Court Opinion

ID: 9846026
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:33:01.72802+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:31.429741
License: Public Domain

Judge Greene
dissenting.
I believe Bill Edward Hall (Defendant) was in custody on 8 January 1997 at the time he gave his statement, and the trial court erred in denying Defendant’s motion to suppress that statement.
Defendant was approached at a friend’s house by two officers and was extended an unsolicited invitation to accompany the officers to the police department to talk about a robbery. Defendant agreed to go to the police station and was driven there in a police vehicle. Upon arrival at the police station, he was escorted by the two officers through the main police department, through a small door to the Detective Bureau, up a flight of stairs, through a room, down a hallway, to the left down another hallway, and finally into an interview room. Though the door to the interview room remained open, Defendant was under direct police supervision at all times during an *437approximately two-hour period of questioning by the two police officers. There is no evidence that Defendant was offered any food and/or water or the use of a bathroom during the two-hour session. At the end of the session, Defendant offered the statement that is the subject of his motion to suppress.
Under these circumstances, a reasonable person would believe that he had been taken into custody and was not free to leave. See State v. Davis, 305 N.C. 400, 410, 290 S.E.2d 574, 580-81 (1982) (person is “in custody” for purposes of Miranda if a reasonable person would believe that he was not free to leave). Defendant, therefore, was “in custody,” and was entitled to be advised of his Miranda rights. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 467-72, 16 L. Ed. 2d 694, 720-22, reh’g denied sub nom. California v. Stewart, 385 U.S. 890, 17 L. Ed. 2d 121 (1966). Defendant, in this case, was not advised of his Miranda rights prior to the taking of his statement, and it, therefore, must be suppressed. I do not believe a different result is required simply because the officers told Defendant he did not have to stay at the police station. That statement was made in a context that would lead a reasonable person to believe that he was free to leave only after Defendant agreed to talk to the police about the robbery they were investigating.
My review of the evidence in this case convinces me that the error was not harmless. Indeed, the State does not even make an argument in its brief to this Court that the admission of the 8 January 1997 statement, if error, was harmless. Once Defendant’s 8 January 1997 statement is removed from the evidence, there are only two other pieces of evidence that even suggest that Defendant was involved in the Fish House robbery: (1) the statement of Natasha Jones wherein “she implicate[d]” Defendant in the Fish House robbery; and (2) Defendant’s 14 January 1997 statement wherein he “stated that at the Fish House [robbery] Sherome [Wellman] got all the money. Natasha [Jones] and him have not gotten anything from that one.” Although these statements could support an inference that Defendant committed the Fish House robbery, the State did not meet its burden of showing through overwhelming evidence that the constitutional error of admitting the 8 January 1997 statement was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. N.C.G.S. § 15A-1443(b) (1997); see also State v. Autry, 321 N.C. 392, 399-400, 364 S.E.2d 341, 346 (1988) (presence of overwhelming evidence of guilt may render a constitutional error harmless). The State’s evidence in this case is hardly overwhelming.
*438I therefore would hold that Defendant is entitled to a new trial.