Court Opinion

ID: 9570726
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:25:40.801368+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:15:17.693027
License: Public Domain

Justice EXUM
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent and vote for a new trial. I believe prejudicial error was committed (1) when defendant’s statements made to Detective Holder were admitted into evidence against him; (2) when the trial court denied defendant’s motion to be allowed to examine the prosecuting witness’ pre-trial statements; and (3) by the prosecutor’s improper cross-examination of defendant.
The conduct of Detective Holder when he confronted defendant in jail on 13 May 1977 with a warrant in his pocket for defendant’s arrest on this rape charge was an attempt to circumvent the requirements of Miranda, as transparently obvious as it was clever. His conduct was palpably designed to elicit in-culpatory information and clearly placed the accused, however subtly, under a compulsion to speak. As such it constituted “interrogation” within the meaning of Miranda.
There are many forms of interrogation known to police science other than asking direct questions. A number of them are mentioned in the majority opinion. For others see the lengthy discussion in Miranda, 384 U.S. at 448-57 and the authorities therein cited. The Supreme Court in Miranda considered that an “interrogation” occurred, giving rise to the accused’s privilege against self-incrimination about which he was then required to be *636advised, whenever the police placed the accused under a “compulsion to speak.” The Supreme Court, addressing this question in Miranda, said, 384 U.S. at 460-61:
“The question in these cases is whether the privilege is fully applicable during a period of custodial interrogation ... .We are satisfied that all the principles embodied in the privilege apply to informal compulsion exerted by law-enforcement officers during in-custody questioning. An individual swept from familiar surroundings into police custody, surrounded by antagonistic forces, and subjected to the techniques of persuasion described above cannot be otherwise than under compulsion to speak. As a practical matter, the compulsion to speak in the isolated setting of the police station may well be greater than in courts or other official investigations, where there are often impartial observers to guard against intimidation or trickery.”
“It is implicit in Miranda that interrogation in this context need not be of the question and answer type.” State v. Godfrey, 131 N.J. Super. 168, 178, 329 A. 2d 75, 80 (1974); accord, Commonwealth v. Mercier, 451 Pa. 211, 302 A. 2d 337 (1973). In Godfrey the New Jersey Appellate Division found an “interrogation” had occurred when the officers merely confronted the accused with the fact that he had failed a lie detector test and accused him of lying. In Mercier the Pennsylvania Supreme Court found an “interrogation” when the police read to the accused the written statement of an accomplice implicating the accused in the crime. No questions were directed toward the accused. In Commonwealth v. Hamilton, 445 Pa. 292, 285 A. 2d 172 (1971) the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that confronting the defendant with an accomplice who accused defendant of committing the crime amounted to an interrogation within the meaning of Miranda. The Court said, 445 Pa. at 297, 285 A. 2d at 175:
“To sanction this technique without proper warnings would be to place a premium on the ingenuity of the police to devise methods of indirect interrogation, rather than to implement the plain mandate of Miranda that a suspect in-custody should be clearly advised of his rights before any attempt is made to induce him to speak.”
*637In the celebrated case of Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387 (1977), the Supreme Court and all the lower state and federal courts which considered the case (it having arrived at the Supreme Court from the State of Iowa via federal habeas corpus) concluded that a declaratory statement, made by an officer in the presence of a murder suspect about the appropriateness of giving the victim a decent burial, constituted a form of interrogation which absent a waiver of his rights rendered inadmissible information later obtained through the response of the accused to the statement.
The conduct of Detective Holder was no less calculated to place and no less in fact placed the accused under a compulsion to speak than the “declaratory statement” held to be interrogation by a majority of the Supreme Court in Brewer v. Williams, supra. I believe this conduct must, therefore, have been preceded by the Miranda warnings before defendant’s responses could be admitted in evidence against him.
I am unable to say, furthermore, that the trial court’s error in failing to permit defendant to examine the prosecuting witness’ pre-trial statement was harmless. As the majority notes, there was a discrepancy between his statement and her trial testimony and “[tjhis discrepancy might have been exploited by defense counsel to question the accuracy of her recollection concerning her version of other events which transpired on the evening she was assaulted.” Had defendant had an opportunity to exploit this discrepancy on cross-examination, it may well have altered in favor of defendant the delicate balance already inherent in the case. The jury’s resolution of this case depended on whether they believed, not necessarily that the prosecuting witness was raped, but whether she was raped by this defendant. Defendant admitted having a confrontation with the prosecuting witness concerning an automobile accident at the place where Miss Walker testified the rape occurred. He also claims to have smelled on her breath “the heavy odor of alcoholic beverages” and “reefer or marijuana smoke in her car.” He said she vomited during their conversation. He also testified that he observed a tall blond man running from Miss Walker’s car when he pulled into the parking lot where she had stopped and as he left her after their discussion he last saw her going through some bushes. Defendant’s defense was, then, that he did not rape nor have any sexual en*638counter with Miss Walker and that, if she had been raped as her testimony and that of other corroborating witnesses tended to show, someone else must have done it. This being the nature of his defense, that Miss Walker had said in a pre-trial statement that she was unconscious at some point during her encounter with defendant, would seem to be a crucial fact the benefit of which was denied to defendant by the trial court’s error in not ordering that the statement be disclosed.
I do not understand the test for harmless error under these circumstances to be whether or not the content of the undisclosed statement creates, in itself, a reasonable doubt as to defendant’s guilt. The majority relies on United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97 (1976), for this proposition. Agurs, however, applied this test to so-called exculpatory information which the government under the rule of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963) might be required to disclose to a defendant even in the absence of defendant’s request for such material. In Agurs the material not disclosed was the deceased’s prior criminal record when the defense in a murder prosecution was self-defense. Noting the “incongruity” of the claim of self-defense in the first place and that the deceased’s “prior record did not contradict any evidence offered by the prosecutor . . . and ‘did not even arguably give rise to any inference of perjury,” the Supreme Court held that “since after considering it [the prior record] in the context of the entire record the trial judge remained convinced of respondent’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and since we are satisfied that his firsthand appraisal of the record was thorough and entirely reasonable, we hold that the prosecutor’s failure to tender Sewell’s record to the defense did not deprive respondent of a fair trial . ...” 427 U.S. at 113-14.
Here, of course, defendant specifically asked for the prior out-of-court statement and his request was denied, a denial which the majority concedes was error. Furthermore, the question would seem to be not whether the content of the statement itself creates a reasonable doubt as to defendant’s guilt but whether through skillful use of the statement on cross-examination such a reasonable doubt could have been created. I am unable to say, on this record, that it could not have been.
I also believe that the cross-examination of defendant by the state was not in good faith, improper and highly prejudicial to *639defendant. On cross-examination defendant readily admitted having been convicted of tampering with an automobile and having been placed in custody for that offense on 3 May. The following cross-examination then occurred:
“Q. Mr. McLean, the car that you tampered with, was a 1973 Plymouth Duster, blue in color and it was occupied by a female person named Joann Ellis, and you were tampering with it by pulling and pushing upon the door handle and latch, weren’t you sir?
“MR. MCNAMARA: Objection, motion to strike.
“COURT: Objection overruled, motion denied.
Exception No. 8
“A. No sir.
“Q. Sir, isn’t that what you did?
“A. No sir.
“Q. That’s what you pled guilty to wasn’t it, sir?
“A. No sir.
“Q. You pled not guilty and you were found guilty, is that right?
“A. Yes sir.
“COURT: What is the charge?
“Q. The charge that you were convicted of, that you did unlawfully and willfully, on the 7th day of April, 1977, tamper with a 1973 Plymouth Duster, blue in color, without consent of the owner, Joanne Ellis, and pulling upon the door handle and latch; what did you do on that occasion sir?
“MR. McNamara: Objection.
“COURT: Objection overruled.
Exception No. 9
*640“A. On the occasion on that night I wasn’t tampering with the car. I was getting out going to the building looking for the income tax place. I dropped my keys, the guard came out, accused me —I went to another building looking for the income tax place and then the guards came and thought I was breaking in the place; brought me to court. He called me a liar. Then he put me in jail for nothing.
“Q. Mr. McLean do you have any military service?
“A. Yes sir.
“Q. What kind of discharge do you have?
“A. Honorable, sir.
“Q. Mr. McLean you were discharged for psychiatric reasons weren’t you?
“MR. MCNAMARA: Objection, motion to strike.
“COURT: Sustained, motion to strike allowed.
“MR. MCNAMARA: Could I approach the bench?
“COURT: You will not consider the question about his discharge from the Army for psychiatric reasons. Disregard that. Come down Mr. McLean, and we will take a recess. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, ya’ll can go out. Don’t discuss the case among yourselves or allow anyone to discuss it with you. Come back in fifteen minutes.”
Jurors leave courtroom.
“Mr. MCNAMARA: Your Honor, I would like to move for a mistrial based on that also. I think that’s very prejudicial.
“COURT: Motion denied.
Exception No. 11”
On oral argument the state conceded that the warrant charging defendant with tampering with a motor vehicle was couched in the language with which the prosecutor framed his question as it appears above immediately before defendant’s Exception No. 9, and that the prosecutor was undoubtedly reading from the warrant. The prosecutor, however, earlier inserted the notion that the vehicle “was occupied by a female person named *641Joann Ellis.” There was nothing in the warrant to indicate that the vehicle was occupied at the time defendant was alleged to have tampered with it. He was not convicted of tampering with an occupied vehicle, as the prosecutor must have known. The record thus reveals that the earlier question was asked in bad faith.
We have, furthermore, recently held in State v. Finch, 293 N.C. 132, 235 S.E. 2d 819 (1977) that it is not improper on cross-examination to ask a defendant-witness who admits a prior conviction the time and place of the conviction and the punishment imposed. We cautioned however, 293 N.C. at 141, 235 S.E. 2d at 824:
“Strong policy reasons support the principle that ordinarily one may not go into the details of the crime by which the witness is being impeached. Such details unduly distract the jury from the issues properly before it, harass the witness and inject confusion into the trial of the case.”
It has also long been the rule with us that it is error warranting a new trial where the prosecutor “testifies” by injecting “into the trial of a cause to the prejudice of the accused by argument or by insinuating questions supposed facts of which there is no evidence.” State v. Phillips, 240 N.C. 516, 524, 82 S.E. 2d 763, 767 (1954). (Emphasis supplied.)
The prosecutor here violated both of these principles when he asked whether in the automobile tampering case the car was not occupied by a female person. He violated the last mentioned principle when he asked whether defendant had been discharged from the army “for psychiatric reasons.”
In a case such as this where the evidence is closely balanced and which involves a sexual assault upon a female person, these improper questions by the prosecutor bore too heavily to the prejudice of the defendant to be dismissed as harmless error or dealt with as a matter within the trial judge’s discretion.