People v. Vigil

242 P.3d 1092, 2010 WL 4595816

• Court: Supreme Court of Colorado
• Decided: November 15, 2010
• Docket: 10SA106
• Status: Published

Opinions

Justice MARTINEZ

delivered the Opinion of the Court.

I. Introduction

Clovis Vigil was arrested and charged with possession of a controlled substance as well as possession with intent to distribute. At the time of his arrest, Vigil confessed to possession and indicated where he kept the drugs only after the arresting officers had used force against him, inflicting numerous injuries. The trial court held that Vigil was arrested without probable cause and that his various inculpatory statements were involuntarily given. The trial court suppressed those statements from admission into evidence as well as the bags of cocaine that were collected from Vigil's pocket. The People appeal the trial court's suppression order. We conclude that the trial court's suppression order was proper and affirm its decision.

II. Facts and Procedure

In July 2009, an off-duty Sheriff's Deputy witnessed what he believed to be an illegal drug transaction in the parking lot of a store in Walsenburg, Colorado. He observed Clovis Vigil, his dog leashed to one hand, approach a parked car with two occupants. After a short interaction, Vigil was handed something, which he placed in his pocket. Vigil then left the parking lot on foot. The off-duty Sheriff's Deputy reported his observations to the dispatcher, identifying Vigil and the two people he had interacted with as people he knew to be involved in drug deals. Dispatch then relayed this information to a Walsenburg police officer, who proceeded to locate Vigil while he was still walking through town.

While driving in his patrol car, the responding police officer spotted Vigil, activated his emergency lights, and pulled up next to him. Exiting his vehicle, the officer told Vigil that he needed to ask him a few questions. At the officer's request, Vigil stopped walking and listened to him. The officer told Vigil that he needed to speak with him because he had been named in a possible drug transaction in the parking lot of a nearby store. Vigil, through a string of profanities, clearly indicated that he did not want to answer any questions. The officer responded by saying that he wanted a brief explanation of Vigil's actions in the parking lot, as an off-duty officer had said that he had seen Vigil in a drug deal.

Vigil apparently grew agitated and flailed his arms, one of which was still tethered to his leashed dog. Although Vigil was not carrying anything and was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, because of Vigil's agitated state, the officer asked him to put his hands on the hood of the police car and submit to a frisk "because of an officer safety issue." Vigil declined and apparently turned to leave the scene. At this time a second officer arrived.

As Vigil turned to leave, the first officer informed Vigil that he was under arrest for disorderly conduct. The officer slowed Vig-i's attempt to leave the scene by grabbing his shirt. When Vigil attempted to shrug off the officer's grab, the first officer struck him with a martial arts "back fist" to his face, fracturing multiple bones in his face and dropping Vigil to his knees. The second officer attempted to spray Vigil's eyes with OC spray, a chemical repellant, and then struck him three times with a metal baton around the lower back and buttocks. Both officers then forced him against the ground, kneed him in the back, and handcuffed him. While being handcuffed, Vigil called out, "alright, alright, I'll give you the shit. It's in my left front pocket." The officers rolled him over and discovered baggies of cocaine in his pocket.

With Vigil's injuries both numerous and apparent, he was taken from the scene in an ambulance to a local hospital. Once at the hospital he received over six hours of medical treatment. Vigil's sinal and occipital bones were broken; his left eye was deeply bruised and bleeding; he had numerous lacerations on his face and side from being pushed against the ground, and welts from being struck with the baton were already evident. The medical staff recommended that Vigil be taken to Pueblo because of the severity of his injuries, but he refused and was instead taken directly to the police department by the same officers who had arrested him. There, he was interrogated beginning at 2:05 a.m. after signing a Miranda waiver form, and he gave various inculpatory statements.

Prior to trial, Vigil moved to suppress his confession at the scene of his arrest, the drugs found on his person, and the inculpato-ry statements he made during his interrogation. The trial court found it incredible that two trained and fully armed officers felt threatened by a man attempting to walk away from them with a leashed dog. Further, the trial court found that Vigil never posed a threat to officer safety and that the amount of force used was unreasonable and unnecessary. The court held that Vigil's initial confession at the seene of his arrest was an involuntary utterance as the result of the police officers' coercive use of physical force, and that the officers arrested Vigil without probable cause. The court also concluded that the prosecution had not met its burden of establishing that Vigil's subsequent confession at the police department was voluntarily made. As such, the trial court suppressed Vigil's statements as well as the baggies of cocaine.

The People filed this interlocutory appeal challenging the trial court's suppression order. After reviewing the record, we affirm the trial court's order.

III. - Analysis

The People challenge the trial court's suppression order with respect to Vigil's first confession, the contraband discovered in his pocket, and his later confession after medical treatment. We conclude that the trial court's suppression order was appropriate.

A. Confession at Arrest

Although not clearly articulated in their brief, the People appear to challenge the trial court's determination that Vigil's original statement at the scene of his arrest was involuntary and so inadmissible. The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the admission of involuntary statements into evidence. See People v. 41 P.3d 658, 660 (Colo.2001) (citing Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157, 181-82, 107 S.Ct. 515, 93 L.Ed.2d 473 (1986)). Once a defendant has challenged a statement as involuntary, the prosecution must establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant's statements were voluntarily given, Connelly, 479 U.S. at 168-69, 107 S.Ct. 515, and it must show that the defendant's will had not been overborne by coercive conduct, see People v. Valdes, 969 P.2d 208, 212 (Colo.1998).

The People assert-though without argument-that Vigil's remarks of "alright, alright, I'll give you the shit, it's in my left front pocket" were spontaneous and voluntary. However, in the same sentence, the People admit that Vigil only made the statement after finding himself "under the firm control of the officers." It is apparent from the record that Vigil gave this statement immediately after being struck in the face, pushed to the ground, sprayed with chemical repellent, and hit several times with a metal baton. In fact, Vigil uttered these words of confession while being handcuffed and with both of the officers pushing their knees into his back. Vigil's protestations of "alright, alright" indicate that his comments were meant as a response to the officers' use of physical force following the attempt to question him about his activity. See People v. Medina, 25 P.3d 1216, 1222 (Colo.2001) ("Coercive physical ... conduct by the government renders an otherwise voluntary statement involuntary, if the conduct plays a significant role in inducing the statement."). The officers' use of force played a significant role in procuring an answer for their original and repeated inquiry, which was an explanation of Vigil's involvement in a drug deal.

Whether a statement is voluntary must be evaluated on the basis of the totality of the cireumstances under which it is given. People v. Raffaelli, 647 P.2d 280, 285 (Colo.1982). We will uphold a trial court's findings of fact on the voluntariness of a statement where those findings are supported by adequate evidence in the record; however, the ultimate determination of whether a statement is voluntary is a legal question and is reviewed de novo. Effland v. People, 240 P.3d 868, 877-78 (Colo.2010).

In United States v. Carroll, the Sth Cireuit determined that a statement made by the defendant during a valid arrest was voluntary even though, during the arrest, the police sprayed the defendant with mace and applied some force. 207 F.3d 465, 470, 472 (8th Cir.2000). The arrest followed a high-speed car chase, a shoot-out, and a fistfight, and the force applied was only "in response to [the defendant's] attempt to resist arrest" and only what was required to "subdue a fighting suspect." Id. at 472. Critically, the defendant's statement was voluntary because there was "no evidence in the record to suggest that [the defendant] answered because he feared the police would use further force against him." Id.

In contrast, here, the trial court found that Vigil posed no threat to the officers and that the amount of force the officers used against him was not only "wholly disproportionate to the circumstances involved," but rather coerced his statement. We agree with the trial court. Neither officer could articulate anything specific about Vigil's manner that imperiled their safety. Vigil was out walking his dog, dressed only in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, carrying nothing. When the officer commanded Vigil to comply with a protective weapons search, he swore and just tried to leave.

Unlike the situation in Carroll, Vigil's arrest did not follow a high-speed chase, a shoot-out, and a fistfight. Here, the officers applied force that overwhelmed Vigil's capacity for self-determination. In contrast to the defendant in Carroll, Vigil confessed here because he "feared the police would use further force."

We see no evidence in the record that supports the People's assertion that Vigil's statements were voluntarily given. Cf. Connelly, 479 U.S. at 168-69, 107 S.Ct. 515. The trial court thus rightly suppressed the statements Vigil made during his arrest as being involuntary and the result of the officers coercive conduct.

Because we affirm the trial court's determination that Vigil's confession was involuntary and do not further review the basis for the trial court's finding that Vigil was arrested without probable cause,¹ it follows that the trial court correctly suppressed the drugs discovered through Vigil's confession and unlawful arrest as the "fruit of the poisonous tree." See People v. Jones, 828 P.2d 797, 800 (Colo.1992) (observing that the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine precludes the admission of evidence "derived from information acquired by the police through unlawful means").

B. Police Department Interrogation Statements

Finally, the People challenge the trial court's determination that Vigil's inculpatory statements at the police department after six hours of medical treatment should be suppressed as involuntary.

Although an earlier coerced confession does not necessarily undermine the voluntary character of subsequent confessions, see Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. 298, 310-12, 105 S.Ct. 1285, 84 L.Ed.2d 222 (1985), courts have an obligation to ensure that interrogating officers who receive such later confessions were not merely "the beneficiaries of the pressure" earlier applied that improperly led to the first confession, Westover v. United States, decided with Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 496, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). To assess whether the coercion of the first confession infected the second confession, a court must look to all attendant cireumstances: "When a prior statement is actually coerced, the time that passes between confessions, the change in place of interrogations, and the change in identity of the interrogators all bear on whether that coercion has carried over into the second confession." Elstad, 470 U.S. at 310, 105 S.Ct. 1285.

"When ... controlling facts are undisputed, the legal effect of those facts constitutes a question of law." People v. D.F., 933 P.2d 9, 15 (Colo.1997). However, "lilf the relation between the earlier and later confession is not so close that one must say the facts of one control the character of the other, the inference is one for the triers of fact." Lyons v. Oklahoma, 822 U.S. 596, 603, 64 S.Ct. 1208, 88 L.Ed. 1481 (1944). As the Supreme Court explained in Lyons, where "different inferences may fairly be drawn from admitted facts" regarding whether a confession was coerced or voluntarily given, "the trial judge and the jury are not only in a better position to appraise" a witness's assertions, "but the legal duty is upon them to make the decision." Id. at 602, 64 S.Ct. 1208 (citing Lisenba v. California, 314 U.S. 219, 238, 62 S.Ct. 280, 86 L.Ed. 166 (1941)); see also United States v. Schmidt, 578 F.2d 1057, 1062 (9th Cir.1978).

Here, the record supports the trial court's determination that the coercion of Vigil's first confession infected his subsequent confession. After being told to seek further medical attention for his rather serious injuries, Vigil was released into the hands of the same officers that had inflicted those injuries. The officers then immediately took him to the police department for interrogation at 2:00 a.m. On such facts, it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that the officers were the beneficiaries of their own coercive conduct when they received Vigil's subsequent cooperation and confession. Cf. Miranda, 384 U.S. at 496, 86 S.Ct. 1602 (finding a Fifth Amendment violation where the FBI interrogated the defendant immediately after local police had already conducted an interrogation in the same place and without providing Miranda-like warnings). The facts thus support the inference that Vigil's statements were made under the lingering coercion of the physical force used against him, and that inference is committed to the trial court's determination. It is not our place to substitute our judgment for that of the trial court in this matter. See DeBella v. People, 238 P.3d 664, 667 (Colo.2010) ("An appellate court may not assign error to a trial court merely because it would have reached a different conclusion."). As such, we affirm the trial court's order suppressing Vigil's police department confession.

IV. Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, the order of the trial court is affirmed.

Justice COATS dissents. Justice EID concurs in the judgment in part and dissents in part, and Justice RICE joins in the concurrence in the judgment in part and dissent in part.

1 . We decline to review the trial court's finding that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest Vigil. On appeal, the People argue that the officers had probable cause to search and arrest Vigil after his voluntary confession, but the People do not argue that, prior to Vigil's confession, the police had probable cause to arrest him for disorderly conduct or for any other offense. Nor does the record provide any basis for such a finding. Further, the People do not argue that a search incident to a valid arrest took place.