Court Opinion

ID: 9607400
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:58:13.028822+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:38.604209
License: Public Domain

PARKER, J.
I concur merely in the result that the defendant is entitled to a new trial.
This is another in a long line of cases presenting the question as to whether a confession was properly admitted into evidence under the Fourteenth Amendment.
This is stated in S. v. Chamberlain, 263 N.C. 406, 139 S.E. 2d 620:
“It is also well settled that the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the use of coerced confessions in state prosecutions, whether the coercion is physical or mental. Hayes v. Washington, 373 U.S. 503, 10 L. Ed. 2d 513; Thomas v. Arizona, 356 U.S. 390, 2 L. Ed. 2d 863, reh. den. 357 U.S. 944, 2 L. Ed. 2d 1557; Payne v. Arkansas, 356 U.S. 560, 2 L. Ed. 2d 975.
“A defendant in a state criminal trial has a right to be tried according to the substantive and procedural due process requirements of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534, 5 L. Ed. 2d 760; Stansbury, N. C. Evidence, 2d Ed., § 183.”
“There is torture of mind as well as of body; the will is as much affected by fear as by force.” Watts v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49, 93 L. Ed. 1801, 1805.
It is well-settled law that we are required to accept the interpretation the United States Supreme Court has placed on the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. S. v. Davis, 253 N.C. 86, 116 S.E. 2d 365, cert. den. 365 U.S. 855, 5 L. Ed. 2d 819.
*523These facts are shown without contradiction in the evidence: A warrant was sworn out before the Onslow county court on 25 September 1961 charging defendant with a violation of G.S. 14-49, a serious felony, for which the punishment, as prescribed in the statute, is imprisonment for not less than five years and not more than thirty years. It was returnable to the Onslow county court on 28 September 1961. On 29 September 1961 the U. S. Marine Corps surrendered defendant to the county authorities. By reason of his inability to give bail, defendant was placed in the common jail of Onslow County. On 29 September John B. Edwards, an agent of the State Bureau of Investigation, saw defendant in custody in the sheriff’s office. Edwards told defendant he needed a lawyer, and did not have to make a statement unless he so desired. Defendant said he did not want to make a statement.
On 29 or 30 September 1961 defendant in jail conferred with E. W. Summersill of the Onslow County Bar in an endeavor to employ him as his counsel to defend him. He saw Summersill again on 1 and 2 and 3 October 1961. Summersill did not appear for him, because defendant could not pay him the fee he demanded.
Superior court convened in Onslow County on 2 October 1961. According to the record proper, the indictment charging defendant with the same offense as the warrant was returned by the grand jury on 3 October 1961 — the exact hour of the day when returned does not appear in the record.
Edwards knew defendant’s case was to be tried on the afternoon of 3 October 1961, because the solicitor for the State had told him so. On that afternoon Edwards saw and talked with defendant in the sheriff’s office about the explosion at the Christenbury home. Defendant told Edwards he had no lawyer, although he had tried to employ Summer-sill. Defendant, after conferring with his wife privately, in the absence of counsel made a statement incriminating himself. Edwards wrote down his statement and asked him questions. When he finished, it was about 5 p.m. Defendant was immediately carried to the courtroom, entered a plea of guilty, and was sentenced to imprisonment for 20 years. It is a reasonable inference that the indictment to which defendant pleaded guilty had been returned before defendant had completed his statement to Edwards, if not before he began it. At least he was certainly in custody before he made his confession under a warrant charging him with the same offense the indictment did.
Defendant was given no preliminary hearing. There is no satisfactory evidence in the record to show that defendant knew an indictment had been returned against him, or that he was to be tried on the afternoon of 3 October 1961 in superior court. It is true defendant was not sub*524jected to long and persistent questioning, and there is no evidence of threats or promises by Edwards.
Considering the totality of the circumstances here shown by the un-contradicted evidence, it is my opinion that the confession deliberately elicited under such conditions, when defendant needed a lawyer and in the very short time allowed him had tried unsuccessfully to employ a lawyer, contravenes the dictates of fairness in the conduct of criminal cases to a defendant under indictment immediately before his trial upon an indictment returned the day of his trial, when he had had no preliminary hearing and had been in custody only parts of five days, and was in real effect an overcoming of his will not to make a statement, is a denial of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment as interpreted in the decisions of the United States Supreme Court above cited, and was wrongfully admitted in evidence against defendant.
In my opinion, the uncontradicted evidence shows that the extrajudicial confession of defendant is incompetent as a matter of law, and there is no need for any additional finding of facts by a trial judge. Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201, 12 L. Ed. 2d 246 (18 May 1964).