Court Opinion

ID: 9686903
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:11:01.448979+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:22.856135
License: Public Domain

JONES, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
I would hold that the statement made by South to appellant in regard to the probation officer was sufficient to render appellant’s in-custody confession involuntary.
If we construe South’s reference to the probation officer as harmless, are we not approving of his routine interrogation practice of inferring to the prisoner that his confession will be communicated to the probation officer. The “if the probation officer asks” condition implied not only that the probation officer in fact will ask, but also that his confession, or lack of one, will influence the probation officer’s action toward the defendant.
Appellant relies upon Womack v. State, supra. In that case the statement which the sheriff said he “could have made” to the prisoner was: “It would go light on me if I did talk.” I think South’s remarks here under consideration are subject to the same vice of the admonition given by the sheriff to the prisoner in Womack, supra.
The same purport and intent of the statement of the sheriff in Womack, supra, can be imparted to South’s reference to the probation officer in the instant case. Indeed, on a relative scale, the prohibited statement in Womack may be classified as an innocent truism, making no reference to any person whose official position alone would infer special consideration; while here the interrogator’s reference to the probation officer infers not only a possibility of probation, if convicted, but that the defendant’s chances of receiving probation are at least in some measure dependent upon his confession. The strength of the inducement is made clear when we recognize the unmistakable inference in South’s statement “. . . if we felt like he told us the truth . . .” The prisoner may have been young, frightened, and uneducated, but he would have had no difficulty in realizing that “the truth” to Officer South meant nothing short of a full confession. This, coupled with a holding out of even the remotest chance that such confession would be looked upon with favor by the probation officer, was violative of the defendant’s constitutionally guaranteed right against self incrimination; consequently, I would hold that the admission of the confession induced thereby was error, and that the conviction is due to be reversed.
HEFLIN, C. J., concurs.