State v. Lloyd

538 P.2d 1278, 22 Or. App. 254, 1975 Ore. App. LEXIS 1190
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedAugust 11, 1975
Docket5785
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 538 P.2d 1278 (State v. Lloyd) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Lloyd, 538 P.2d 1278, 22 Or. App. 254, 1975 Ore. App. LEXIS 1190 (Or. Ct. App. 1975).

Opinion

LANGTRY, J.

Defendant appeals from convictions on two counts of manslaughter (ORS 163.125) and one count of reckless burning (ORS 164.335), arguing that the circuit court erred in refusing to* exclude from evidence testimony about, and recordings of, statements elicited from him by police during a period of alleged illegal detention extending over some four- and-orie-half days prior to his arrest on May 29, 1974.

Having responded to a report of a residential fire during the, early morning hours of May 25, 1974, Pendleton City Police Officers Anderson and Moore discovered defendant, in an extremely intoxicated *257 state, “passed out” in a nearby parking lot. Aroused and directed to “go home,” defendant made an attempt to enter the burning house located across the street. The officers then decided it would be necessary to take the defendant into custody for detoxification, pursuant to OES 426.460.

Following a delay of over two hours, while the detaining officers assisted in traffic and crowd control at the scene of the fire, defendant was transported to the Umatilla County Jail and “booked” as a “friendly drunk” at approximately 6 a.m. No criminal charges were filed at that time, and defendant was told he would be released within six hours or as soon as he was “sober.” Defendant, however, was questioned at that time ‘about how and why he had come to be in the vicinity of the fire in an apparent attempt to determine whether others might also have been in the area. During the course of this initial interrogation, in which defendant admitted having been inside the house and having lit at least one match therein sometime before the outbreak of the fire, defendant was found to be in possession of a considerable amount of money; additional questioning directed at ascertaining the source of these funds followed a “Miranda warning” by Officer Anderson.

Defendant was next questioned by Officer Walker of the Pendleton police at approximately 8:30 a.m., subsequent to the discovery that the morning’s fire had *258 caused the deaths of two unidentified persons. Apparently, due to defendant’s continued intoxication, this questioning, which followed a second Miranda warning, yielded little additional information about events surrounding the fire although defendant unequivocally denied that he had started the fire.

Shortly after the conclusion of Officer Walker’s interview Pendleton Police Chief Gallaher contacted a deputy district attorney for the purpose of securing authorization to detain the defendant as a “material witness.” Based upon information that the defendant had been picked up near the fire on a detoxification “charge,” had been in the house or close to- it at the time of the fire’s outbreak, and was both in possession of a large sum of money and a stranger, to- the area, Deputy District Attorney Swint concluded that such a hold would be warranted and at approximately 9 a.m. May 25 defendant’s custody report classification was altered from “detox” to “material witness.”

Later that same day an attorney retained by defendant’s aunt for the purpose of determining the reason or reasons for his incarceration met with State Officer Howland at the scene of the fire and was informed of the “material witness” hold. Officer How-land also indicated to the attorney that the defendant was not a suspect in the arson investigation then underway and volunteered to provide notice of any change in his status should it occur. Some 90 minutes after this exchange — at approximately 2:30 p.m.— Howland himself had an opportunity to speak with the defendant and was told “somewhat the same” story previously given to the Pendleton police.

*259 No further questioning of the defendant took place until the following afternoon when, because his previous statements had been found to be not entirely consistent with physical evidence then available, Officer Howland returned with Detective Carey of the Umatilla County Sheriff’s Office' in an attempt to “fill in” defendant’s narrative of the events leading up to the fire and his actions after its outbreak. In this interview, not preceded by any Miranda warning, defendant reiterated that while he had been present inside the house prior to the fire and had lit at least one match during that time, he had subsequently fallen asleep in the living room and remained unaware of the presence of any fire until being waked by a “slamming door” at a time when the house was already smoke filled.

Two days later, May 28, 1974, defendant was interviewed for the fifth time, the questioning being conducted by Officer Howland together with Officers Eitter and Mink of the Oregon State Police. In the course of this interrogation — initiated by a review of defendant’s Miranda rights — defendant conceded that he had not previously been entirely candid and that the fire might have inadvertently been started by any one of several matches he had discarded while in the house.

Two separate interrogations followed on the 29th. The first, conducted by Officers Mink and Eitter at 10:01 a.m., was preceded by another Miranda warning and resulted in an admission by the defendant that after discovering the fire he had, while attempting to put it out, mistakenly poured some kind of an accelerant onto the flames.

At approximately 4:15 that afternoon Officer Howland once again encountered the attorney retained by defendant’s aunt. At that time he apparently informed the attorney that defendant had, in fact, be *260 come a “focal suspect,” but that he would be released from custody within a matter of hours. Immediately thereafter, Howland — along with Officer Mink and Detective Carey — proceeded to interrogate the defendant for another 90 minutes, during which time defendant admitted that he had been present in the house prior to the fire, had used lighted matches to make his way around in the dark, had dropped what he believed to be a “burned out” book of matches on the floor; that within a matter of minutes of dropping those matches he left the premises, walked across the street, looked back to see flames inside the home, returned to the site, grabbed a can from the porch with the intent of using its contents to extinguish the fire, and that he had continued to apply liquid from that can even after discovering it to be an accelerant rather than water. At the conclusion of this interview defendant was arrested and charged.

On August 2, 1974 a motion to suppress “[a]ny fact, matter or thing whatsoever arising from, discovered or derived by reason of the defendant’s illegal incarceration during the period of May 25, 1974, through and including May 29, 1974” — including all statements elicited by police during that prearrest interval — was filed in the Circuit Court for Umatilla County.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
538 P.2d 1278, 22 Or. App. 254, 1975 Ore. App. LEXIS 1190, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-lloyd-orctapp-1975.