State v. Nielsen

2008 ME 77, 946 A.2d 382, 2008 Me. LEXIS 78
CourtSupreme Judicial Court of Maine
DecidedMay 6, 2008
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 2008 ME 77 (State v. Nielsen) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Judicial Court of Maine primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Nielsen, 2008 ME 77, 946 A.2d 382, 2008 Me. LEXIS 78 (Me. 2008).

Opinion

LEVY, J.

[¶ 1] Christian Nielsen appeals from a judgment of conviction entered in the Superior Court (Oxford County, Crowley, J.) on his conditional guilty plea to four counts of murder, 17-AM.R.S. § 201(1)(A) (2007). Nielsen contends that the court erred when it denied, in part, his motion to suppress statements he made to police officers before and after his arrest, as well as evidence obtained as a result of those statements. We affirm the judgment.

I. BACKGROUND

[¶ 2] The following facts, as found by the suppression court, are supported by the evidence. On September 4, 2006, at approximately 5:30 p.m., Trooper Dan Hanson of the Maine State Police received a dispatch telling him that there had been a report of an “unattended death” at the Black Bear Inn in Newry. Upon arriving at the Inn, Trooper Hanson spoke first with Lee Graham, who told the trooper that her husband, Charles Nielsen, had found bodies by the Inn and that her stepson, Christian Nielsen, had told Charles that he had killed some people. Lee then directed Hanson to two men sitting on a bench, Nielsen and his father Charles. After radioing for assistance, Hanson approached the father and son and asked Nielsen “What [is] going on?” Nielsen looked at Hanson’s nametag and replied, “Well, I killed some people, Dan. I shot them all. The gun’s in the house in the tool chest.” Hanson then asked when this had happened, to which Nielsen responded that it had been awhile.

[¶ 3] Trooper Hanson advised Nielsen of his Miranda rights, reciting the warnings from memory, and Nielsen acknowledged that he understood his rights. Hanson then asked Nielsen if he would like to tell Hanson what had happened, and Nielsen stated that he did, but he only wanted to say it once. Hanson did not ask Nielsen any further questions about the deaths, but did inform Nielsen that detectives would be arriving shortly and he could tell them what had happened. Hanson then handcuffed Nielsen and placed him in his police cruiser. Once Hanson had placed [385]*385Nielsen in the police cruiser, Hanson turned on his in-car video recorder.

[¶ 4] Shortly after Nielsen was placed in the police car, his father Charles came to the car window and asked him, “Shouldn’t you wait for counsel?” Nielsen responded “Yeah, not a bad idea.” Trooper Hanson thereafter advised Nielsen that it was up to him whether or not he spoke with detectives, to which Nielsen stated that he would speak with them.

[¶ 5] Trooper Hanson waited for additional law enforcement officers to arrive at the Inn, and then he asked Charles to describe where he had found the victims. Hanson followed a trail of blood leading out of the Inn and through the grass to some brush. In this brush, Hanson discovered the remains of two dismembered human bodies as well as the remains of two dogs. Hanson did not know at that time how many potential victims he was looking for, so he returned to his police cruiser and said to Nielsen, “I know you invoked your rights and you want to speak to counsel. But I need to ask this question just for the purpose of (unintelligible). Is there any chance there is anyone here alive? I don’t want to leave someone out there bleeding.” Nielsen responded that everyone was dead.

[¶ 6] Later that evening, while waiting for the detectives to arrive, Charles told Trooper Hanson that he had learned from Nielsen that there were four victims in total, three near the Inn and one in Upton. Hanson eventually received directions from both Charles and Nielsen regarding where he could find the third victim at the Inn, and Hanson followed these directions and discovered a third body under a tarp approximately fifty yards from the first two bodies.

[¶ 7] Game Warden Norm Lewis arrived at the Black Bear Inn shortly after 6 p.m. and approached Trooper Hanson, who was speaking with Charles at the rear of the police cruiser. Hanson asked Warden Lewis if he was familiar with the Brown Company Road in Upton because there was possibly another victim there. Charles suggested that they ask Nielsen for directions to the fourth victim, but Hanson stated that because Nielsen had expressed his desire to only tell his story once, there would be no further questioning of Nielsen until detectives arrived. It was at this time that Hanson went to look for the third victim at the Inn, while Lewis was left at the police cruiser to watch Nielsen.

[¶ 8] While Trooper Hanson was gone, Charles approached Nielsen and initiated a conversation with him, indicating that the police would be going to Upton. Nielsen stated that this would be good because that was where his mother lived, at which point Charles clarified that the police would be going to Upton to look for the fourth victim. Nielsen stated that the police would not find the body because he had burned it. Nielsen then gave detailed directions to Warden Lewis regarding where he had burned the fourth victim, without Lewis’s prompting. The only question Lewis asked Nielsen was for clarification at one point in his directions.

[¶ 9] Later that evening, Warden Lewis led other officers to the location where Nielsen had told Lewis he had burned the fourth victim. Lewis and the officers found the fire pit Nielsen had described, and a forensic anthropologist later confirmed that the pit contained the remains of the fourth victim.

[¶ 10] Detective Jennifer King from the Maine Criminal Investigations Division arrived at the Black Bear Inn at around 7:30 p.m. Upon arriving, Trooper Hanson advised Detective King that Nielsen had stated he had killed some people, that [386]*386Hanson had then read Nielsen his Miranda rights, and that Nielsen had responded that he only wanted to tell his story once and had made mention of counsel. King approached Nielsen, who was still sitting in Hanson’s police cruiser, and asked him if he would come to the Newry Fire Station to be interviewed. Nielsen said that he would.

[¶ 11] Once at the fire station, Detective King brought Nielsen to an upstairs room and removed his handcuffs. The room was set up like a classroom, and King and Nielsen sat at separate tables opposite one another during the interview. A second detective was also present during this interview. Prior to the interview, King asked Nielsen if he was hungry, he stated that he was, and King sent Trooper Hanson to get him a sandwich. After Nielsen had eaten, King read him his Miranda rights again. Nielsen stated that he understood his rights and wanted to speak with King at that time. Nielsen then confessed to killing all four victims, giving a detailed account of the crimes.

[¶ 12] Following his indictment, Nielsen filed a motion to suppress all the statements he made to police on the evening of September 4, as well as all physical evidence obtained as a result of those statements. In its order on Nielsen’s motion to suppress, the court found that only one statement made by Nielsen in the course of his interactions with police on September 4 should be suppressed: his statement to Trooper Hanson that it had been awhile since the killings, made after Nielsen told Hanson that he had killed some people and before he had received Miranda warnings. The court denied Nielsen’s motion to suppress as to all other statements and the evidence obtained as a result of those statements. Nielsen subsequently entered a conditional guilty plea to all four counts of murder, and was thereafter sentenced to four concurrent terms of life imprisonment.1 This appeal followed.

II. DISCUSSION

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
2008 ME 77, 946 A.2d 382, 2008 Me. LEXIS 78, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-nielsen-me-2008.