Court Opinion

ID: 9707939
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 02:25:34.475491+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:40.418210
License: Public Domain

*446Prescott, J.,
filed the following dissenting opinion, in which BrunB, C. J., and Hornby, J., concurred.
There can be little doubt that an inexpiable and very brutal crime, as it was described by her, was committed at the home of the prosecuting witness on October 11, 1962. Also there is little doubt that the State offered sufficient evidence, extrinsic of appellant’s confession, to have warranted his conviction of the offense of rape, which formerly, in many jurisdictions, would have justified an affirmance of the conviction. However, the Supreme Court of the United States, in comparatively recent years, has laid down certain rules with reference to constitutional questions that are binding upon all of the State courts. Hence, we must examine the evidence in the light of those rules and see if it can stand the test of disclosing that appellant was not denied due process of law, for under our constitutional system of government, the guilty, as well as the innocent, must be afforded constitutional due process, Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U. S. 568. And in determining whether there has been a denial of due process by reason of admitting a coerced confession, the Supreme Court will not consider the sufficiency of the evidence extrinsic of the confession to sustain the conviction. Haynes v. Washington, 373 U. S. 503; Haley v. Ohio, 332 U. S. 596. Cf. Fahy v. Connecticut, 375 U. S. 85.
I concur in all of the rulings of the majority, except the holding that the State proved the appellant’s confession was “freely and voluntarily” given. I accept the quotation from Abbott v. State, 231 Md. 462, used by the majority, as being the unquestioned law of this State, and also' recognize that no physical violence, threats thereof, or promises were used to extract a confession from the accused. However, a confession may be “coerced,” and therefore inadmissible as evidence, without these factors being present. Culombe v. Connecticut, supra. In Culombe, the Supreme Court stated that the police may make a suspect an unwilling collaborator in establishing his guilt “not only with ropes and a rubber hose * * *, by relay questioning persistently, insistently subjugating a tired mind [but alsoj by subtler devices. * * *. Is the confession the product of an essentially free and unconstrained choice by its maker? If it is, *447if he has willed to confess, it may be used against him. If it is not, if his will has been overborne and his capacity for self-determination critically impaired, the use of his confession offends due process, [citation] The line of distinction is that at which governing self-direction is lost and compulsion, of whatever nature or however infused, propels, or helps to propel, the confession.” (Emphasis added.) The Supreme Court, in Haynes v. Washington, supra, held that the confession therein involved “was obtained in an atmosphere of substantial coercion and inducement,” and expressed the same principle quoted above from Culombe, in terms slightly less esoteric: “In short, the true test of admissibility is that the confession is made freely, voluntarily and without compulsion or inducement of any sort. * * *. Haynes’ undisputed testimony as to the making and signing the confession used against him at the trial leave no doubt that it was obtained under a totality of circumstances evidencing an involuntary written admission of guilt [italics added].” This Court has likewise recognized that a confession may be psychologically coerced as well as being coerced by physical brutality. James v. State, 193 Md. 31. Cf. U. S. v. Mitchell, 322 U. S. 65; Palko v. Conn., 302 U. S. 319; Chambers v. Florida, 309 U. S. 227; Upshaw v. U. S., 335 U. S. 410. And see Fahy v. Connecticut, supra, wherein the Supreme Court stated that an accused “should have a chance to show that his admissions were induced by being confronted with illegally seized evidence.”
Before attempting to apply the above tests to our present case, it will be necessary to add slightly to the statement of facts of the majority, because one cannot get from them the full picture as it is disclosed in the record extract. Appellant is a Negro adolescent, fifteen years of age, “emotionally unstable,” with an I.Q. of about 61, one of “borderline intelligence.” Another test showed the I.Q. to be about 74. Upon being notified of the crime, the sheriff, immediately and properly called in “all of the deputy sheriffs he could locate.” He and Deputy Sheriff Canter located appellant at his home, at about 1:45 p.m. on the day of the offense, and, after questioning him left him there. Shortly thereafter, the sheriff radioed Deputy Sheriff Jameson to bring appellant to the house of the *448prosecuting witness. After locating him, Jameson and appellant arrived at the Dobry home at about 3:30 p.m. The sheriff told him he was a suspect and the sheriff and this deputy questioned him, and asked if they might go to his home and look around, to which he assented. They drove to his home, where he was “asked” to stay in the car. The sheriff and his deputy searched the premises, and obtained evidence that was presented at his trial. The three drove back to the Dobry house, and after a few minutes, the sheriff instructed another deputy, one Fuller, to take appellant to the court house, while the sheriff followed. On the way, they stopped at the hospital (where appellant was “shaken down” according to the sheriff) to see if Mrs. Dobry could identify appellant, but she was “under medication.” They proceeded to the sheriff’s office, arriving at about S :00 p.m. Appellant was placed in the “lockup” room. This room was approximately 4 by 6 feet and located within the entrance room to the sheriff’s offices. It had no windows, was ventilated, and was furnished only with a bench. In about five minutes, the sheriff left. Magistrate Scott apparently was in charge of the office in the absence of the sheriff. A warrant, charging appellant with having committed the offense at the Dobry home, was read to him by Fuller at about 6:00 p.m. At around 7:00 p.m., appellant was taken from the “lockup” room in the sheriff’s office by two other deputy sheriffs, Monroe and Mudd, and placed by himself, in the juvenile detention room of the jail. At 12:00 p.m., midnight, he was removed by Monroe and Mudd from the jail back to the sheriff’s office, where he was placed in the custody of another deputy sheriff, one Cooksey. He, of course, passed the “lockup” room where he had been from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. Cooksey took his finger prints, and then took him into the .sheriff’s private office where they were alone. Cooksey questioned appellant, and told him that he, Cooksey, would “like him to get it off his chest.” At 1:05 a.m., Cooksey began to write appellant’s confession and it was completed at about 2:00 a.m.
Thus, it is seen that it is doubtful whether the statement in the majority opinion “appellant confessed after being questioned for something less than an hour by a single officer” is completely accurate. Between 3:30 p.m. on October 11 and 2:00 *449a.m. the following morning, appellant was in the custody of, and came in contact with, no less than eight law enforcement officials. He was questioned by most of them, and saw some of them more than once as he was moved back and forth in the officers’ cars. After 3:30 p.m., the record does not reveal that he saw friend, relative or a lawyer. It was shown that the father came to the sheriff’s office around 6:00 p.m. (because the sheriff was searching for him), and it is asserted that appellant failed to request that he be allowed to talk with his father. However, there is not the slightest evidence to show that appellant knew his father was there. It is also asserted that “there was evidence from which the court could find that the jailer had fed the appellant on the night in question.” The evidence as to whether appellant received food was conflicting, but if the accuracy of the last assertion be conceded, the fact remains that the trial court made no finding on the point. The only significance I place upon appellant’s having received food, or not, is whether he was just “tired of fighting” (as we shall soon see he claimed) and the possible psychological effect of fearing that he was not going to receive food if he failed “to cooperate.” The officer who obtained appellant’s confession stated that the reason the boy was left incarcerated for seven hours and then taken out of jail at midnight and removed to the sheriff’s office was because “we were busy at the scene, trying to gather any evidence we could find there.” The officers had been at the scene of the crime in relays since 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon. Mrs. Dobry had left for the hospital at about that time. It hardly seems possible that they could not have made a thorough search of the scene between 1:00 p.m. and dark — surely before midnight. In any event, it was not shown that any new evidence was obtained by the officers after 7:00 p.m. and before midnight.
Appellant testified he had eaten breakfast in the morning, but had had no food since that time and when he confessed. He also had had no water or other liquid to drink after being arrested, and had not been to sleep after being placed in jail. Cooksey told him to “come on, confess, to get it off my chest,” he “got tired of fighting it, so I went on and confessed.”
Applying the principles of law laid down by the Supreme *450Court, as we have set them forth above, to‘ the undisputed facts surrounding the taking of appellant’s confession, I am impelled to the conclusion that the State failed in its burden to establish that the confession was “freely and voluntarily” made. We have here an ignorant adolescent Negro of fifteen who was moved back and forth in police cars beginning at 1:45 p.m. in the afternoon until 5 :00 p.m., during which he was questioned by a number of officers, and then placed in a 4 by 6 foot “lockup” without windows, where a warrant, charging him with a most serious offense was read to him. He was kept therein until 7:00 p.m., and then removed to the county jail. He was removed from the county jail at midnight for fingerprinting and questioning. The police did not tell him that his father was at the jail in the evening, or ask him if he desired to see his father. He had seen no friend, relative or lawyer. The Courts, in my opinion, should not be so naive as not to realize the purpose and motive of taking a fifteen year old youth out of jail at midnight for the purpose of fingerprinting and questioning. (Under compelling circumstances not here present, this might be permissible.) It is clear to me that it was done, because experience had taught the mature police that a tired, scared boy is more susceptible to their questioning at midnight than one who is not tired or frightened in daylight hours. There was no sufficient reason shown why he could not have been questioned at any reasonable hour before midnight or on the following morning.
Can it realistically be said that a confession obtained under the above circumstances (a) was not “obtained in an atmosphere of substantial coercion and inducement”; (b) was obtained under a situation where “the totality of circumstances” did not evidence a confession that was not freely and voluntarily (as these are defined by the law) made; or was obtained at a time when the appellant still maintained his “governing self-direction” and there was no “compulsion, of whatever nature or however infused, [that] propel [led] or help[ed] to propel the confession”? I believe not; the same tactics have induced many mature, well-educated men to confess.
The facts in the case of Haley v. Ohio, 332 U. S. 596, were quite similar, but somewhat more drastic, to those in the case *451at bar. There, a Negro boy of fifteen was arrested at midnight, and questioned by five or six policemen in relays of one or two each. (In the case at bar, appellant was in the custody of seven police officers, in relays of one to three, from early afternoon until after midnight. He was questioned both before and after midnight, but was not questioned while he was in the “lockup”' room or the jail.) After about five hours he confessed. The Supreme Court stated: “Age 15 is a tender and difficult age for a boy of any race. He cannot be judged by the more exacting standards of maturity. That which would leave a man cold and unimpressed can overawe and overwhelm a lad in his early teens. This is the period of great instability which the crisis of adolescence produces.” It then set aside his conviction on the ground that the confession, after the several hours of questioning during the night by the police without any friend or legal counsel at hand, had been obtained by methods at variance with fundamental concepts of fairness and justice.
I would reverse, and remand for a new trial.
Chief Judge Brune and Judge Horney have authorized me to say they concur in this dissent.