State v. Ladd

431 A.2d 60, 1981 Me. LEXIS 845

• Court: Supreme Judicial Court of Maine
• Decided: June 30, 1981
• Status: Published

Opinions

McKUSICK, Chief Justice.

A Superior Court jury in Franklin County found defendant Ladd guilty of committing arson, 17-A M.R.S.A. § 802 (Supp.1980), at the Magno apartment building in Farming-ton on February 9, 1980. At trial the principal evidence against defendant consisted of a confession he gave five days after the fire during interrogation at the Farmington police station. On appeal he contends that his confession should not have been admitted in evidence because, he claims, it was obtained in violation of his Miranda1 right to cut off police interrogation and also it was the fruit of an invalid arrest warrant. We reject both claims and accordingly affirm the judgment of conviction entered on the jury verdict.

I.

At the outset we can narrow the Miranda issue that is in dispute before this court. At all times defendant has conceded that he received proper Miranda warnings before any police interrogation that resulted in his confession. For its part the State does not now make any contest over the custodial nature of defendant’s interrogation by the police. The parties are, however, in sharp dispute over whether the two officers whose questioning led up to the critical confession “scrupulously honored” Ladd’s right to cut off questioning.

As the Supreme Court of the United States stated in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 at 473-74, 86 S.Ct. at 1627 (1966):

Once warnings have been given, the subsequent procedure is clear. If the individual indicates in any manner, at any time prior to or during questioning, that he wishes to remain silent, the interrogation must cease. At this point he has shown that he intends to exercise his Fifth Amendment privilege; any statement taken after the person invokes his privilege cannot be other than the product of compulsion, subtle or otherwise. Without the right to cut off questioning, the setting of in-custody interrogation operates on the individual to overcome free choice in producing a statement after the privilege has been once invoked.

The propriety of continued police interrogation after a suspect has asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege was clarified by Michigan v. Mosley, 423 U.S. 96, 104, 96 S.Ct. 321, 326, 46 L.Ed.2d 313 (1975). There the Court held “that the admissibility of statements obtained after the person in custody has decided to remain silent depends under Miranda on whether his ‘right to cut off questioning’ was ‘scrupulously honored’.” Under our Maine rule the State bears the burden of proving the facts necessary for admissibility beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Stone, Me., 397 A.2d 989, 995 (1979); State v. Capitan, Me., 363 A.2d 221, 222 (1976). Only by imposing this strict standard on the State can the justice hearing the suppression motion

thereby the better ‘insulate his mind’ from a confession’s inherent surface tendency to project a

‘near certainty of guilt and make a dispassionate judgment .. . ’

concerning operation of the factors— whether they be the special prophylactic requirements of Miranda v. Arizona or the traditional generalized due process ‘voluntariness’ — upon which the eviden-tiary admissibility of an extra-judicial confession depends.

State v. Collins, Me., 297 A.2d 620, 627 (1972) citing and quoting State v. Merrow, 161 Me. 111, 122, 208 A.2d 659, 664 (1965) (Webber, J., concurring).

In the case at bar, after a full hearing on defendant’s pretrial motion to suppress his confession to the Magno arson, as well as confessions to three previous arsons, the Superior Court found

that the state has established beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant’s confessions to the four crimes were knowingly and voluntarily made and that the state has in all other respects met the requisite burden for the admissibility of defendant’s statements.

That compendious finding includes, we must assume, a finding beyond a reasonable doubt that the officers did scrupulously honor Ladd’s right to cut off questioning, see State v. Broucher, Me., 388 A.2d 907, 909 (1978), and we must sustain that finding if the record furnishes “rational support for the conclusions reached,” see State v. Stone, supra at 995. The record does contain that necessary support.

The Magno apartment building arson was investigated by State Police Detective Emery and Farmington Police Sergeant Wilcox. After completing their initial investigation, upon the basis of which they obtained a warrant for defendant’s arrest,² the officers on February 14, 1980, sought out defendant at his place of employment. Upon meeting defendant, the officers did not execute the arrest warrant or even tell him of it. Rather, they asked him if he would be willing to talk with them about the Magno fire. Defendant agreed and went voluntarily with them to the Farming-ton police station.

At the station defendant, after receiving the Miranda warning, agreed to being questioned without having an attorney present. Although Sergeant Wilcox remained in the room throughout the interrogation, Detective Emery conducted the initial questioning and tape-recorded the exchange. After about an hour the discussion between defendant and Detective Emery became heated, and defendant told Emery, “I got no more questions. I’m not going to answer anything.” And he added, “Because I ain’t done nothing.” Thereupon, Detective Emery told Sergeant Wilcox to serve defendant with the arrest warrant and angrily left the room, turning off the tape recorder as he went. Although Sergeant Wilcox did not then execute the warrant, he did stay in the room with defendant.

Wilcox, who, unlike Detective Emery, had known defendant for some ten years, then asked defendant, “Do you want to talk to me anymore alone?” In response, defendant said that “he needed help with an alcohol problem” and “that the alcohol had gotten to him and the only time he’d do anything like this is when he was under the influence.” It was during this discussion of defendant’s alcohol problem that he confessed to the Magno arson and gave Wilcox the Bic cigarette lighter he had used to set the fire. Sergeant Wilcox then put defendant under arrest and took him to the Franklin County jail for booking. The entire episode at the Farmington police station, starting at about 5:00 p. m., covered a couple of hours. He confessed to the three other unrelated arsons the following day at the Franklin County sheriff’s office. Those other confessions are not here in issue.

Whether in the circumstances defendant’s statement to Detective Emery:

I got no more questions. I’m not going to answer anything. Because I ain’t done nothing.

was ambiguous, thereby entitling Sergeant Wilcox to make limited inquiry solely for clarification, was a question of fact to be resolved by the Superior Court justice who heard all the testimony. On appeal the Law Court’s function is a limited one, namely, solely a review function of determining whether the justice below could on this record, considering the extensive oral testimony given by all three participants, rationally have found as a fact beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant’s statement was ambiguous. See State v. Smith, Me., 415 A.2d 553, 558 (1980). We conclude that he could.

The justice was warranted in finding that, in the context in which defendant made his statement, ambiguity existed in at least one critical respect. Even if his statement amounted to something more than an assertion of innocence or an impatient protest against Emery’s questioning, cf. Fare v. Michael C., 442 U.S. 707, 727, 99 S.Ct. 2560, 2573, 61 L.Ed.2d 197 (1979), defendant left it unclear whether he was refusing to answer further questions from either officer or only from Detective Emery, who up to that time had alone questioned him. At the suppression hearing, Sergeant Wilcox testified that defendant “gets upset easily” and that he, Wilcox, understood defendant’s statement to be an angry outburst against Detective Emery whose questioning had annoyed him. In any event, on this evidence the Superior Court justice acted rationally in concluding that defendant’s statement was not unambiguous. In face of that finding of ambiguity Sergeant Wilcox cannot be faulted for asking a single, specifically directed question to determine Ladd’s desires. All Wilcox did was to ask that one clarifying question, “Do you want to talk to me anymore alone?” Ladd responded affirmatively by himself opening up the conversation in regard to his alcoholism problem.

An all-important distinction must here be drawn

between, on the one hand, an inquiry for the limited purpose of clarifying whether the defendant is invoking his right to remain silent or has changed his mind regarding an earlier assertion of the right and, on the other hand, questioning aimed at eliciting incriminating statements concerning the very subject on which the defendant has invoked his right.

United States v. Lopez-Diaz, 630 F.2d 661, 665 (9th Cir. 1980). Cf. Nash v. Estelle, 597 F.2d 513, 517-18 (5th Cir. 1979); Vail v. State, Alaska, 599 P.2d 1371, 1378-79 (1979). The record before the justice amply supported his finding beyond a reasonable doubt that Wilcox’s inquiry was calculated innocently to clarify defendant’s statement, rather than improperly “to persuade [defendant] to reconsider his position,” Michigan v. Mosley, supra 423 U.S. at 104, 96 S.Ct. at 326, or otherwise to infringe upon his right to silence.

On its face the successive questioning by Detective Emery and Sergeant Wilcox does have some of the appearance of the “rough guy-nice guy” interrogation technique.³ See White, Police Trickery in Inducing Confessions, 127 U.Pa.L.Rev. 581, 625-28 (1979) (“Mutt and Jeff” routine). However, the Superior Court justice, after hearing extensive testimony by the two officers and Ladd, all three of whom were subjected to energetic cross-examination, found as a fact that Ladd had voluntarily waived his Miranda right to cut off questioning. That conclusion finds rational support in the evidence adduced at the suppression hearing. For the Law Court to draw the opposing inference from the cold transcript before it on appeal would be to usurp the factfinder’s function. Our appellate role is restricted to reviewing whether the trial court erred by reaching a conclusion without rational support in the record. Within the confines of our appellate supervisory powers, we can find no error in the admission in evidence of defendant’s confession to Sergeant Wilcox.

II.

Before the police brought defendant to the Farmington police station for questioning, they had obtained a warrant for his arrest from the clerk of the District Court. On appeal the State concedes that the arrest warrant was invalid because the issuing magistrate did not have before her either a sworn complaint or an affidavit from which she could satisfy herself “that there [was] probable cause to believe that an offense ha[d] been committed and that the defendant committed it.” See D.C.Crim.R. 4(a); see also M.R.Crim.P. 4(a).

From the invalidity of the arrest warrant, defendant constructs an argument that his confession to the Magno arson was the “fruit of a poisonous tree,” apparently either by reason of the coercive effect of Detective Emery’s announcement of the existence of the warrant as he left the interrogation room or by reason of its execution by Wilcox immediately after Ladd confessed. Cf. State v. Turner, Me., 394 A.2d 798 (1978). It is difficult to see how the execution of the invalid arrest warrant after defendant had already confessed to the Magno crime could retrospectively make that prior confession the fruit of the invalidity. On the other hand, the revelation to defendant of the existence of the arrest warrant may have had some tendency to persuade him that the officers “had the goods on him” and that he might as well tell all. However that may be, we have no occasion here to decide whether a confession might be inadmissible as the fruit of merely the threatened use of an invalid warrant. Here the police in any event, even before they questioned defendant, had adequate probable cause to arrest him with no warrant at all. A law enforcement officer may arrest without a warrant any person who he has probable cause to believe has committed the Class B crime of arson. See 17-A M.R.S.A. § 15 (Supp.1980). Since, when Detective Emery left the room and at all other times during the questioning, the officers could have arrested defendant without a warrant, the subsequent confession in no way can be said to have resulted from the fatal documentary defect in the arrest warrant.

The information available to the officers at the time they obtained the arrest warrant — even though not stated in writing and under oath to the issuing magistrate, as is required for the warrant itself to be valid — amply supported the warrantless arrest of defendant for the arson at the Mag-no apartment building. The officers reasonably believed that the fire, which occurred in a vacant apartment, was of incendiary origin. They had probable cause to believe that defendant had set the fire from the following facts: Defendant had recently been evicted from the building and had “predicted” to several persons that it would bum. Defendant was seen hurrying from the scene of the fire minutes before it was discovered. Then shortly thereafter defendant was seen standing at a nearby telephone, apparently talking on it, and at the same time watching the fire; he had to be told to hang up the telephone and call the fire department. This information came to Sergeant Wilcox from citizens residing in the Magno block or in the house right next to it, who from every appearance were “innocent of criminal involvement, and volunteered] their information fortuitously, openly, and through motives of good citizenship.” See State v. Parkinson, Me., 389 A.2d 1, 9 (1978), quoting People v. Ramey, 16 Cal.3d 263, 127 Cal.Rptr. 629, 632, 545 P.2d 1333, 1336 (1976). The facts and circumstances within the knowledge of the officers and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information would warrant any prudent and cautious person to believe defendant Ladd had committed the arson at the Magno apartment building. That probable cause, which existed prior to their questioning of Ladd, fully justified the officers’ arresting defendant, whether or not they also had a warrant founded on a prior magisterial determination of probable cause. See State v. Fogg, Me., 410 A.2d 548, 550 (1980).

The entry shall be:

Judgment affirmed.

WERNICK and GODFREY, JJ., concur.

NICHOLS and CARTER, JJ., dissent in separate opinions.

1 . Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).

2 . The arrest warrant was in fact invalid for failure to comply with the documentary requirement .of D.C.Crim.R. 4(a). See part II for a discussion of the consequences of that invalidity.

3 . Police use of the “rough guy-nice guy” technique runs the serious danger of a later court determination that the police have not scrupulously honored the suspect’s right to cut off questioning.