Court Opinion

ID: 9514707
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 22:51:20.234501+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:20.289587
License: Public Domain

*492SABERS, Justice
(concurring specially).
[¶ 25.] The actions of this Sioux Falls detective clearly cross the line of permissible interrogation. Unfortunately, these overreaching interrogations are not new to the Sioux Falls Detective Bureau. Justice Henderson’s concurrence in Dickey, decided over ten years ago, still rings true:
I vote hereby to affirm this conviction but with a singular warning to the Sioux Falls Detective Bureau that there is a limit to which it can proceed, in order to obtain incriminating statements. I truly hope that this affirmance does not spawn further similar practices.
Dickey, 459 N.W.2d at 450.
[¶ 26.] The actions by Detective Lubbers demonstrate this warning went unnoticed here. It would seem that the Sioux Falls Detective Bureau is as well versed in our harmless error analysis as we are. Apparently, the trampling of a suspect’s rights is of little concern to some members of law enforcement as long as a conviction will be upheld. However, more harm than good may come from such practice.
[¶ 27.] In State v. Oltmanns, this Court affirmed the suppression of incriminating statements obtained through coercion. 519 N.W.2d 602, 606 (S.D.1994). “Maybe they will persist in their present practice. If so, it won’t be long before the results necessarily required in Oltmanns will revisit them.” State v. Darby, 1996 SD 127, ¶ 52, 556 N.W.2d 311, 323 (Sabers, J., dissenting).