Court Opinion

ID: 9711216
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:26:34.688333+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:02.884012
License: Public Domain

DUFFY, Justice
(concurring):
I agree that there was no reversible error in the Superior Court proceedings and, for that reason, I join in affirming the judgment.
In my view, the critical question in the case is whether the Wilmington police violated the law in securing a statement of guilt from defendant, Lloyd C. Fullman. Fullman was kept in custody by the police in the City jail for an unusually long period without an appearance before a Magistrate.1 Some twenty-two hours passed between the time when he was arrested (after walking into the Station House about 1 A. M. on Sunday morning) and when he was first taken before a Magistrate. During that period he was questioned by five or six different officers and two Deputy Attorneys General, and he submitted to thirteen separate polygraph charts. That is an extraordinary litany of events which is troublesome, indeed.
But, as the majority opinion states, the police were required by the capias to produce Fullman before the Superior Court when it convened (at 10 A. M. on Monday morning). Given the hour and day at which Fullman presented himself, I cannot say that as a matter of law the police were required to send him to the Department of Corrections facility some thirty-five miles away, to remain for a few hours and then to be returned to Wilmington by 10 A. M. Monday. In saying this, I also note that Fullman’s purpose in voluntarily appearing at the Police Station was to “clear” himself in the attempted murder investigation; that purpose, with the supportive efforts of his parents and girl friend, could not have been undertaken had he been removed to the Corrections facility at Smyrna. And if he lawfully remained in custody at the Station House, then the police, who were investigating an attempted murder, had a right to talk to him as they would any other person who may have had knowledge of the crime. That right, of course, was subject to the binding law announced in Miranda v. Arizona, 348 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), and the tests which must be applied under Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 227, 93 S.Ct. 2041, 36 L.Ed.2d 854 (1973). The majority opinion summarizes the State’s side of the evidence, and I shan’t repeat it. The Trial Judge made specific findings under both Miranda and Bustamonte and I cannot say, as a matter of law, that his rationale or his conclusion was wrong.
I therefore conclude, in this close and difficult case, that the judgment should be affirmed.

. “Unreasonable delay” is the test under Superior Court Criminal Rule 5(a). See the discussion in Warren v. State, Del.Supr., 385 A.2d 137 (1978).