Court Opinion

ID: 9561809
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:16:35.616867+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:29.632001
License: Public Domain

Justice MEYER
dissenting.
Believing as I do that defendant’s acknowledgment of wrongdoing was not “voluntarily” made and that it thus does not meet the requirements of N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.4(a)(2)l, I respectfully dissent.
On 16 April 1984 a criminal investigator in the Buncombe County Sheriffs Department was called to investigate the contents of a plastic garbage bag that had been found near Black Mountain, North Carolina. The bag contained the remains of a black female infant and some household trash, including a discarded piece of schoolwork bearing the name of defendant’s younger sister. The officer traced the paper to the home of defendant’s *316mother, advised the mother and her three daughters of their rights, and questioned them about the garbage bag. All denied having any information regarding the bag or its contents.
Later the same day a second investigator interviewed defendant at her place of work. Defendant reiterated that she knew nothing about the bag or the baby. That evening defendant and her mother and sisters agreed to come to the sheriffs department for polygraph tests and additional interviews. During questioning preliminary to the polygraph test, defendant was told the state had evidence indicating she was the mother of the child. The investigating officer testified that defendant asked about its birth-date “in an attitude of, ‘If you know so much, then when was the child born?’ ” When the officer responded that it had been born the preceding Wednesday, defendant grew silent and began to cry. Subsequently she was again advised of her rights under Miranda and, after waiving them, recounted the events occurring on Wednesday, 11 April.
Defendant said she had given birth shortly after her younger sisters had left for school. Her baby appeared healthy at birth and had gone to sleep shortly afterwards. When the infant later wakened and began to cry, defendant grew concerned that her mother’s boyfriend would hear the cries. Defendant got a garbage bag from the kitchen, laid old clothes in the bottom, and placed the child on top of the clothes and more clothes on top of the child to muffle her cries. Anxious that her mother’s boyfriend would soon arise and discover the infant, defendant took the bag to her car and drove around awhile, looking for a place to dispose of the bag. She eventually drove to a wooded area on a road where her mother had once lived and tossed the bag over onto the side of the road. Defendant also said that two years earlier she had given birth to a male infant whose breathing had been “ragged.” She said she had also wrapped this infant in a blanket, deposited it in a garbage bag, and disposed of it in the woods behind her house. Investigating officers could not find this child’s remains. After defendant made these statements she was placed under arrest and charged in a warrant with the murder of the child born in April 1984.
The defendant first denied that she had given birth or knew anything about the baby, even after being confronted with the *317fact that trash found in the bag with the body contained her younger sister’s school papers. Only when faced with apparently overwhelming evidence of her guilt and the prospect of a polygraph test which might reveal her deception did she give up her futile denials and acknowledge that the baby was hers and describe the events surrounding its birth and disposal. Defendant evidenced no remorse for the death of either this or her previous child. I do not believe that under these circumstances the trial judge was compelled to find that the acknowledgment was voluntary within the requirement of the statutory mitigating factor.
I also disagree with the majority’s holding that “if the acknowledgment [of guilt] is admissible against the defendant, it is voluntary within the meaning of this mitigating circumstance.”
Whether this defendant was entitled to the mitigating circumstance depends on the meaning we attach to the word “voluntarily.” The General Assembly clearly meant that more be shown than simply that the defendant acknowledged wrongdoing before arrest or early in the process, for it specifically provided that before the acknowledgment qualifies as a statutory mitigating factor, the acknowledgment be voluntary.
In the context of criminal prosecutions and confessions, the word “voluntary” has not been a term of easy application and universally accepted meaning. The majority holds that “if the acknowledgment is admissible against the defendant, it is voluntary within the meaning of this mitigating factor.” However, the General Assembly did not provide that the acknowledgment of wrongdoing should be a mitigating factor depending upon its constitutional admissibility; rather the statute mandates that the trial judge determine whether the acknowledgment was given “voluntarily.”
Just as a defendant should not be denied this mitigating factor because other factors preclude its admissibility of a confession, he should not be automatically entitled to it as a matter of law because it was admitted against him. Admissibility of a confession may be denied because of factors, such as failure of the prosecuting authorities to give Miranda warnings (Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 16 L.Ed. 2d 694 (1966)) or failure to provide counsel, Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387, 51 L.Ed. 2d 424, reh’g denied, 431 U.S. 925, 53 L.Ed. 2d 240 (1977), which do not cause *318the confession to be involuntary. Inadmissibility of the confession as evidence would not preclude use of the statement as a mitigating factor. Neither should a determination that the confession was given under circumstances that make it admissible as evidence at trial, and thus necessarily voluntary within the interpretation of Fifth Amendment requirements, automatically require the trial judge to find that it was given voluntarily within the meaning of N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.4(a)(2)l. Indeed, this Court has already held that if a defendant retracts or repudiates a confession previously given, he is not entitled to this mitigating factor. State v. Hayes, 314 N.C. 460, 314 S.E. 2d 741 (1985).
I would construe the use of the word “voluntarily” in the statute to mean that the trial judge should be able to look not only at the time of the acknowledgment but at the circumstances and forces which led to the defendant’s statement to determine whether the purposes which prompted the inclusion of the factor in the list of mitigating factors are served by the acknowledgment under the circumstances of the particular case. I believe that such construction is required by both reason and logic.