State v. Guillory

511 S.E.2d 591, 236 Ga. App. 230, 99 Fulton County D. Rep. 703, 1999 Ga. App. LEXIS 125
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedFebruary 4, 1999
DocketA98A1885
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 511 S.E.2d 591 (State v. Guillory) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Guillory, 511 S.E.2d 591, 236 Ga. App. 230, 99 Fulton County D. Rep. 703, 1999 Ga. App. LEXIS 125 (Ga. Ct. App. 1999).

Opinion

Beasley, Presiding Judge.

Joseph Guillory was indicted for false public alarm (OCGA § 16-10-28). OCGA § 5-7-1 (a) (4) permits the State’s appeal of the order granting Guillory’s motion to suppress his confession.

The evidence at the suppression hearing showed that at approximately 12:45 a.m. on October 1, 1997, Alicia Rankine received a telephone call in her dorm room at McAllister Residence Hall at Brew-ton-Parker College. The caller did not identify himself but told her there was a bomb in the building. Authorities were contacted.

GBI Agent Watson arrived on the scene at about 2:30 a.m. after the dormitory had been evacuated. Rankine, Sheriff Sanders and Brewton-Parker security officer Cleve Royal told Watson the details of the bomb threat. Rankine told Watson that she knew only one male student at Brewton-Parker whom she had known prior to college, and that she knew him as “J. C.” She said he lived in the “200 dormitory” of LeRoy Hall and she had not had any problems with him. Rankine explained that she knew from the sequence of the rings that the telephone call was an on-campus call. But she told Watson [231]*231that it was not “J. C.” who made the threat on the phone.

Royal told Watson that during the evacuation of McAllister Hall, he observed a man wearing blue shorts and a white shirt alone in the area of a nearby male dorm, LeRoy Hall. When Royal shined his flashlight, the man ran into the dorm.

While McAllister Hall was being searched for a bomb, Watson and Sanders went to LeRoy Hall to see if they could locate anyone matching the description given by Royal. The two men entered the main door to the 200 block of LeRoy Hall which was open; the doors to the four individual dorm rooms were on the interior of the building. Watson saw that the door to room 202 was ajar by about two to four inches and he knocked on that door, but not on the other three. Although there was no answer, he heard sound from a television. He continued to “beat” on the door and announce who he was but there was no response. He peeked into the room, saw two men inside each lying on a bed, and opened the door. He let himself in the room and called out to the sleeping men.

The defendant identified himself and Watson said he would like to talk to him. Guillory stood up and put on dark colored shorts and a white tee shirt. Watson testified that he asked Guillory “what he had been doing” and that Guillory said-he had been “playing” on the telephone. Guillory testified that this conversation occurred at the police station. There was some other discussion during which Watson visually examined the room. At some point during the encounter, Guillory was arrested and handcuffed. Sheriff Sanders took him by car to the sheriff’s department. No Miranda warnings were given to Guillory in the dorm room or before he got to the sheriff’s department.

When Watson arrived at the Sheriff’s department at about 4:15 a.m., he joined Guillory in an office where he was being detained and had a brief conversation with him. Guillory testified that Watson asked if he had been “playing” on the phone that night. Guillory said “yes” and told how he had called his girlfriend, Sheree Smith, and pretended to do a routine from the movie “Scream” to scare her. Watson testified that this statement was Guillory’s explanation of his earlier comment about playing on the telephone. Watson then left the office to contact Smith about the story. Sanders, who had come into the office at some point, stayed with Guillory. Guillory testified that Sanders told him he should go ahead and confess and get it over with so he could go on about his business and get back to school. Watson came back into the office and Sanders told him that Guillory wanted to tell what had happened.

Watson testified that he then advised Guillory of his Miranda rights, and Guillory signed the waiver of rights form and a written confession in which he admitted making the bomb threat. Guillory testified that he signed a waiver only after Watson got him to sign [232]*232the confession. Sanders testified he was not in the room when the rights were given.

The trial court ruled that whether Miranda warnings were given before or after Guillory signed a confession was irrelevant and did not make a finding on that factual issue. The court found instead that Guillory was under arrest at the time he was first questioned in the dormitory and that he began to incriminate himself then. The court concluded that therefore the subsequent statement must be excluded. It did not base its decision on the possible illegality of the arrest.

The trial court’s “findings based upon conflicting evidence are analogous to the verdict of a jury and should not be disturbed by a reviewing court if there is any evidence to support it,” and “the trial court’s decision with regard to questions of fact and credibility . . . must be accepted unless clearly erroneous.”1 In essence the court construed the facts against Guillory and still ruled as a matter of law that the confession was not admissible.

The evidence regarding Watson’s entry into Guillory’s room and the subsequent arrest is not in dispute, and “where the evidence is uncontroverted and no question regarding the credibility of witnesses is presented, the trial court’s application of the law to undisputed facts is subject to de novo appellate review.”2 Guillory argued that the arrest was illegal in his motion' to suppress. Although the issue was not resolved, the pleadings and motion hearing show the matter was thoroughly aired and presented to the court.

The State argues that Guillory was given Miranda warnings before the verbal and written confessions, and even if the statements made at the dormitory room were incriminating, the later confessions must be examined separately and were properly taken. It cites Reinhardt v. State,3 Andrews v. State,4 and Moore v. State.5

1. We affirm but on different grounds. “The fact that a confession may be voluntary for purposes of the Fifth Amendment is merely a threshold requirement for Fourth Amendment analysis.”6 In other words, assurance that a person’s Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination was not violated does not necessarily overcome a failure to protect the person’s right under the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure. For the following reasons we hold that even if Guillory’s confession was voluntary, [233]*233it materialized from an illegal arrest and must be excluded.

“An arrest for a crime may be made by a law enforcement officer either under a warrant or without a warrant if the offense is committed in such officer’s presence or within such officer’s immediate knowledge; if the offender is endeavoring to escape; ... or for other cause if there is likely to be failure of justice for want of a judicial officer to issue a warrant.”7 “The Supreme Court of the United States has held that, even where probable cause exists, intrusion of a person’s home without a warrant is prohibited by the Fourth Amendment unless such intrusion is preceded by consent or exigent circumstances.

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Related

Turner v. State
700 S.E.2d 386 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 2010)

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Bluebook (online)
511 S.E.2d 591, 236 Ga. App. 230, 99 Fulton County D. Rep. 703, 1999 Ga. App. LEXIS 125, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-guillory-gactapp-1999.