Court Opinion

ID: 9792441
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:29:30.547157+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:42.878452
License: Public Domain

ROVIRA, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in the holding in Part II of the majority opinion because I understand it to *1072be limited to the circumstance where the robbery victim is killed during the course of the robbery. An entirely different holding might be appropriate where the person killed was not the robbery victim, but, instead, death occurred to another person during the course of the robbery.
I dissent from Part III of the majority opinion ordering a remand for the purpose of determining whether law enforcement authorities unnecessarily delayed taking the defendant before a judge for advisement of his rights prior to custodial interrogation. The record discloses that the trial court held an extensive hearing on the defendant’s motion to suppress his confession and whether that confession was the product of unnecessary delay in bringing him before a judge for the advisement of his rights pursuant to Crim.P. 5.
It is undisputed that the defendant was arrested at 10:15 a.m., taken to an Adams County police substation, then to the Adams County jail in Brighton, and finally to the Denver police station where he arrived between 2:00 p.m. and 2:30 p.m.
The defendant, after being advised of his Miranda rights for the third time, gave a statement at approximately 2:40 p.m. confessing his participation in the killing of Doris Mae Hargrove. The record further reflects that most of the four and one-half hour period between the arrest and the defendant’s confession was spent transporting him from the place of arrest to Denver and performing routine administrative procedures. At no time before the defendant was brought to Denver was there any interrogation concerning the Lakewood robbery and killing. The defendant gave his statement no more than forty minutes after arriving in Denver, and no evidence was introduced by him at the suppression hearing of any connection between that brief delay, the failure to provide a judicial advisement of his rights, and the resulting statement. See Raigosa v. State, 562 P.2d 1009 (Wyo.1977).
In my view, the majority opinion improperly applies Crim.P. 5 and People v. Heintze, 200 Colo. 248, 614 P.2d 367 (1980), to the facts of this ease. The police do not have an obligation to take an arrested person to a judge for an advisement of his rights immediately after arrest. The police are entitled to a reasonable time period in which to transport the accused to the proper jurisdiction, especially, as here, when the events occur within a metropolitan area. See Commonwealth v. Clifton, 272 Pa.Super. 95, 414 A.2d 686 (Pa.Super.1979) (four and one-half hour period consisting of transportation and twenty-five minutes extra not unnecessary); Commonwealth v. Terebieniec, 268 Pa.Super. 511, 408 A.2d 1120 (Pa.Super.1979) (time period consisting of transportation and thirty minutes extra not unnecessary).
The trial court has already considered the Crim.P. 5 delay issue and concluded that the delay did not contribute to the acquisition of the challenged statement.1 The trial judge, whose ruling was issued before our decision in Heintze, supra, concluded that, under the facts of this case, the delay was not unreasonable and that the detention was not used to exact evidence from an unwitting suspect. In Heintze, we recognized that a “per se rule of exclusion” for Rule 5 violations was unfeasible, and, instead, required a case-by-case determination of the delay issues. 200 Colo, at - — , 614 P.2d at 371. The trial court’s findings here, while not phrased exactly in the language adopted in Heintze, are dispositive of the issue of delay. Both the issue of necessity and the issue of prejudice were argued before the trial court and rejected.2 Since no further purpose will be served by re*1073manding the case for findings already made by the trial court, I would reverse the order of the court of appeals.
I am authorized to say that Chief Justice HODGES joins me in this dissent.

. The trial court found that the defendant was alert, calm, unemotional, and not confused when he gave his statement, and there was no showing that any force, duress, coercion, or promises or threats were made to him.

. Counsel for the defendant specifically argued that the challenged statement was a product of unnecessary delay. Counsel also argued that *1073Rule 5 is violated if “delay is for the purpose of extracting a confession or incriminating statements”; or, alternatively, if it is “prejudicial.” The prosecutor argued that even if delay were shown, the defendant must make a showing of unfair prejudice. The trial court resolved the issue in favor of the prosecution and so ruled. In my view, the trial court made sufficient findings of necessity and prejudice to meet the dictates of Heintze.