Clarke v. State

• Decision Date: 01 April 1968
• Docket Number: No. 67,67
• Citation: 240 A.2d 291,3 Md.App. 447
• Parties: Alphonso CLARKE v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

Page 447

3 Md.App. 447

240 A.2d 291

Alphonso CLARKE v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 67.

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland.

April 1, 1968.

Fred Warren Bennett, Rockville, for appellant.

Frank A. DeCosta, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom were Francis B. Burch, Atty. Gen., Baltimore City, William A. Linthicum, Jr., State's Atty. for Montgomery County, Andrew L. Sonner, Deputy State's Atty., for Montgomery County, on the brief for appellee.

Before MURPHY, C. J., and ANDERSON, MORTON, ORTH, and THOMPSON, JJ.

MORTON, Judge.

The Appellant, Alphonso Clarke, was convicted by a jury in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County of grand larceny and sentenced to fifteen years in the Maryland Penitentiary.

It appears that a service station owner returned to his station about 11:00 P.M. on the evening of November 14, 1966, after having closed it an hour before, and found two men in front of the tire racks with the doors open. Both men fled and the owner gave chase. He overtook one of them but when the man threatened to shoot him he let him go and returned to the station to obtain a pistol. As he did so, he observed a red truck loaded with new tires taken from the racks leaving the station. He fired several shots in the direction of the truck which kept going. He jumped in his car and attempted, unsuccessfully, to follow the truck. About two blocks from the station, as he was still trying to locate the truck, he observed the Appellant walking across a parking lot and recognized him as the second individual he had seen in front of the tire racks. He forced the Appellant, as gun point, into the car, drove back to the service station where the Appellant was arrested by the police officers who had been called by the service station owner's wife.

During the cross examination of Officer Wisda, by the Appellant's trial attorney (not his appellate counsel) it was developed that at the police station, Detective Daniels advised the Appellant of 'his right to have a lawyer; his right to remain silent; his right not to make any statement; if he couldn't afford a lawyer the State would provide one if he was unable to pay for one * * *' and that he had a right to have an attorney before any interrogation. The Appellant said he wanted an attorney and 'he wasn't going to say anything'. At the Appellant's request, the police attempted to contact three attorneys without success. No further attempt was made to interrogate the Appellant about the crime and Detective Daniels left the room to attend to other work, while Officer Wisda proceeded to 'book' the Appellant. In filling out the forms in connection with the 'booking procedure' Officer Wisda asked the Appellant his name, address and place of employment. The Appellant stated that he worked at the Topaz House. As a result of this information, the Topaz House was checked and a red truck loaded with the stolen tires was found in the basement and an inspection indicated that the front fender and right front door had 'a definite place where a bullet had hit.'

In this appeal, the Appellant contends that the trial judge committed prejudicial error in failing to exclude the testimony as to how and where the police located the truckload of stolen tires, since, it is argued, this testimony was the product of interrogating the Appellant in violation of the principles enunciated in Miranda v. State of Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694. The Appellant concedes that the Miranda warnings were given but argues that once they were given and the Appellant indicated that he wanted to exercise the rights afforded by the warnings, all questioning thereafter became illegal, per se, and any 'fruits' produced by such questioning were 'poisonous.'

We need not decide the applicability of the 'fruit of the poisonous tree' doctrine to state criminal trial since Appellant's argument here completely overlooks the fact that Miranda dealt with in-custody interrogations which had as their purpose the extration of confessions, admissions or inculpatory statements from the accused. The Court referred to 'incommunicado interrogation of individuals in a police-dominated atmosphere' and stressed 'that the modern practice of in-custody interrogation is phychologically rather than physically oriented'. The Court alluded to its prior holding in Escobedo v. State of Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977 and stated:

'The entire thrust of police interrogation there, as in all the cases today, was to put the defendant in such an emotional state as to impair his capacity for rational judgment. The abdication of the constitutional privilege-the choice on his part to speak to the police-was not made knowingly or competently because of the failure to apprise him to his rights; the compelling atmosphere of the in-custody interrogation, and not an independent decision on his part, caused the defendant to speak.'

Thus, it is apparent that the type of 'interrogation' with which the Court was concerned in Miranda was an interrogation that had as its purpose the determination of the accused's connection with the commission of the crime and the revelation of crucial facts which would reflect upon his guilt or innocence of the crime for which he was being held. In decreeing that the warnings must be given prior to such interrogation, the ultimate purpose was, clearly, to prevent interrogations of the type that result in the will of the accused being overborne. Thus, the answers of the accused to questions propounded during such interrogation would be anything but freely and voluntarily given.

In the case at bar, the Miranda warnings had been given to the Appellant. When he indicated that 'he wasn't going to say anything', the interrogation proposed by Detective Daniels was abandoned and he had no more contract with the Appellant. The three questions concerning the Appellant's name, address and place of employment which were asked by another officer, whose responsibility it was to carry out the booking procedure, did not, in our opinion, constitute an interrogation of the type contemplated by the Court in Miranda. The questions were routine; were ordinarily addressed to every individual who was subject to the booking procedure; and were not intended to elicit answers which would incriminate the Appellant.

The factual situation here is not unlike that which confronted the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Farley v. United States, 381 F.2d 357, cert. den. 389 U.S. 942, 88 S.Ct. 303, 19 L.Ed.2d 295. In that case, the accused had been arrested for attempted burglary of a post office. After Farley had declined to tell the postal inspector anything concerning the crime, but referred all questions to his attorney, the inspector 'made one further inquiry, 'will you tell me where you live?', to which Farley responded that he lived at 1040 Opalocka Boulevard.' The purpose of eliciting this testimony from the Appellant was to negative any possible explanation for Farley's presence at the scene of the crime by proving that he lived a...