Court Opinion

ID: 9584909
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:53:51.018396+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:07:12.912897
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Payne contends on motion for rehearing that his in-custody statements were inadmissible because his Miranda rights were violated when the investigating officers immediately did not cease their questioning of him after he indicated to them during his interrogation that he wanted a lawyer present.
On direct examination during the second Jackson-Denno hearing, Payne testified that he told the investigating officers he wanted a lawyer. Then, on cross-examination, he admitted that he never specifically asked the officers for a lawyer. Rather, that within the hearing of at least one of the investigating officers, he asked his brother Kenneth, over the telephone, to get him a lawyer.
On direct examination, the defendant’s brother, Kenneth Payne, testified that Payne called him from the jail and told him “to get in touch with my sister to get Don Clark, who is a lawyer, to come and help him. . ..” On cross-examination, Kenneth Payne testified that the first thing Payne said to him over the telephone was “get me a lawyer.”
The investigating officers testified that Payne never asked them for a lawyer, although they gave him his Miranda rights immediately before commencing each of the three periods of questioning, and that Payne did not request a lawyer during his telephone conversation with his brother, Kenneth.
The trial court resolved the foregoing conflict in the testimony by finding that Payne made a telephone call to his brother from the jail during which he requested that his brother obtain for him the services of Don Clark, who is an attorney, but that he did not communicate his request for legal counsel to anyone other than his brother. The court further found as a fact that Payne did not subsequently request of the officers the services of an attorney although he was informed of his right to counsel three times during the questioning that evening.
The findings of the trial court in the order entered after the second Jackson-Denno hearing harmonize the conflicting testimony regarding Payne’s request to his brother for legal counsel, and are not *362clearly erroneous. Gates v. State, 244 Ga. 587, 590 (261 SE2d 349) (1979). No error has been made to appear regarding this claimed Miranda violation.

Motion for rehearing denied.