Court Opinion

ID: 9665928
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:59:57.979642+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:20.810854
License: Public Domain

JONES, Justice
(dissenting):
I respectfully.dissent. I would state the issue thusly: Must the State in a criminal prosecution, as a predicate to admissibility, prove the voluntariness of a confession and the existence of a Miranda warning in the presence of the jury after it has successfully established voluntariness and Miranda warnings to the trial Judge en camera?
By affirming the Court of Criminal Appeals’ reversal of the conviction in this case, the majority of this Court has overturned the traditional distinction between admissibility and credibility of a confession; and, by destroying this distinction, Alabama now stands alone, as far as I can determine, in fashioning a hybrid rule for admissibility of confessions: At the defendant’s insistence, the State must first overcome the presumption against voluntariness en camera and then this predicate to admissibility must again be proved before the jury. The majority says that such proof the second time around is in order for the jury to weigh its credibility; but admissibility, not credibility, is the only issue raised by the objection (grounded on lack of proper predicate) at the time the confession is offered into evidence before the jury.
While its utility may be of doubtful value in the context of a dissenting opinion, it is at least interesting to review briefly the legal and factual background against which the dispositive question in this appeal arose. A good beginning is the excellent statement of the rule in the early case of Redd v. State, 69 Ala. 255:
“It is a well established maxim of the law, that the admissibility of evidence is always a question to be determined by the court, and its weight or credibility is for the determination of the jury. It is for the court, therefore, to say whether the confessions of a prisoner are voluntary or involuntary, and this question being judicially settled can not be reviewed by the jury. Hence a charge is erroneous which submits to them the decision of this legal question, and should for that reason, be refused.
“There is no conflict whatever between this principle and the further pne, which is equally well settled, that after the confessions, in a given case, have been admitted, the jury may consider the circumstances under which the confessions were obtained, and the appliances by which they were elicited, including the situation and mutual relation of the parties, in exercising their exclusive prerogative of determining the credibility of the evidence, or the weight to which it is properly entitled in controlling the formation of the verdict . . . . ”
Under this so-called orthodox rule, the admissibility-credibility distinction was preserved through instruction to the jury *357since the voluntariness predicate — though invoking a pure legal ruling on admissibility — was taken before' the jury in the same manner as all other proof. Subsequent federal case law development (notably Miranda and Jackson) added two constitutional dimensions to Alabama’s “presumption against voluntariness” rule: First, additional rights were included in the warning (e. g., right of counsel); and, second en camera proceedings were required to insure against irradicable prejudice to the defendant in the event the predicate was ruled legally insufficient to admit the confession into evidence.
In the pre-preliminary inquiry era, then the defendant could not avail himself of the involuntariness presumption • without necessarily casting on the state the burden of proving to the Court and before the jury, as a predicate to the admission of the confession, the circumstance under which the confession was obtained. The presentation of this predicate before the jury was purely incidental to the pr e.-Jacks on single proceeding which then existed. While the Jury’s limited prerogative to weigh the confession and its attendant circumstances, and not to judge its competence, was carefully circumscribed by thorough instructions, this single proceeding system forced the defendant to risk dual prejudice: First, the jury heard confession evidence prior to a competence ruling by the Court; and, second, and just as potentially prejudicial, the confession may be given undue emphasis and weight by the State’s compliance with the predicate requirement. Jackson’s en camera requisite cured the first problem. . Before we proceed with an analysis of the second point, a brief statement of the factual context of the instant review may be helpful.
The record shows that the defendant, at the first hint of the State’s offer of a predicate for the admission of the confession, objected on the ground that this was a matter for the Court, not for the jury. Acting upon this appropriate objection, and the State’s concurrence therein, the trial Court then recessed the jury and heard testimony en camera on the voluntariness issue for two hours. After holding the confession competent, the trial Court reconvened the jury and the State offered the defendant’s confession. Defendant again objected to its admission before the jury on the stated ground that the proper predicate had not been laid.
The purpose of the objection at this point was in the exercise of abundance of precaution to preserve for review the trial Court’s ruling on admissibility; that is, the defendant did not want to risk his failure to object as constituting a waiver of his previous objection. The trial Court’s ruling, consistent with his en camera indication, was a statement for the record in the main proceeding upholding the legal competency of the confession.
The majority opinion holds that the trial Court erred in not sustaining this objection. Thus, this enigma: Does the majority mean that the trial Court should have changed its mind and ruled differently than earlier indicated en camera? Or, should the trial Court have shared its admissibility prerogative with the jury? Actually, it is not the intent of the majority to do either; but I have posed this alternative inquiry to make a point. The majority opinion states: “Under the rationale of [Duncan & Jackson], how can the jury consider ‘the voluntariness as affecting the weight or credibility of the confession’ unless the state presents evidence as to the ‘Miranda’ and ‘voluntariness’ predicates to the jury?” This presupposes one of two things: Either the defendant will invariably prefer to have the State prove before the jury the circumstances surrounding the confession; or, by objecting, the defendant can preclude such proof. The first condition is ruled out, and rightly so, by the majority’s observation “that defense counsel may decide for *358reasons of trial strategy it would not be desirable, from defendant’s standpoint, to rehash this evidence before the jury.”
We now look at the second supposition that the defendant, by timely objection, may preclude the State from bolstering the confession by showing the surrounding circumstances. If it is error for the trial Court to overrule Defendant objection to the introduction of the confession on the ground of lack of the voluntariness predicate, how, then, could it be error to overrule the defendant’s object to the State’s offer of such proof. If this predicate can be insisted upon by the defendant, then surely the State would have the right to make such proof over the defendant’s objection. A contrary conclusion would produce the oddity of rendering either choice (to prove or not to prove the predicate) subject to the objection by the defendant.
I will now make a final point in the context of a comment on the Mississippi (Rhone) and Iowa (Holland) cases cited by the majority. Neither of these cases addresses itself to the issue before us. Surely, there should be no question in anyone’s mind that the defendant has the unqualified right to attack the credibility of a confession ruled competent by the Court and admitted into evidence before the jury. Neither case held (or addressed by way of dictum) whether the trial Court would have erred in requiring the state to prove the voluntariness predicate before the jury. To be sure, there is dictum to the effect that either party has the right to submit such proof. With this I disagree. To avoid one of the inherent potentials for prejudice, as earlier discussed, I would limit this right to the defendant — permitting the State to preface the offer of a confession or inculpatory statement, first ruled competent by the trial Court, with words to the effect, “Officer, after warning the defendant of his constitutional right, did he make a statement ?”
In the trial of the instant case, the defendant, on direct and cross examination of the police officers who heard the defendant’s confession, explored the circumstances under which the confession was made. On cross examination, the defense attorney emphasized the violent nature of police arrest procedures when they “bust some citizen’s door open,” and he portrayed the panic and confusion within the defendant’s apartment after the police had entered. This evidence was admissible because it bore upon the credibility of the confession. Following such an examination, the prosecution could elect to counter this attack on credibility by introducing the evidence of Miranda warnings and voluntariness to offset the defendant’s presentation. Under the majority opinion of this Court of the Court of Criminal Appeals’ interpretation of the Johnson case, the prosecution would put the trial Court in error by not presenting as strong a case against the defendant as possible. I do not believe this is the law of Johnson. I, therefore, would reverse the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals and remand to the Court of Criminal Appeals for affirmance of the conviction of the trial Court.