Court Opinion

ID: 9775957
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:13:54.688993+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:32.197880
License: Public Domain

Tom Glaze, Associate Justice, concurring. I concur on the majority opinion’s point one regarding the trial court’s admission of Anthony Griffin’s custodial statements. In sum, I submit it is unnecessary to affirm solely upon whether the trial court was correct in admitting Griffin’s controverted confessions he claims were coerced from him on June 15, 1993. The record clearly reflects and the trial court so found that Griffin gave officers two confessions on June 14, 1993, which were almost identical to the ones he claimed were coerced from him on June 15. Although Griffin at the Denno hearing denied he gave any statements on June 14, all of the evidence reflects otherwise. Griffin signed and initialed his Miranda rights dated June 14, 1993, and the authorities took both a written and taped statement from Griffin on the same date. On June 14, Griffin also drew a map of where his victim’s house was located. In addition, Griffin’s employer, Willie Smith, testified Griffin confessed to him when Smith spoke by telephone to Griffin on June 15. In Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279 (1991), the Supreme Court held that a trial court’s admission of an involuntary confession is subject to harmless error review on appeal. In allowing for harmless error review where an involuntary confession is in issue, the Fulminante court cautioned that a confession is the most probative and damaging evidence that can be admitted against a defendant, and, if it is a full confession, a jury may be tempted to rely on it alone in reaching its decision. Nonetheless, an error is harmless if that confession was “unimportant in relation to everything else the jury considered on the issue in question as revealed in the record.” Yates v. Evatt, 500 U.S. 391 (1991); see also U.S. v. Jones, 16 F.3rd 275 (8th Cir. 1994). In the present case, the record shows beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury would have convicted Griffin even absent his June 15 confessions. As alluded to above, Griffin gave three other confessions, admitting his having murdered the victim. One of these statements given on June 14 went into enormous detail. In that statement, he related the events leading up to seeing a man working on a vehicle, helping the man and later tying up the man and stealing the man’s guns, car and tools. Griffin left in the man’s car, but returned to kill the man. He also identified his victim’s house as the one he broke into. Other than his empty denial of making no statements on June 14, Griffin offered no evidence to contradict his June 14 signed rights form, written and taped statements, and his drawn map describing where his victim lived. Whether Griffin’s June 15 statements were erroneously admitted into evidence is of no import, since the record bears evidence showing Griffin’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In my view, the majority court’s discussion of whether the state withheld the names of material witnesses who may, or may not, have observed the taking of his June 15 statements unnecessarily complicates this point on review. Thus, I would affirm this suppression issue based upon harmless error. Roaf, J., joins this concurrence.