Court Opinion

ID: 9560299
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:46:53.89946+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:46.882621
License: Public Domain

NAHMIAS, Justice,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion in this case, as we are constrained by the record and the applicable law to reach those results. I write separately to note that the record, as it was developed below, *104provides little comfort that the actual truth about Lynch’s confession has been ascertained. Did Lynch voluntarily confess to the murder of Kory Gore, as DeKalb County Detective Cheek testified? If so, that would be important evidence for the jury trying to decide whether Lynch is in fact guilty of the murder. Or did a deputy U. S. Marshal and Nash County, North Carolina Sheriffs officers assault and injure Lynch, keep him naked in a holding cell for two hours, and withhold medical attention, as Lynch testified? If so, that would mean not only that his confession was coerced and inadmissible, but also that those officers committed serious and potentially criminal misconduct.
The trial court was entitled, on the record presented, to credit Lynch’s testimony, and we are required, on that limited record and under the applicable standard of appellate review, to defer to that finding and affirm the suppression of Lynch’s confession. But I would be much more confident that we were reaching the factually correct result, rather than simply the legally correct result, if the record contained more of the readily available and highly probative evidence on the important questions presented — the reliability of a confession to murder and the misconduct of law enforcement officers. What is missing in particular is the testimony of the officers actually involved in Lynch’s arrest and subsequent detention (as Detective Cheek was not), whose conduct is at the heart of this matter.
We do not have that additional evidence before us because the prosecutor did not offer it at the Jackson v. Denno hearing, either in the State’s initial presentation or in rebuttal, and the trial court then declined to allow the State to re-open the evidence. The prosecutor’s decisions reflect some combination of being surprised by Lynch’s testimony, being unprepared for an important evidentiary hearing, and — in the most significant tactical mistake — failing to offer additional evidence in rebuttal or to seek a continuance after Lynch testified.1 The trial court’s subsequent decisions not to re-open the evidence and to deny the State’s formal motion for reconsideration cannot be appealed, as the Court explains.
The trial court, however, had the discretion to re-open the hearing, and I believe it would have been preferable for the court to have done so. Two of the Nash County officers whose conduct was at issue were actually in the courtroom when the court denied the motion for reconsideration and repeated its finding that they had “terrorized [Lynch] until the time DeKalb County got there.” Yet the *105court did not seem interested in what they would say about that issue, under oath and subject to cross-examination. Nor did the State clearly proffer for the record what the officers would say if allowed to testify. The State did offer booking photos that might — or might not — show some of the injuries that Lynch claimed, but the court did not allow the photos even to be tendered into the record.
Decided November 2, 2009.
Gwendolyn Keyes Fleming, District Attorney, Leonora Grant, Assistant District Attorney, Thurbert E. Baker, Attorney General, for appellant.
Alden W. Snead, Gerard B. Kleinrock, for appellee.
The prosecutor’s performance in this case obviously leaves much to be desired. I also recognize and reiterate that trial courts must have broad discretion to conduct evidentiary hearings and to make credibility findings, and they are not required to advise parties of their potential findings before the evidence closes or to give parties the opportunity to present additional evidence to convince the court to change its findings. That is why we are affirming the judgment in this case. But the decisions of the prosecutor and the trial court leave the record insufficient for me, and I expect for the murder victim’s family, the command staff of the law enforcement agencies involved, and the people of our State, to know with confidence either that law enforcement officers engaged in serious misconduct or that a voluntary confession to murder will never be heard by a jury. That is a situation that could easily have been avoided, but regrettably was not.

 After Lynch testified, the trial court asked “Anything further from the State?” The prosecutor replied, “Just argument, your Honor.”