United States v. Haye

25 M.J. 849, 1988 WL 16445
CourtU S Air Force Court of Military Review
DecidedFebruary 3, 1988
DocketACM 25873
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 25 M.J. 849 (United States v. Haye) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering U S Air Force Court of Military Review primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Haye, 25 M.J. 849, 1988 WL 16445 (usafctmilrev 1988).

Opinion

DECISION

MURDOCK, Judge:

A general court-martial with members found the appellant guilty of two specifications of adultery and one specification of fraternization. The military judge set aside the guilty finding of one specification alleging adultery because it was multiplicious with the fraternization specification. The appellant was sentenced to dismissal and total forfeitures. Because she did not receive any confinement, the convening authority reduced the forfeitures to $848 per month for twelve months. R.C.M. 1107(d)(2), Discussion. The appellant has asserted nine assignments of error. We will discuss three.

I.

The appellant was charged with two specifications of adultery. The original Charge refers to her activities with a technical sergeant who was a subordinate on her missile combat crew. The Additional Charge refers to her activities with a captain. Referring to testimony relating to the Additional Charge, the appellant asserts that the military judge erred in admitting evidence derived from an inadmissible confession. The affair with the captain occurred, and ended, about six months before the one with the sergeant occurred. After the appellant’s husband, himself an active duty technical sergeant, learned of the affair with the sergeant, he became suspicious of all her activities. Eventually, he focused on her relationship with this particular captain.

Upset and suspicious, he called the captain and arranged to meet him in a shopping mall parking lot. Both parties describe the meeting as amicable, but it apparently did not satisfy the husband. He asked the captain to reveal the affair to the [851]*851captain’s wife. The captain told him he “probably would not.” Early the next morning, the captain’s wife was told of the affair in an anonymous telephone call.

About three months later, the captain received an early morning call from the appellant’s husband demanding that he come to the appellant’s house immediately. The captain complied. The husband was in an angry, confrontational mood. He used “abusive language” and physically grabbed the captain. Shortly before the visit ended, the husband kicked a small television set off a table.

After the captain left, the husband forced the appellant to go to the base security police station to make a statement about her affairs. The husband testified that before they went he hit and threatened her and that he “physically forced” her to go. He further testified that he considered her statement to have been involuntarily given, and that if she had refused to give it he would “probably” have "hit her again”.

The trial judge found the statement had been coerced, and was not voluntary. He suppressed the statement, but did not suppress the captain’s testimony as derivative evidence flowing from the statement. In his findings the judge stated

(M)y view is this is a classic case of inevitable discovery. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that, even apart from the accused’s statement, that these facts would have been reported and investigated. And, therefore, I don’t find that the derivative evidence or fruit of the poison tree doctrine should be applied to the testimony of Captain

At the defense counsel’s request, the judge made a further explanation:

My conclusion is based upon the testimony of the witnesses. My conclusion is, admittedly, circumstantial, but it is a factual conclusion that I am authorized to make in ruling on this legal issue and to me there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence that this matter would have been reported to authorities quite apart from the accused’s coerced statement to the Security Police, if not directly from her husband, then from Captain ... in reaction to the confrontations which were likely to continue with her husband.

As appealing as this analysis may be, it does not apply the inevitable discovery doctrine as we understand it to have been interpreted by the Court of Military Appeals.

Courts are frequently troubled by how to treat evidence associated with an unlawful search or seizure. The most central statement was announced by the Supreme Court in Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963), where the Court articulated the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine.

There are three principal exceptions to total exclusion of derivative evidence. The first exception allows admission where knowledge of the evidence is gained from an “independent source”. Silverthorne Lumber Co., Inc. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385, 40 S.Ct. 182, 64 L.Ed. 319 (1920). The second is where the connection between the unlawful act and the evidence has “become so attenuated as to dissipate the taint”. Nardone v. United States, 308 U.S. 338, 60 S.Ct. 266, 84 L.Ed. 307 (1939). The third exception, and the one involved in the present case, is the doctrine or rule of inevitable discovery. Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 104 S.Ct. 2501, 81 L.Ed.2d 377 (1984).

The Court of Military Appeals applied the inevitable discovery rule to courts-martial in United States v. Kozak, 12 M.J. 389 (C.M.A.1982). They stated what would allow evidence to be admitted under the inevitable discovery rule:

In applying this exception to the exclusionary rule in the future, we will require that after an accused challenges the legality of a search, the prosecution must, by a preponderance of the evidence, establish to the satisfaction of the military judge that when the illegality occurred, the government agents possessed, or were actively pursuing, evidence or leads that would have inevitably led to the discovery of the evidence and that the [852]*852evidence would inevitably have been discovered in a lawful manner had not the illegality occurred.

12 M.J. at 394.

The clear language of Kozak, and cases which have followed it, convince us that we should apply inevitable discovery carefully and narrowly. Without such restraint the doctrine will support almost any supposition or hunch a prosecutor can propose.

In United States v. Butner, 15 M.J. 139 (C.M.A.1983), a case very similar to the present one, the Court of Military Appeals refused to apply inevitable discovery. Security police investigators received a lead that Butner might have stolen a dormitory television set. Butner made a statement after an investigator threatened to “hang a snitch coat” on him (reveal him as a police informer). Butner implicated his roommate, Cady, in the statement. Finding coercion, the Court refused to admit the statement. Butner’s statement was not the only mention of Cady’s name to the police. At least one tipster had told them that the television set was in Cady’s apartment. The Court refused to admit Cady’s testimony under the inevitable discovery theory stating:

Thus, it is obvious that sooner or later the security police would have gotten around to interviewing Cady. Recently in United States v. Kozak, 12 M.J. 389 (C.M.A.1982) we adopted “the so-called inevitable discovery rule.” Id. at 391-92, 393.

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Related

United States v. Williams
54 M.J. 626 (Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals, 2000)
United States v. Korda
36 M.J. 578 (U S Air Force Court of Military Review, 1992)
United States v. Chick
30 M.J. 658 (U S Air Force Court of Military Review, 1990)
United States v. Haye
29 M.J. 213 (United States Court of Military Appeals, 1989)
United States v. Spence
29 M.J. 630 (U S Air Force Court of Military Review, 1989)
United States v. Peoples
28 M.J. 686 (U S Air Force Court of Military Review, 1989)
United States v. Tallon
28 M.J. 635 (U S Air Force Court of Military Review, 1989)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
25 M.J. 849, 1988 WL 16445, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-haye-usafctmilrev-1988.