State v. Pierce

533 A.2d 34, 130 N.H. 7, 1987 N.H. LEXIS 252
CourtSupreme Court of New Hampshire
DecidedOctober 15, 1987
DocketNo. 86-355
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 533 A.2d 34 (State v. Pierce) 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. Pierce, 533 A.2d 34, 130 N.H. 7, 1987 N.H. LEXIS 252 (N.H. 1987).

Opinion

Per Curiam.

In this appeal from two convictions for burglary, RSA 635:1, and one for assault, RSA 631:2-a, the defendant claims that the Superior Court (Manias, J.) erred in denying his pretrial motion to suppress a confession on the ground that it was “obtained contrary to his Miranda rights, including the right against self-incrimination.” We affirm.

On February 12, 1985, the defendant, wearing a ski mask, unlawfully entered two girls’ dormitories at St. Paul’s School in Concord. While inside the first, he engaged in sexual contact with two students, one of whom he injured when she tried to confine him in a storage room until the police arrived. Within the second building, he removed his clothes and indecently exposed himself to several individuals before leaving.

[8]*8After focussing suspicion on the defendant, the police obtained a warrant to search his room, as well as to remove samples of his hair and to photograph his unclothed body as it might have appeared to a victim of indecent exposure. When the defendant was brought to the police station to provide the samples and stand for the photographs, the police advised him of his rights under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), and he declined to give any statement. Although he was free to leave the police station after the samples had been provided and the photographs taken, he remained there for about an hour, while his landlord was questioned.

Following this interview with the landlord, the police placed the defendant under arrest and again repeated the Miranda warnings. This time the defendant said that he wished to make a statement and ostensibly waived his rights to remain silent and to require the presence of a lawyer. He went on to confess to the crimes and told the police where he had discarded the ski mask. Although the defendant cried during the confession, the trial court found that “he was not so demoralized that he was not aware of what he was doing and the consequences thereof.” Finding “no credible evidence that [the defendant’s] confession was coerced,” the court denied the motion to suppress it.

Our review of that ruling must start with a word about two preliminary issues, the first being the scope of the defendant’s claims. While it is clear that he raised no issue of State law in the trial court, the breadth of the federal issues raised is less certain. He obviously contested the voluntariness of the waiver of his rights to silence and the presence of a lawyer, as guaranteed under Miranda, but he did not clearly raise a further challenge to the voluntariness of the ensuing confession. The reference in his written suppression motion, to “the right against self incrimination,” alludes to the fifth amendment, “on which Miranda was based,” Colorado v. Connelly, 107 S. Ct. 515, 523 (1986), rather than to the fourteenth amendment’s due process clause, which is the independent basis for excluding an involuntary confession. See, e.g., Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 376 (1964); Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534, 544-45 & n.3 (1961); Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278, 285-87 (1936). Although there is doubt, therefore, that the defendant’s pleading was sufficient to challenge the voluntariness of his confession, the trial court dealt with this issue as well as with the voluntariness of the waiver, and we will do the same. [9]*9The second preliminary matter is the burden of persuasion on these issues. While the State does not dispute its obligation to prove the voluntariness of the Miranda waiver and resulting confession, the parties disagree about the quantum of evidence necessary to carry the State’s burden. The defendant claims both as to waiver and confession that the State must prove voluntariness beyond a reasonable doubt, citing State v. Goddard, 122 N.H. 471, 473, 446 A.2d 456, 457 (1982); the State maintains that it need satisfy its burden only by a preponderance of the evidence, citing Colorado v. Connelly supra and Lego v. Twomey, 404 U.S. 477 (1972). It is, nevertheless, unnecessary to decide whether Goddard has any continuing vitality after Connelly, because it it plain that the trial court was correct even on a reasonable doubt standard.

Turning to the merits, the defendant maintains that the trial judge’s findings of voluntary waiver and confession failed to reflect the psychological effects of providing the hair samples and standing exposed for police photographs, a process that he claims left him feeling humiliated, fearful, and “dirty.” The assertion musters no factual support in the record, however, which discloses the defendant’s admission that he had exposed himself indecently at least a dozen times over the course of his life and had suffered no sense of humiliation while doing so. Since the record indicates that the police conducted themselves professionally throughout the process of obtaining the evidence, it is not easy to see why standing for such photographs would have proven so emotionally unsettling as to debilitate the will of an individual who had exposed his body so often in far more startling circumstances. Still less is it plausible that his reaction would have rendered him incapable of voluntary activity after remaining at the police station by his own choice for an hour after the photographs and samples were taken. We therefore perceive nothing in the circumstances to indicate that it was unreasonable of the trial judge to conclude that the waiver and confession were voluntary.

The defendant’s position is not merely implausible on the facts, however. It suffers from an equally serious legal flaw in its underlying assumption that a defendant’s reaction to reasonable and professional police conduct in gathering evidence could ever render a subsequent waiver of Miranda rights or confession of guilt involuntary for constitutional purposes. Colorado v. Connelly, 107 S. Ct. 515 (1986), contains the United States Supreme Court’s most recent explanation of the concept of voluntariness applicable for purposes of the fifth and fourteenth amendments, and two [10]*10quotations from the text of the opinion, when read together, clearly indicate why the defendant’s position is untenable.

“We hold that coercive police activity is a necessary predicate to the finding that a confession is not ‘voluntary’ within the meaning of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Id. at 522.

“There is obviously no reason to require more in the way of a ‘voluntariness’ inquiry in the Miranda waiver context than in the Fourteenth Amendment confession context. The sole concern of the Fifth Amendment, on which Miranda was based, is governmental coercion. See United States v. Washington, 431 U.S. 181, 187 (1977); Miranda, supra, 384 U.S. at 460. Indeed, the Fifth Amendment privilege is not concerned ‘with moral and psychological pressures to confess emanating from sources other than official coercion.’

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Worrall v. FNMA and Nationstar
2013 DNH 158 (D. New Hampshire, 2013)
Balsamo v. UNH
2012 DNH 048 (D. New Hampshire, 2012)
Moore v. Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems
2012 DNH 021 (D. New Hampshire, 2012)
Fin Brand v. Take 2 Dough
2011 DNH 200 (D. New Hampshire, 2011)
Skynet v. NH Real Estate Commission
2008 DNH 072 (D. New Hampshire, 2008)
Raynor v. Estes & Gallup, Inc.
2003 DNH 190 (D. New Hampshire, 2003)
Hall v. New England Business
2003 DNH 073 (D. New Hampshire, 2003)
Chatel v. Town of New Ipswich
D. New Hampshire, 2001
State v. Hammond
742 A.2d 532 (Supreme Court of New Hampshire, 1999)
State v. Monroe
711 A.2d 878 (Supreme Court of New Hampshire, 1998)
Butler v. Hitchiner Man. Corp.
D. New Hampshire, 1997
Cabletron v. Allied
D. New Hampshire, 1996
Spacetown Auto Body v. Derry
D. New Hampshire, 1996
Robinson v. Caronia
D. New Hampshire, 1996
State v. Carroll
645 A.2d 82 (Supreme Court of New Hampshire, 1994)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
533 A.2d 34, 130 N.H. 7, 1987 N.H. LEXIS 252, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-pierce-nh-1987.