Court Opinion

ID: 9532600
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:23:03.578841+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:47.487501
License: Public Domain

Judge JONES
specially concurring.
Although I concur with the majority that reversal is required, I disagree with the majority’s holding that defendant’s statements were properly admitted as being voluntarily made. Thus, I would reverse on this basis also and would direct that such statements be suppressed on retrial.
Extrajudicial statements may be admitted as evidence only if voluntarily given. If there is evidence of coercive or improper governmental influence, physical, mental, or emotional, that induced, or significantly affected, the defendant to make a confession or inculpatory statement, an essential predicate has been established for a finding of involuntariness. Such improper governmental influence may include violence, threats, implied or express promises, and different forms of physical abuse and psychological coercion. People v. Gennings, 808 P.2d 839 (Colo.1991).
Here, I believe the police employed what has been termed the “crude chicanery of employing [a person] intimate with an accused, to play on his emotions_” Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U.S. 568, 630, 81 S.Ct. 1860, 1894, 6 L.Ed.2d 1037, 1074 (1961). This practice has been strongly deplored. See People v. McIntyre, 789 P.2d 1108 (Colo.1990); People v. Freeman, 668 P.2d 1371 (Colo.1983).
It is even more deplorable a practice under the circumstances here in which the record shows that: 1) there was no physical evidence linking defendant to the crimes; 2) the police conducted nearly 30 hours of interviews with defendant over the course of five days; 3) during those interviews, the police displayed a grotesque photograph of the dead victim to the defendant; 4) prior to these interviews, the person with whom defendant had a familial relationship, ie., his mother, had held a gun to defendant’s head and had threatened that he was “going to die” if he did not confess to killing the victim; 5) thereafter, defendant’s mother collaborated with the police, planning, consulting, and being physically present with them during the interrogation so as to induce him to give statements admitting his involvement in the offenses.
Under these circumstances, I conclude that his mother’s active participation in the interrogations transformed her into an agent of the state, and that the factors set forth in Gennings that show improper coercive impact were present. Thus, I would hold that the inculpatory statements made by defendant over the many hours of interrogation were involuntary, see Culombe v. Connecticut, supra, and, therefore, they are inadmissible at his new trial.