State v. Stearns

620 S.W.2d 92, 1981 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 362
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee
DecidedMay 5, 1981
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 620 S.W.2d 92 (State v. Stearns) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Stearns, 620 S.W.2d 92, 1981 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 362 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1981).

Opinions

OPINION

TATUM, Judge.

This is an appeal by the State from a pre-trial judgment sustaining a motion to suppress a confession given by the defendant. In the confession, the defendant admitted the robbery and murder of Radford Stockton in Pickett County on November 7, 1979. The only issue presented is whether the defendant’s confession was voluntarily made following a knowing and intelligent waiver of his constitutional rights.

After information had been received from the alleged accomplice, Darrell Huck-elby, implicating the defendant Stearns in the robbery homicide of Stockton, a warrant for the arrest of Stearns was obtained.

Stearns was a resident of Albany, Kentucky, but had gone to Indianapolis, Indiana after the crime was committed. Officers in Indianapolis arrested Stearns early on the morning of November 11, 1979. The defendant waived extradition and was given his Miranda rights soon after his arrest by the Indianapolis officers. There is no evidence that the Indianapolis Police Department questioned Stearns or that Stearns gave them a statement concerning the crime.

Two T.B.I. Agents and the Sheriff of Pickett County went to Indianapolis for Stearns after he waived extradition. We will summarize the testimony given by the three officers. They stated that upon their arrival, late on the morning of November 12, the defendant was brought to their automobile by the Indianapolis authorities. Immediately after getting into the automobile, the officers removed Stearns’ handcuffs. He did not appear to be drugged or intoxicated. Soon afterwards, they again read the defendant’s Miranda rights to him and two of the officers testified that they informed him of the offense of which he was charged and that they had a warrant for him. All testified that his conversation indicated that he was aware of the charges against him.

After being advised of his Miranda rights and told of the charges against him, the defendant talked freely with the officers and admitted his complicity in the crime. The officers in no way abused, threatened, or coerced the defendant into making the oral confession. The conversation between the officers and the defendant was friendly. The crime was discussed intermittently during the trip and they also discussed various other topics.

Their route took them near the scene of the crime. The defendant willingly left the automobile with the officers at the scene and further discussed the crime there. At the defendant’s request, they placed the defendant’s handcuffs on him at the scene of the crime; he told the officers that he was afraid that he would run without the handcuffs. After arriving at the Pickett County Jail, the information given by Stearns to the officers was reduced to writ[94]*94ing. He signed the written statement voluntarily. After signing the confession, he was brought into the cell with the co-defendant, Huckelby, but we do not deem it necessary to further discuss what occurred after the confession was orally given, reduced to writing and signed by the defendant.

The defendant testified that he was arrested early on the morning of Sunday, November 11 by the Indianapolis police who told him that he was wanted as a witness. He volunteered to come back to Pickett County “on his own.” He also signed a document furnished to him by the Indianapolis police advising him of his Miranda rights.

He admitted that the officers from Pickett County again advised him of his Miranda rights and told him why he was arrested after they had driven “down the road.” He also admitted that the officers did not attempt to question him until after he was advised of his Miranda rights and the reason for his arrest. He admitted orally telling the officers that he was involved in the crime but stated that the information given by him to the officers was not true. He testified that he was sleepy and at times the officers talked “kind of loud” but they did not “grab him or rough him up” or otherwise intimidate him. He testified that he told the officers at first that he did not want to discuss the crime but they persisted in questioning him afterward. He stated that he changed his mind about discussing the crime because “he was tired and sleepy and scared” and the officers told him, “they wasn’t going to leave me alone until I told them something.”

At another point, he testified that he had been up two nights and a day before his arrest in Indianapolis but that he had taken pills in Indianapolis that would keep him awake. He explained that this was the reason that he did not sleep in the automobiles though the officers did not try to keep him awake. He did not state whether he slept while in jail on the day or night of November 11, prior to the arrival of the Tennessee officers on November 12. He stated that he got tired after traveling “down the road.”

The trial judge sustained the motion to suppress on findings as follows:

“THE COURT: I think I’ve reviewed this matter sufficiently. I’ve given everybody an opportunity to speak as much as they wanted to and I assume there’s nothing more. I really don’t think it boils down to a question, gentlemen, of whether I believe or disbelieve the officers as opposed to the Defendants. I think obviously there are some contradicting statements made by the officers and made by the Defendants.
But I think the way I see it, and the way I see it from what I understand the law to be, I see from the testimony of the State’s witnesses that there’s sufficient problems in the admissibility of these statements. Unfortunately, from the State’s point of view.
* * * * * *
THE COURT: Danny Stearns was basically the oral statements made in the ear coming down from Indiana. And I think without question that the officers went up there. They didn’t read the warrant to him. They didn’t tell him what he was charged with. They didn’t read the warrant to him; they told him what he was charged with in a surreptitious sort of way I think. Played one statement against another. ‘Darrel has already talked. You ought to talk.’ Whether he said, T don’t want to talk about it,’ or not — and I don’t think the officers said that he said that. He says he said that. I don’t think the officers said that, but whether he said it or not, I doubt that if you take an eighteen year old, pick him up in the middle of the night, whether he’s slept three days or been up three days, but pick him up in the middle of the night, take him into a big city jail, fingerprint and question or photograph him, and detain him for a period of time, at least the middle of the day, and then have officers from out of State come up and say, ‘We’ve got a warrant for your arrest and we’re going [95]*95to take you back to Tennessee. We’ll get you one way or another.’ ‘Well, I’ll just go.’ And he’s there in that police environment and there are three rather large people who are given weapons and he gets in the car with them — I don’t know if there can be a voluntary waiver or not. It seems to me that’s a rather coercive kind of atmosphere that would require a great showing on the part of the State or require them to show maybe more than the usual circumstance that it was in fact a voluntary waiver.
Simply signing a statement that the rights have been read and I understand them doesn’t fit the bill as I understand what the Supreme Court’s tried to say to us.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
620 S.W.2d 92, 1981 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 362, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-stearns-tenncrimapp-1981.