State v. Burdgess

434 So. 2d 1062
CourtSupreme Court of Louisiana
DecidedJune 27, 1983
Docket82-KA-1476
StatusPublished
Cited by85 cases

This text of 434 So. 2d 1062 (State v. Burdgess) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Burdgess, 434 So. 2d 1062 (La. 1983).

Opinion

434 So.2d 1062 (1983)

STATE of Louisiana
v.
James W. BURDGESS.

No. 82-KA-1476.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

June 27, 1983.

*1063 William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Barbara Rutledge, Asst. Atty. Gen., J. Nathan Stansbury, Dist. Atty., R. Gregg Fowler, Earl Humphries, Asst. Dist. Attys., for plaintiff-appellee.

W.T. Armitage, Jr., Alexandria, for defendant-appellant.

DENNIS, Justice.

The defendant was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without benefit of probation, parole or suspension of sentence. La.R.S. 14:30. On appeal to this court, he presents five arguments for the reversal of his conviction. We find that these arguments have no merit, and we therefore affirm his conviction and sentence.

On March 8, 1979 Mrs. Bobbie Kimball returned to her home outside of Pineville, Louisiana and found the body of her husband, Guy, stretched out on the living room floor in a pool of blood. There were signs that the house had been ransacked after a forced entry. The coroner determined the cause of death to be gunshot wounds to the head.

The confession of James Burdgess was presented to the jury at the trial. Burdgess stated that he and Dennis Nall had agreed to kill Guy Kimball. Nall, a severed co-defendant, was having an affair with Bobbie Kimball. Burdgess stated that he and Nall had discussed the matter with Bobbie, and that she and Nall told him that he was to receive $10,000 and a truck for his participation in the crime. Burdgess stated that he and Nall had broken into the Kimball home, ransacked the house so that it would appear that it had been burglarized, and lay in wait for Guy Kimball. When Kimball arrived, Burdgess and Nall shot him *1064 through the head, the former with a large caliber revolver taken from Kimball's nightstand, and the latter with a small caliber handgun taken from the Kimballs' gun closet.

At trial, the defendant contended that his confession was false. He claimed that he had confessed to the crime only because he believed Nall had given a statement to the police which placed the primary blame for the crime on him, and that his confession was merely an attempt to save himself by getting a favorable plea bargain.

Elements of Burdgess' confession were corroborated by the other evidence at the trial. Bobbie Kimball testified that she had spoken to Nall and Burdgess about the murder of her husband and that, at what she thought was Burdgess' request, she had wiped her house clean of fingerprints before she left on March 7. She testified that she had received $10,000 in insurance proceeds for the death of her husband, and that she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit first degree murder. She also testified that when she returned home on March 8, she expected to find her husband dead because she had received a phone call to that effect from Nall.

Ballistics experts linked a gun given to the police by the defendant's girlfriend as the large caliber revolver which fired one of the fatal shots into Guy Kimball's head. Also surrendered to the police were several eight track tapes. Burdgess stated in his confession that he had given this gun and the tapes to his girlfriend for her birthday. Bobbie Kimball positively identified the gun as the one which her husband kept in his nightstand, and the tapes as her own.

ASSIGNMENTS NUMBERS ONE AND THREE

In assignment number one the defendant complains of the denial of the motion to suppress his confession. The defendant contends that his statement was given as a direct result of a statement given by Dennis Nall on April 30, 1979. Since that statement was found to be involuntary and suppressed by this court, State v. Nall, 379 So.2d 731 (La.1980), the defendant contends that his statement was "fruit of the poison tree" and therefore not admissible.

In assignment number three the defendant complains of the denial of his objection to the testimony of his former attorney at the hearing on the motion to suppress. The attorney was subpoenaed by the state, and his testimony was elicited to prove that the statement given by the defendant was not the result of the April 30 statement of Dennis Nall. The defendant objected to the testimony on the ground that it violated his attorney-client privilege. La.R.S. 15:475, 478.

A detailed consideration of these assignments is unnecessary because the defendant has no standing to assert the involuntary nature of Dennis Nall's April 30 statement. A person adversely affected by a confession unlawfully obtained from another has no standing to raise its illegality in court. This principle has been applied where, as in this case, one co-defendant or co-conspirator seeks to suppress evidence incriminating him that was obtained from a coparticipant in crime without proper compliance with the procedural requirements of Miranda or otherwise in violation of that party's Fifth or Sixth Amendment rights.[1]United States v. Fredericks, 586 F.2d 470 (5th Cir.1978). See Gissendanner v. Wainwright, 482 F.2d 1293, 1296-97 (5th Cir. 1973); United States v. Pruitt, 464 F.2d 494, 495 (9th Cir.1972); United States v. Schennault, 429 F.2d 852, 855 (7th Cir.1970); United States v. Bruton, 416 F.2d 310, 312-13 (8th Cir.1969), cert. denied, 397 U.S. 1014, *1065 90 S.Ct. 1248, 25 L.Ed.2d 428 (1970). See also McKenney v. State, 388 So.2d 1232 (Fla.1980); People v. Varnum, 66 Cal.2d 808, 59 Cal.Rptr. 108, 427 P.2d 772 (1967), cert. denied, 390 U.S. 529, 88 S.Ct. 1208, 20 L.Ed.2d 86 (1968). The failure of the 1974 Louisiana constitution to provide for such standing, while explicitly granting any person adversely affected by a search or seizure conducted in violation of the constitution standing to raise its illegality in the appropriate court, indicates that the framers did not consider that the additional benefit of extending the exclusionary rule to persons adversely affected by others' involuntary confessions would justify further encroachment upon the public interest in having criminal cases decided on the basis of relevant evidence. Compare La. Const. art. 1 § 5 with art. 1 § 16.

While we find that the defendant has no standing in this case to object to the nonvoluntary nature of his co-defendant's confession, we reserve judgment on the question of whether gross police misconduct against third parties in the overly zealous pursuit of criminal convictions might lead to limited standing. See United States v. Fredericks, supra, 586 F.2d at 481 and the cases cited at note 14. In this case, however, the conduct of the police in the taking of Nall's statement is far from the sort of third-degree physical or psychological coercion that might prompt us to exclude the defendant's confession.

This assignment of error, therefore, lacks merit.

ASSIGNMENT OF ERROR NUMBER FOUR

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