State v. Dupont

816 A.2d 954, 149 N.H. 70, 2003 N.H. LEXIS 8
CourtSupreme Court of New Hampshire
DecidedJanuary 24, 2003
DocketNo. 2001-259
StatusPublished
Cited by19 cases

This text of 816 A.2d 954 (State v. Dupont) 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 v. Dupont, 816 A.2d 954, 149 N.H. 70, 2003 N.H. LEXIS 8 (N.H. 2003).

Opinion

Brock, C. J.

The defendant, Timothy Dupont, was convicted after a jury trial in Superior Court (Groff, J.) of sixty-nine counts of felonious sexual assault. See RSA 632-A:8, III (1986). The indictments alleged that the defendant committed three different felonious sexual acts against his stepdaughter on a monthly basis over twenty-three months from 1987 through 1989. The defendant appeals his convictions on a number of grounds. We affirm.

The relevant facts follow. The defendant moved to the Somerset apartments in Nashua with his wife and her two children around 1987. The victim was the defendant’s stepdaughter. The victim testified that during the two years that the family lived at the Somerset apartments, the defendant assaulted her “at least once a month.” The defendant would enter her bedroom at night, and while she pretended to sleep, would remove her clothing. He then “touched [her] breast and [her] vagina and ... would have [her] touching his penis.”

The victim did not tell anyone about the assaults for many years. She testified that this was partly because she was afraid, and partly because the defendant was the leader of a small religious group. She also testified that the defendant told her that her mother would be angry with her if she found out about the abuse. Furthermore, once in 1993, the defendant held a gun to his own head and told the victim how sorry he was, that he could go to jail if she reported him, and “how he would kill himself if [she] wanted him to.”

The victim testified that when she went to college in the fall of 1996, the defendant wrote her letters and insisted that she call him every night. He became upset when she did not call one night, and wrote her a card that accused her of thinking that his feelings for her were “funny,” and saying [73]*73that he would not share those feelings with her any more. He also wrote her a letter asking “forgiveness for my bad.”

The victim moved out of her parents’ house in 1997 or 1998. In 1998, she told her boyfriend, who was later to become her husband, that the defendant had molested her. She later reported the molestation to the police.

At trial, police officer Scott Howe testified that he, another Nashua police officer, and a New Hampshire State Trooper went to the defendant’s residence to question and arrest the defendant. The police officers spoke with the defendant, indicated that they wished to inquire about “an incident that occurred in Nashua,” and asked him to drive to the police station in Newport so that they could question him about it. When they arrived at the station, the police escorted the defendant to an interview room, where they advised him of his Miranda rights. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).

After the defendant signed a form waiving his Miranda rights, the police began interrogating him about his relationship with the victim. During the interrogation, the defendant admitted to having had sexual contact with the victim, and stated that he was confused about his relationship with her and treated her more as a girlfriend than as a daughter. About twenty minutes after the interrogation began, the police advised the defendant that they would be taking an audiotaped statement. He agreed to be audiotaped, and the interrogation continued.

After recording the defendant’s statement, the police told the defendant that he was under arrest and would be transported back to Nashua. During the ride to Nashua, the police inquired of the defendant whether he had penetrated the victim during the sexual assaults. The defendant initially denied penetration, but later, while at the Nashua police station, admitted that he might have accidentally pushed his fingers into the victim’s vagina. At that point, the police took the defendant to an interview room so that they could record that statement as well. The taped interviews were played for the jury at trial.

I. Tape-Recorded Confession

The defendant argues that the trial court erred in admitting the tape-recorded confession, where parts of the same interrogation were not recorded. The State argues that even if the trial court erred in admitting the partially recorded interview, such error was harmless.

In order “[t]o avoid the inequity inherent in admitting into evidence the selective recording of a post -Miranda interrogation,” we recently set forth the following rule:

[74]*74In order to admit into evidence the taped recording of an interrogation, which occurs after Miranda rights are given, the recording must-be complete. The police need not tape the administration of a defendant’s Miranda rights or the defendant’s subsequent waiver of those rights. However, immediately following the valid waiver of a defendant’s Miranda rights, a tape recorded interrogation will not be admitted into evidence unless the statement is recorded-in its entirety.

State v. Barnett, 147 N.H. 334, 337-38 (2001). We made clear in Barnett that our decision was based, not upon due process grounds, but upon our supervisory authority over our trial courts’ to ensure the fair administration of justice. Id. at 337.

In the present case, the defendant was read his Miranda rights and waived them. The police then obtained a confession. However, it was only after they had obtained the defendant’s statement that they audiotaped his confession. Because the defendant’s statement was not recorded in its entirety, we agree with the defendant that the trial court erred when it allowed the jury to hear the tape recorded confession. We now consider whether the erroneous admission of a partially recorded interrogation should be subject to harmless error analysis,'and, if so, whether the error in this case was harmless.

It is well settled that the erroneous admission of evidence is harmless only if it is determined, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the verdict was not affected by the admission. State v. Skidmore, 138 N.H. 201, 203 (1993). In making this determination, we consider the alternative evidence presented at trial as well as the character of the inadmissible evidence itself. State v. Smith, 141 N.H. 271, 278 (1996).

The harmless-error doctrine recognizes the 'principle that the central purpose of a criminal trial is to decide the factual question of the defendant’s guilt or innocence, and promotes public respect for the criminal process by focusing on the underlying fairness of the-trial ’rather than on the virtually inevitable presence of immaterial error.

Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570, 577 (1986) (citations and quotation omitted).

There are instances, however, when the erroneous admission of evidence is so prejudicial that reversal is required without regard to the evidence in a particular case. State v. Williams, 133 N.H. 631, 634 (1990). In Williams, we explained that the United States Supreme Court, while rejecting a per se rule that the harmless error doctrine does not apply to constitutional [75]*75errors at trial, stated that “only such constitutional errors as necessarily render a trial fundamentally unfair require reversal without regard to the evidence in the particular case.” Id.

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Bluebook (online)
816 A.2d 954, 149 N.H. 70, 2003 N.H. LEXIS 8, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-dupont-nh-2003.