobedo rights, offered an attorney, advised of his absolute constitutional right to remain silent or, at any time after his arrival at the Pawtucket police headquarters, allowed to speak to his parents. During the entire interval he was continuously in the presence of at least one and sometimes as many as four police officers, and *265when he confessed to Captain Hilton had neither eaten nor slept since his apprehension at 10:30 on the previous night.
Moreover, by the time he “volunteered” to tell all to Captain Hilton, Knott had already “let the cat-out-of-the-bag” by confessing to the Pawtucket police.
That his “secret [was] out for good” and that he would never thereafter be “free of the psychological and practical disadvantages of having confessed” does not mean that the illegality which produced his earlier confessions should in all events be regarded either as having induced an otherwise proper later confession or as having perpetually disabled him “from making a usable [confession].”
United States v. Bayer, 331 U. S. 532, 67 S.Ct. 1394, 91 L.Ed. 1654 (1947), adopts neither of these extreme positions. Instead, after examining all the circumstances, the Court there decided that the taint of the prior illegal confession5 had been dissipated in the six-month span which intervened between it and the subsequent otherwise legal confessions, during which interval the only restraint under which the defendant had labored was that he could not leave the base where he was stationed without permission.
Bayer, however, is hardly comparable to this case. Here, the interval between the two confessions, instead of being six months, was six or seven hours during which time Knott, unlike the defendant in Bayer, continued in intimi*266dating surroundings equivalent to those which had produced his earlier concededly illegal Pawtucket confessions.
In my judgment, therefore, “the psychological and practical disadvantages [to Knott] of having confessed” is a significant factor. While in and of itself not compelling, it nonetheless belongs in the hopper together with all other relevant circumstances.
In any event, cat-out-of-the-bag or no, a realistic appraisal of those circumstances in this case satisfies me that the Pawtucket confessions propelled or helped to propel the later “volunteered” Hilton confession, Culombe v. Connecticut, supra at 602, 81 S.Ct. at 1879, 6 L.Ed.2d at 1058; that Captain Hilton was a beneficiary of the corrosive influences of the place and atmosphere which produced the Pawtucket confessions, Westover v. United States, supra; and that the “stream of events” which started with Knott’s apprehension at 10:30 on the night of January 26, and continued throughout the confession “volunteered” to Captain Hilton was not broken by any event “sufficient to insulate” that confession “from the effect of all that went before.” Clewis v. Texas, 386 U. S. 707, 710, 87 S.Ct. 1338, 1340, 18 L.Ed.2d 423, 427 (1967); Darwin v. Connecticut, 391 U. S. 346, 349, 88 S.Ct. 1488, 1489-90, 20 L.Ed.2d 630, 633-34 (1968).
In his opinion, the Chief Justice, however, says that “* * * the lack of interrogation for more than five hours and the transfer of custody from the Pawtucket police to Captain Hilton constituted a break from what occurred at the time the Pawtucket confessions took place,” and that defendant has “* * * failed to establish the existence of a poisoned tree which could have tainted his statements.” I do not agree.
The Chief Justice fail's to support that proposition with the citation of any authority, and he completely ignores the conditions which prevailed when Knott emerged from *267his five-hour “sort of catatonic trance”6 and was about to be turned over to Captain Hilton. Those conditions had not changed significantly from what they weré when he entered that trance. He was still in the same room, still guarded by one or more police officers, still without advice from parents or counsel, still denied access to the outside world, and still subject to the intimidating influence of custodial surroundings. The only change was that five hours had elapsed.
It was as if he had been on the rack, confessed, lapsed into unconsciousness, emerged five hours later still on the rack, and then turned over to Captain Hilton to whom he “spontaneously” told all. Can there be any doubt that •a confession in those circumstances would be rejected?
“Although the process of decision in this area, as in most, requires more than a mere color-matching of cases * * Reck v. Pate, 367 U. S. 433, 442, 81 S.Ct. 1541, 1547, 6 L.Ed.2d 948, 954 (1961), the extreme position the Chief Justice takes invites comparison.
A sampling of the authorities evidences that neither transfer of an accused from the custody of one police department to that of another, his removal from one place of detention to another, nor lapse of time will without more purge an otherwise admissible confession of the taint of an earlier confession obtained in violation of EscobedoMiranda mandates.
*268Thus, for example, a subsequent confession, irrespective of whether “spontaneous” or preceded by adequate warnings, was held inadmissible: in Westover v. United States, supra at 496-97, 86 S.Ct. at 1639, 16 L.Ed.2d at 736, where notwithstanding a transfer of custody the court held that the FBI agents who obtained the later confession were the “beneficiaries of the pressure applied” by the local officials who secured the earlier one; in Evans v. United States, 375 F.2d 355 (8th Cir. 1967), where there was a lapse of three days between the time an accused confessed to a local officer at a police station and when, in the presence of the same local officer, he confessed to an FBI agent at the city jail, and the court found that the “difference” in place was “not meaningful,” and that the accused “* * * was on both occasions a prisoner and the atmosphere on April 11th was no different than it was on April 8th.” Id. at 360, n.4; in State v. Lekas, 201 Kan. 579, 442 P.2d 11 (1968), where approximately one hour after being taken into custody and confessing to a parole officer the accused confessed to a sheriff; in Commonwealth v. Eperjesi, 423 Pa. 455, 224 A.2d 216 (1966), where an earlier confession made to a state police officer in the office of a justice of the peace was followed two days later by one made to the same officer who, together with a detective, questioned the defendant at the county jail; in Dean v. Commonwealth, 209 Va. 666, 166 S.E.2d 228 (1969), where the later confession was made “shortly after” the earlier-one; in Brunson v. State, 264 So.2d 817 (Miss. 1972), where the defendant confessed to a police officer sometime in the morning and to the city attorney at about one o’clock in the afternoon of the same day; and in Cagle v. State, 45 Ala. App. 3, 221 So.2d 119 (1969), cert. denied 284 Ala. 727, 221 So.2d 121 (1969), where the defendant confessed at a police station, was removed to a hospital where he was anesthetized and a forehead wound treated and stitched. *269and then taken into a “prayer room” in the hospital where he again confessed.
In each of the foregoing cases, as in this case, the “compulsion inherent in custodial surroundings” continued from original arrest to final confession, and whatever breaks there may have been in the “stream of events” ■— even though in most instances sharper than those relied upon by the Chief Justice’s opinion here ■— were “insufficient to insulate” the later confession “from the effect of all that went before,” or to remove it from the time, place and atmosphere of what preceded.
My brother, Kelleher, in his concurring opinion, says that all testimonial conflicts with respect to the admission of the Hilton confession were settled by the trial justice’s judgment, and that his findings of fact, unless clearly wrong, become the basis for our review. I agree. That principle, as my brother points out, stems from the advantage which an opportunity to see and hear witnesses gives a trial justice when he passes on credibility. That vantage is of no assistance in the determination of a legal as distinguished from a factual question. Yet my brother Kelleher uses it as a base for applying the same clearly wrong rule to the trial justice’s legal conclusion that the taint of Knott’s illegal Pawtucket confession was dissipated by the time of the Hilton confession. With -that I cannot agree. To extend the same degree of finality to a legal determination as we do to fact-finding is to ignore the distinction “* * * between issues of fact that are here foreclosed and issues which, though cast in the form of determinations of fact, are the very issues to review which this Court sits.” Watts v. Indiana, 338 U. S. 49, 51, 69 S.Ct. 1347, 1348, 93 L.Ed. 1801, 1804 (1949) (Opinion of Frankfurter, J.) The distinction between the two becomes particularly apt in a due process case where the judicial task is to relate uncontested facts to a rule of law *270formulated by the Supreme Court. That is a legal, not a fact-finding, procedure. It cannot be left to the trial justice’s determination, and the ultimate responsibility to see to its proper execution rests with a reviewing court regardless of how it may have been resolved by the trier of the facts. Culombe v. Connecticut, supra at 603-06, 81 S.Ct. at 1879-81, 6 L.Ed.2d at 1037, 1058-60. For examples of this principle in action in taint cases we need not go outside of this dissent. Darwin v. Connecticut; Clewis v. Texas; Westover v. United States; United States v. Bayer, all supra.
Richard J. Israel, Attorney General, Donald P. Ryan, Asst. Attorney General, for plaintiff.
Thomas Richard Knott, Jr., pro se.
Leonard Decof (court-appointed attorney for the limited purpose of protecting rights of defendant during prosecution of his appeal), for defendant.
In my judgment the unconstitutional Pawtucket confessions tainted the later “spontaneous” Hilton statement and Knott’s conviction should therefore be reversed. In these circumstances I do not reach the question of the admissibility of the incriminating statements made by Knott in Family Court on the morning of January 28, 1963.

Knott was aged 17 years and 8 months when he made those confessions. While the trial justice here found that at that time he “was not suffering from any mental disease which would impair him from making a complete and voluntary free-will confession” it should not go unnoticed that in 1963, about a month and a half after those confessions were obtained, a Superior Court justice found Knott mentally incompetent to make a rational defense to the Frenier murder. Neither should it go unnoticed *262that he was thereafter confined at the criminal insane ward at the Adult Correctional Institutions until almost three years later when it was determined that he had sufficiently recovered from his mental illness to enable him to stand trial. See Knott v. Langlois, 102 R. I. 517, 519-20, 231 A.2d 767, 768 (1967).

 In Westover v. United States, 384 U. S. 436, 494-97, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1638-39, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, 735-36 (1966), even adequate warnings given by FBI agents at the outset of their interrogation did not insulate the confession they obtained from the primary taint of a prior confession secured by local officials without similar warnings.

 I approach that question uninfluenced, just as I know my brethren are unaffected, by any considerations concerning the truth or falsity of Knott’s confessions, or his guilt or innocence of the atrocious crime which was committed.

Captain Hilton had been in charge of the investigation of the Frenier murder from its beginning. He had twice previously taken Knott, a prime suspect -in the case from its inception, into custody and questioned him without warning him of his rights.

The circumstances were that the defendant army officer was placed under arrest on August 9, 1944, and confined in the psychopathic ward in the station hospital where, for some time, he was denied callers, communications, comforts and facilities. Charges were not promptly served upon him as required by the Articles of War, nor was he brought before a magistrate and arraigned on the charges preferred against him by the civil authorities. These were the restraints to which he was subjected when he confessed on September 5 or 6, 1944. Without going into any of the details, the Court assumed that his confession was inadmissible under McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 63 S.Ct. 608, 87 L.Ed. 819 (1943).

While I have borrowed the trial justice’s description of Knott’s state during the five-hour interval as being a “sort of catatonic trance,” I also accept as a premise for whatever else I have to say, the trial justice’s finding that Knott used that “trance” as a device to shut off any further questioning on the subject of the murders. What is decisive in this case is not whether Knott was in a trance or a pretended trance during that interval, but whether the Hilton confession was sufficiently removed in time, place and atmosphere from the compulsion responsible for the Pawtucket confessions to insulate it from their corrosive influences.