Bryant v. Vose

• Decision Date: 06 March 1986
• Docket Number: No. 85-1671,85-1671
• Parties: Clayton M. BRYANT, Petitioner, Appellant, v. George A. VOSE, Jr., Superintendent of Massachusetts Correctional Institution, Respondent, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 364

785 F.2d 364

54 USLW 2518

Clayton M. BRYANT, Petitioner, Appellant, v. George A. VOSE, Jr., Superintendent of Massachusetts

Correctional Institution, Respondent, Appellee.

No. 85-1671.

United States Court of Appeals,

First Circuit.

Argued Jan. 8, 1986.

Decided March 6, 1986.

Miriam R. Goldstein, with whom Stephen A. Hopkins, and Robert V. Lizza, Sherburne, Powers & Needham, Boston, Mass., were on brief, for petitioner, appellant.

Barbara A.H. Smith, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom Francis X. Bellotti, Atty. Gen., Boston, Mass., were on brief, for respondent, appellee.

Before COFFIN and BOWNES, Circuit Judges, and ROSENN, ^* Senior Circuit Judge.

COFFIN, Circuit Judge.

Appellant, Clayton M. Bryant, asks us to reverse dismissal of his writ of habeas corpus. He claims two errors of constitutional dimension in his Massachusetts murder trial: admission of an involuntary oral confession made without the benefit of Miranda warnings, along with its "fruit", a subsequent written confession, and ineffective assistance of counsel. We reject both of these claims, and affirm dismissal of the writ.

I. Background

The facts of this case are set forth comprehensively in the opinion of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, 390 Mass. 729, 459 N.E.2d 792 (1984), and we therefore only summarize the facts as found by that court. ¹

On November 21, 1978, William Seduski was shot in the chest with a sixteen-gauge shotgun at his home. Appellant was known to have disliked the victim, at least in part because Seduski was involved in a steady relationship with Jane McNeal, who operated a restaurant near appellant's home. Appellant, a steady customer of the restaurant, was in love with McNeal, was fond of her children, and wanted to marry her.

Appellant was questioned on the day after the murder by the state police lieutenant in charge of the homicide investigation, and was given Miranda warnings at that time. The defendant voluntarily spoke with the officer but denied that he was involved in the murder. At some point during the next month, when appellant and the lieutenant met briefly on the street, the officer asked appellant if they could meet again to discuss the shooting. Appellant agreed. On February 2, 1979, the town's new police chief, who previously had been introduced to appellant, arrived at appellant's home at 5 p.m. pursuant to an appointment to speak with appellant. The chief, who had just come off duty, was in uniform and carrying a gun.

Appellant invited the chief into his house, offered him a cup of coffee, and the two men spoke for a few minutes. The chief then told appellant that he was investigating the shooting, and appellant agreed to discuss the crime. The chief gave appellant an incomplete version of the Miranda warnings, telling him that he did not have to talk, and that anything he said could be used against him in court. The chief asked appellant if he could afford an attorney, and appellant apparently suggested that he could, discussing with the chief the money he had available.

For more than two hours, the police chief and appellant discussed a number of general subjects. At 7 p.m., the chief had offered to leave, but the appellant said he had no plans for the evening and offered the chief another cup of coffee.

The conversation turned to Jane McNeal, her children, and her relationship with the victim, Seduski. At about 7:50 p.m., the chief observed that, since the homicide, McNeal had been nervous around appellant, her children were afraid of him, and he (appellant) "really made a mess of the whole situation". According to the chief's testimony, appellant responded to this information by saying that he "didn't realize that he had hurt the kids, didn't realize they were afraid of him, that he just didn't want Seduski to hurt them. And then he stated that, 'I did it, I shot him.' " After ten or fifteen seconds of silence, the chief told appellant that he (appellant) "must be glad to get that off his chest" and asked "if he want[ed] to say anything about it." Appellant then made a detailed confession.

The chief arrested appellant, brought him to the police station and gave him complete Miranda warnings. Appellant agreed to make a written confession, and he wrote a statement that confirmed the chief's version of the oral confession.

Both confessions were admitted at trial after a suppression hearing. After their admission, appellant testified that he had confessed falsely to protect McNeal, whom he believed to be the police's primary suspect. He was convicted of first degree murder, and the conviction was affirmed on appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court. The Massachusetts high court noted that, without the confessions, there was insufficient evidence to convict him.

II. Discussion

A. Admission of the Confessions

Appellant argues that his oral confession to the police chief was inadmissible because it was both involuntary and made without the benefit of Miranda warnings. We shall address the Miranda issue first, only to the extent necessary to explain why we do not reach the merits of that claim.

Appellant would have been entitled to Miranda warnings only if he was subjected to "custodial interrogation", Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1612, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). Both the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the federal district court concluded that appellant was not in custody during his conversation with the police chief. ² If this conclusion is correct, the oral confession would be excludible only if appellant succeeded in proving that it was involuntary.

We decline to decide whether appellant was in custody because, under Oregon v. Elstad, --- U.S. ----, 105 S.Ct. 1285, 84 L.Ed.2d 222 (1985), even if appellant was in custody during the discussion at his home, our resolution of this case depends solely upon the outcome of the voluntariness question. The Supreme Court concluded in Elstad that "technical" violations of the Miranda requirements--the failure to give the warnings before a wholly voluntary admission--would not preclude admission of fully warned, voluntary statements obtained at a later time. "[A] suspect who has once responded to unwarned yet uncoercive questioning is not thereby disabled from waiving his rights and confessing after he has been given the requisite Miranda warnings, .... Though Miranda requires that the unwarned admission must be suppressed, the admissibility of any subsequent statement should turn in these circumstances solely on whether it is knowingly and voluntarily made", id. 105 S.Ct. at 1293-94.

Thus, if appellant's oral confession was voluntary, even if that confession must be suppressed because of a Miranda violation, his later written confession would be admissible because it was fully warned and given in circumstances devoid of compulsion. ³ If the written confession was properly admitted, the trial court's decision to admit the oral confession as well would be no more than harmless error.

The Supreme Judicial Court found that appellant's written statement confirmed the details of the oral confession as described by the chief; the jury therefore would have learned no more from the improperly admitted confession than it did from the properly admitted one. The written statement was the more potent confession; it was in the appellant's handwriting and not subject to the credibility questions that would surround the police chief's version recited from memory. Once the jury had before it the confession in appellant's handwriting, the impact of the oral confession would have been merely cumulative. For these reasons, we find that if the oral confession was voluntary and not obtained by "improper tactics", Elstad, 105 S.Ct. at 1296, there is no remediable error in the trial court's decision to admit it into evidence. This is so even assuming that appellant was subjected to custodial interrogation without the benefit of full Miranda warnings.

We thus turn to our consideration of the voluntariness of the oral confession. The Supreme Court recently has confirmed that a federal court must independently evaluate the admissibility of an allegedly coerced confession, Miller v. Fenton, --- U.S. ----, 106 S.Ct. 445, 88 L.Ed.2d 405 (1985). Although subsidiary factual questions are entitled to the presumption of correctness established by 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2254(d) for state court findings of fact, "the ultimate question whether, under the totality of the circumstances, the challenged confession was obtained in a manner compatible with the requirements of the Constitution is a matter for independent federal determination." Id. 106 S.Ct. at 451.

Appellant argues that his confession was the product of psychological overbearing and a promise of leniency by the chief. He points to two statements in support of this contention. First, early in his conversation with the police chief, after appellant denied his involvement in the murder, the police chief responded, "That's not the truth, Mac, is it?" Second, the police chief told appellant that, to the best of his knowledge, the general practice for persons who are "crazy" and commit serious crimes is for them "to be sent for observation to Bridgewater for--I don't know if I said twenty or forty days--sent to Bridgewater for observation, then they're determined whether or not they're capable of standing trial."

Appellant suggests that even without an explicit reference to the Seduski murder, and even without a direct offer of leniency, this comment on Bridgewater, combined with the earlier challenge to appellant's version of the facts, in the context of the "overall behavior of the police officer", was sufficient to overbear appellant's will. We disagree.

The question as to compulsion is "whether the will of the defendant had been overborne so that the statement was not his free and voluntary act, and that question [is] to be resolved in light of the totality of the circumstances". ...