Court Opinion

ID: 9666025
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:02:50.745992+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:22.683388
License: Public Domain

R. M. Maher, J.
(dissenting). I cannot join in the affirmance of defendants’ convictions.
On January 4, 1974, the partially clothed body of a young woman was found in the snow outside a Pontiac grocery store. Clothesline was around her neck, hands and feet. Burns, bruises and cuts on various parts of the body indicated vicious torture. An autopsy revealed strangulation by ligature and substantial internal hemorrhaging.
A few days after the victim’s body was found, her brother led a group of young men in "investigating” her death. They were brutal with their four suspects, defendants Joseph and Anita Harris, Rosemary Tipton, who was charged with defendants but pled to a lesser charge, and Willie Scott. Defendant Joseph Harris was pistol-whipped and scalded with hot bleach in front of the others, and Rosemary Tipton was seriously beaten. All four then gave statements at gunpoint to the vigilante group. After taping the statements, the vigilante group took the four to the Pontiac police.
*89Defendant Joseph Harris and Rosemary Tipton required medical treatment. The four were given their Miranda warnings and interviewed. All gave statements to the police. Defendant Anita Harris’ statement was used to obtain a warrant to search Rosemary Tipton’s apartment, where evidence introduced at defendants’ trial was seized.
At. a Walker hearing, the statements extracted by the vigilante group were ruled inadmissible. Nevertheless, the taped statement that defendant Joseph Harris gave as the result of torture and at gunpoint was used to impeach his testimony at trial. Both defendants urge that admission of this statement, and other alleged errors, require reversal of their convictions.
The prosecution, invoking Harris v New York, 401 US 222; 91 S Ct 643; 28 L Ed 2d 1 (1971), persuaded the court to admit for impeachment purposes the previously suppressed statement of defendant Joseph Harris. In Harris, the Supreme Court held that statements inadmissible under Miranda v Arizona, 384 US 436; 86 S Ct 1602; 16 L Ed 2d 694 (1966), can be used to impeach a defendant, "provided of course that the trustworthiness of the evidence satisfies legal standards”. 401 US at 224. Harris provides no basis for the admission of defendant’s statement, which had been suppressed because the trial court here, considering the situation under which the statements were made, found them "patently liable to untrustworthiness”.
People v Reed, 393 Mich 342; 224 NW2d 867 (1975), held that impeachment by an involuntary confession is improper. The Court quoted from *90State v Smith, 242 Or 223, 226; 408 P2d 942, 944 (1965), where the Oregon Supreme Court stated:
"An involuntary confession is just as untrustworthy when used for impeachment purposes as when used to prove guilt. Such a confession is of no greater credibility when used to prove defendant a liar than when it is used to prove him guilty.”
In Reed, defendant’s confession was involuntary because it was made in response to promises from police officers. Defendant Joseph Harris’ statement was made at gunpoint, after the group had beat him and poured hot bleach on him. Even more so than in Reed, the potential for fabrication, for defendant telling his tormentors what they wanted to hear, was present.
The only serious argument that the prosecution makes against reversal on this issue is that admission of the statement was harmless error. The prosecution points out that it is unlikely that the trial court, which had earlier ruled the statement inadmissible because it was untrustworthy, was influenced by it in determining guilt. While I agree with this contention, before this Court can hold an error harmless it must first determine that the error is not "so offensive to the maintenance of a sound judicial process that it never can be regarded as harmless”. People v Robinson, 386 Mich 551, 563; 194 NW2d 709 (1972). Application of this admittedly imprecise standard is not easy, and in the context of this case it is truly troubling.
Deliberate interjection of improper evidence by the prosecutor precludes holding that an error is harmless. People v Robinson, supra. While the prosecution misstated the thrust of Harris in persuading the court to admit defendant Joseph Harris’ statement, I am unable to state, from review*91ing the record, that this misstatement was deliberate. Even this Court has incorrectly read Harris. See People v Reed, supra, reversing 49 Mich App 308; 212 NW2d 41 (1973).
More difficult to assess, in terms of the standard this Court must apply to determine whether an error is harmless, is the admission of the statement by the trial court which was well aware of the brutality used to extract it. More than mistrust of the evidentiary value of coerced statements has caused their rejection; trustworthiness is only one interest among several that requires exclusion of involuntary statements. Blackburn v Alabama, 361 US 199; 80 S Ct 274; 4 L Ed 2d 242 (1960). Most recent decisions emphasize the interest in deterring unlawful police conduct; the facts of this case do not require consideration of this interest. Also underlying the judicial rejection of coerced statements as evidence is a difficult to articulate notion of individual dignity; to use a confession that is not the "product of a free and unconstrained will”, Haynes v Washington, 373 US 503, 514; 83 S Ct 1336, 1343; 10 L Ed 2d 513, 521 (1963), not "freely self-determined”, Rogers v Richmond, 365 US 534, 544; 81 S Ct 735, 741; 5 L Ed 2d 760, 768 (1961), is inconsistent with the worth our legal system attributes to the individual. The separation of this notion from the control of police misconduct is not often made, undoubtedly due to use of public, not private, law enforcement in this country and also to the fact that respect for the individual is one reason why courts have been so concerned with overseeing police practices. Eg. Miranda v Arizona, 384 US 436, 460; 86 S Ct 1602, 1620; 16 L Ed 2d 694, 715 (1966). Gross coercion in order to extract a statement is in any instance repugnant. The admission *92of coerced statements, even when the police have not been involved in the coercion, diminishes the respect an individual should be accorded by the judicial system. I cannot find the admission of defendant Joseph Harris’ statement to be harmless error in his conviction.
The statement refers to codefendant Anita Harris, and was used to impeach Joseph Harris’ testimony about Anita. The error in admitting the statement in their joint trial requires the reversal of her conviction as well as Joseph Harris’ conviction.
While I agree with the majority that defendants’ other issues do not involve reversible error, I believe they deserve at least brief discussion. Defendants were well aware of the trial court’s familiarity with preliminary examination testimony, since portions of the preliminary examination transcript were incorporated in the Walker hearing record by stipulation. Any objection they had to a bench trial before the judge should have been raised by a motion to disqualify. GCR 1963, 405.3. Only if People v Ramsey, 385 Mich 221; 187 NW2d 887 (1971), vitiates any conviction in which a judge sitting as trier of fact is familiar with the preliminary examination transcript can defendants prevail on this issue. They can point to no prejudice. People v Walter, 41 Mich App 109; 199 NW2d 651 (1972), and People v Garcia, 51 Mich App 109; 214 NW2d 544 (1974), indicate that there are exceptions to Ramsey applicable to this case.
It is also my opinion that any objection to trial by the judge who conducted the Walker hearing should not be first raised on appeal. Failure to move to disqualify in this case waives whatever claim of error defendants might have.
Defendants objected below to the use of state*93ments given the police after the vigilante group brought the four suspects to the police station. Miranda warnings preceded the statements, and the court found them voluntary. Nevertheless, defendants contend that the use of these statements, which were used to obtain arrest warrants and a search warrant, and were introduced at trial, was prohibited by the "fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine. Wong Sun v United States, 371 US 471; 83 S Ct 407; 9 L Ed 2d 441 (1963). There was no poisonous tree, as the term has been employed by the courts, to bear fruit. The doctrine extends the exclusionary rule to evidence obtained from exploitation of an initial government illegality. The doctrine, designed to prevent the government from benefiting even indirectly from its illegal conduct, is inapplicable where no police misconduct has occurred.
Defendants claim the evidence presented was insufficient to support the verdict. I disagree. The record supports the court’s finding that both defendants participated in vicious torturing of the victim. Though the medical examiner gave the cause of death as strangulation by ligature, he also testified that the other injuries contributed to her death.
"Liability for homicide does not depend upon the fact that death is the immediate consequence of the injury inflicted by the accused. One who inflicts an injury on another is deemed by the law to be guilty of homicide if the injury contributes mediately or immediately to the death of such other. * * * If, at the moment of death, it can be said that both injuries are contributing thereto, the responsibility rests on both actors. In such cases, the law does not measure the effects of the several injuries in order to determine which is the more serious, and which contributes in the greater measure to *94bring about the death.” 40 Am Jur 2d, Homicide, § 15, pp 306-307. (Footnotes omitted.)
Defendants’ last issue is answered by People v Stewart, 61 Mich App 167; 232 NW2d 347 (1975).
I would reverse defendants’ convictions and remand their causes for a new trial.