Court Opinion

ID: 9449069
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:54:48.152052+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:40.718989
License: Public Domain

BASTIAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
My examination of the record indicates that the confession was freely and voluntarily given, and in no sense was it obtained in violation of the Mallory rule. The police questioned appellant on several occasions prior to his arrest. Having additional information, they arrested him in the 2700 block of Wade Road, S. E., on January 17, 1961, at 6:45 P.M. He was taken to the Fourteenth Precinct, located at 42nd and Benning Road, S. E., arriving there at 7:20 P.M. and then being taken to an upstairs room at the precinct. Appellant was not questioned on his way to the precinct, nor did he volunteer any statement. Detective Shirley testified that at about 7:30 P.M., after appellant had been advised of his rights and that anything he stated might be used against him, Coleman gave a statement claiming an alibi. He was then left alone until 8:45 P.M., when the officers familiar with the case, who had been called from downtown to the precinct, arrived to interrogate him. Thus confronted, appellant admitted his guilt within five minutes. Surely his oral admissions, at least, may be received. Metoyer v. United States, 102 U.S.App.D.C. 62, 250 F.2d 30 (1957); and see Mitchell v. United States, 322 U.S. 65, 64 S.Ct. 896, 88 L.Ed. 1140 (1944). Thereupon, the officers undertook to reduce those threshold admissions to writing, a process involving a reasonable time, before booking the appellant. He was given a preliminary hearing at 10:00 A.M. the next day. No confession or statement made by appellant after the confession was offered in evidence.1
During the interim between the giving of the alibi at 7:30 P.M. and the interrogation of appellant at 8:45 P.M., the police were engaged in checking his story against those of others who were being interrogated and whose stories, as it turned out, shattered his alibi. The police can and indeed should, in fairness to a defendant, check his story and, if it is contradicted — as it was here — confront the accused with the evidence against him. This may take time, and if that time is not so unreasonable as to bring it into conflict with the Mallory rule, it is proper. I think that the time here was not so unreasonable.
If the accused’s claim of an alibi had been found to be correct, after having been checked out, he should and would have been released. The police had the right and the duty to check the alibi to see if Coleman was the man to be charged with this cold-blooded murder, and it turned out that he was.
It is to be remembered that the District Court properly submitted to the jury, after hearing the testimony out of the presence of the jury, the question of whether or not the confession was voluntary. Obviously, the jury found that it was.