Court Opinion

ID: 9664976
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:35:45.578805+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:11.816929
License: Public Domain

GALBREATH, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
The trial judge made a ruling, outside the presence of the jury, that the investigating officer could not be asked anything about a statement that had been given by the defendant. The final instruction given by the judge was: “It has already been stipulated that the statement can’t come in, so all he can ask the man (the witness) is ‘did he talk to him.’ ”
In other words, the court ruled that the officer could tell what he did, but not what the defendant said, or did not say.
In spite of this clear instruction, the attorney for the State asked the following questions:
*372“Q. And, did you interrogate the defendant in this case?
A. I did.
Q. John Guy, and when was that?
A. The 22nd.
Q. And, did he make a statement?
A. He did.
MR. COLTON OBJECTS: If your Honor please, at this time I am going to object to any statement.
THE COURT: Alright, Sir, we’ll sustain the objection.”
The plain message delivered to the jury from the above was: “Yes, the defendant made a statement but since his lawyer knows it would damage his case I am not allowed to tell you what he said.”
This accomplishes indirectly the very thing the court had ruled could not be done. We recently held in a case now before the Supreme Court on certiorari (Walter Flanagan v. State, December, 1968) that “no more should be made of the refusal of a defendant to tell an investigating officer anything while in custody than of the refusal of the same defendant to take the witness chair and tell the jury anything.” For the officer in this case to tell the jury that he obtained a statement but could not testify about it violates this principle even more than did the officer in Flanagan who merely testified the defendant refused to tell him anything.
For the above stated reason, I would reverse the judgment of the lower court.