State of New Hampshire v. Caleb Douglas Marquis

CourtSupreme Court of New Hampshire
DecidedMay 4, 2023
Docket2021-0394
StatusPublished

This text of State of New Hampshire v. Caleb Douglas Marquis (State of New Hampshire v. Caleb Douglas Marquis) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of New Hampshire primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State of New Hampshire v. Caleb Douglas Marquis, (N.H. 2023).

Opinion

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to motions for rehearing under Rule 22 as well as formal revision before publication in the New Hampshire Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter, Supreme Court of New Hampshire, One Charles Doe Drive, Concord, New Hampshire 03301, of any editorial errors in order that corrections may be made before the opinion goes to press. Errors may be reported by email at the following address: reporter@courts.state.nh.us. Opinions are available on the Internet by 9:00 a.m. on the morning of their release. The direct address of the court’s home page is: https://www.courts.nh.gov/our-courts/supreme-court

THE SUPREME COURT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

___________________________

Hillsborough-southern judicial district No. 2021-0394

STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

v.

CALEB DOUGLAS MARQUIS

Argued: September 20, 2022 Opinion Issued: May 4, 2023

John M. Formella, attorney general, and Anthony J. Galdieri, solicitor general (Elizabeth C. Woodcock, senior assistant attorney general, on the brief and orally), for the State.

Stephanie Hausman, deputy chief appellate defender, of Concord, on the brief and orally, for the defendant.

HANTZ MARCONI, J. The State brings this appeal pursuant to RSA 606:10, II(a), arguing that the Superior Court (Colburn, J.) erred in suppressing statements made by the defendant, Caleb Douglas Marquis. See RSA 606:10, II(a) (2001). The trial court ruled that the defendant was subject to custodial interrogation at the time he gave the statements, and, because he was not given the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), those statements were obtained in violation of his right against self- incrimination. We affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand.

I.

The trial court found, or the record supports, the following facts. In September 2020, Nashua emergency services responded to a call about an unconscious 16-month-old child who was hurt in the shower while under the defendant’s care. The toddler was the defendant’s girlfriend’s child. Several uniformed officers arrived to secure the apartment “as a scene” and asked the defendant if he would go to the station for an interview. The defendant asked if he was under arrest, and, after an officer told him that he was not, he agreed to an interview. The defendant asked for a ride, and an officer drove him to the Nashua police station in the back of a cruiser. He entered the station’s lobby, signed in as a visitor, and was issued a visitor’s badge. Officers escorted the defendant to and from the interview room on the second floor of the station.

Two detectives questioned the defendant inside the interview room. The interview was recorded. The trial court, having viewed the recording, described the room as “a 10-foot-by-12-foot room with a square table pressed up against one wall and three chairs around the table. The room has no windows and a single door. . . . [It] is not large enough to allow a person to exit it while the chairs are occupied.” The defendant sat in the chair farthest from the door, with the two detectives between him and the door. The detectives wore “professional clothing,” were not armed, and did not display badges. There were three interviews in this setting. The first two were held on the evening of September 15, shortly after the incident, and the third was held on the afternoon of September 16. The detectives did not give the defendant Miranda warnings before any of the interviews.

The first interview began with Detective Durden asking the defendant, “You know you’re here voluntarily, right? You’re signed in as a visitor?” The defendant answered, “Yeah.” Durden told the defendant he was free to leave or to stop talking, and began questioning him. The defendant described showering the child, briefly leaving the bathroom to check on the dog, and returning to find the child unconscious. The trial court found that the detectives’ tone was “cordial” and “calming” throughout. During a break, the defendant asked if he could use his cell phone, but Durden asked him to “hold off on that.” The defendant kept his cell phone and can be seen in the video using it anyway. In all, the first interview lasted about 75 minutes.

The defendant remained in the interview room, and the second interview, also recorded, began about 15 minutes later. The detectives again assured the defendant that he was a visitor and was free to “stop talking.” They informed the defendant that the child had suffered first- and second-degree burns and was being transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital. The detectives

2 compared the defendant’s story to reports from the hospital and began to ask about inconsistencies, though the trial court found that “the conversation remained cordial.” The second interview lasted about 17 minutes.

The next day, Durden called the defendant and asked if he would come in for a third interview. The defendant agreed and got a ride to the station from a friend. He again signed in as a visitor and was escorted to the interview room where the interview was again recorded. Durden reminded the defendant that he was there voluntarily and was free to leave, and the defendant responded that he understood. Durden continued, “If at any point in time you feel uncomfortable and don’t want to talk to me, you need more water, you need to go to the bathroom or anything like that just let me know and we’ll be more than happy to accommodate that, ok?” The defendant answered affirmatively, and the interview began.

Durden began by telling the defendant, “[W]e have more questions. Obviously we’re putting a case together.” He explained that he had received a report from the hospital and believed “there’s more to the story” than what the defendant had told him the day before. In response, the defendant volunteered that he had learned from his girlfriend that the doctors had found “a significant amount of THC . . . in the baby’s system.” He admitted that he smoked marijuana with his girlfriend the day of the incident and that they sometimes smoked around the children. But he expressed disbelief that marijuana had caused the child to pass out. Instead, he theorized that flushing the toilet caused the shower to overheat, causing the child to pass out. The detectives shifted the conversation back to marijuana:

[Durden]: [The doctors] know for a fact there was a high level of THC in his blood. Ok? It didn’t just get there from walking in a room where you smoked earlier in the day. That’s, that’s not how it works.

[Defendant]: Right. So, like he must have got in weed then. . . .

[Durden]: Well, here’s my issue with that. He didn’t ingest the weed because he had petechiae, which is the, like, blood vessels across all red right here, and that’s from coughing, excessive coughing. He had large amounts of that around his chest and his neck and they said that’s from him coughing.

[Defendant]: Ok.

[Durden]: So your story’s not adding up right now. So that’s why we’re having this conversation, because there’s a lot of unanswered questions and I have a theory what I think, and I’m fairly certain I

3 know what happened and your story is not jiving with that, so it looks like you’re trying to be deceitful . . . .

The defendant denied giving the child marijuana and said that he felt like he was being looked at like a “baby killer” and a “monster.” Durden told him:

[W]e don’t think you’re a monster. . . . [B]ut the fact of the matter is, we have facts that the doctor’s giving us, stuff that we can’t deny, that’s facts, that certain things lead to this. And your story of what happened is not, it doesn’t, 1 and 1 is not equaling 2 right there. . . . [I]n Colorado there’s kids that take THC all the time to get them to calm down.

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Bluebook (online)
State of New Hampshire v. Caleb Douglas Marquis, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-of-new-hampshire-v-caleb-douglas-marquis-nh-2023.