Com. v. Green

• Decision Date: 29 August 1996
• Citation: 453 Pa.Super. 179,683 A.2d 659
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Samuel Lee GREEN, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Superior Court

Page 659

683 A.2d 659

453 Pa.Super. 179

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Samuel Lee GREEN, Appellant.

Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued May 23, 1996.

Filed Aug. 29, 1996.

Karl F. Longenbach, Bethlehem, for appellant.

Mark Refowich, Assistant District Attorney, Easton, for appellee.

Before BECK, KELLY and BROSKY, JJ.

BECK, Judge:

In this appeal we address whether the circumstances of appellant's custodial interrogation violated Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), where appellant was not specifically informed of the crime about which he was questioned. We find appellant's rights under Miranda were not violated and therefore we affirm.

Appellant was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to death. On direct appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, his judgment of sentence was reversed and a new trial was granted. ¹ At the second trial, appellant was again found guilty of first degree murder and, this time, sentenced to life in prison. This appeal followed.

The evidence at trial, when viewed in a light most favorable to the Commonwealth as verdict winner, revealed the following. Sometime in the late night or early morning hours of October 22 and 23, 1987, appellant broke into the apartment of Harrisburg police officer Richard Bowser. A window screen and telephone cord recovered at the scene had appellant's fingerprints on them. Several items were taken from the residence, including the keys to Officer Bowser's car. The officer, who was naked, was removed from his apartment, placed in the trunk of his automobile, driven to a remote area of Northampton County, shot twice in the head and left beneath a pile of leaves and branches by the side of the road. At some point during this criminal episode, appellant was joined by a young woman named Bonnie Sue Pflugler. Pflugler accompanied appellant when he fled southward in Officer Bowser's vehicle.

Appellant and his companion abandoned the victim's car in Richmond, Virginia and took a bus to North Carolina. ² Once there, they stole a van and some credit cards and made their way to Florida. At a rest stop outside Tallahassee, they were arrested by police who discovered them inside the stolen vehicle. Pflugler was released from custody after she and appellant told police that she was a hitchhiker he had picked up outside Miami. Appellant was taken to Leon County prison.

Meanwhile, Officer Bowser was reported missing in Pennsylvania after he failed to appear for work. A subsequent search of his apartment caused police to suspect he had been the victim of a serious crime. ³ A missing persons report alerted law enforcement officials nationwide of Bowser's disappearance, including Leon County Sheriff's Detective Sam Bruce, who interviewed appellant while he was awaiting extradition from Florida.

Detective Bruce met with appellant in the Leon County prison, gave appellant his Miranda rights and observed as appellant executed a written waiver of his rights. Prior to execution of the waiver, Detective Bruce did not inform appellant that he intended to ask him questions about Officer Bowser. Appellant claims he thought the questioning would be limited to the car theft. When Bruce asked appellant if he knew the officer, appellant replied that he "never heard of him." In response to questioning about the fact that appellant and Officer Bowser were from the same town in Pennsylvania and that appellant had left the area at about the same time Bowser was reported missing, appellant stated that he "smoked marijuana and stole, but never hurt anyone or murdered anyone." At the time of the interview, police did not know that the victim had been murdered.

Within a few days of Bruce's interview with appellant, FBI Agent Matthew Pelligrino visited appellant in the Leon County jail for the purpose of conducting an interview with appellant and taking his fingerprints. Appellant agreed to speak with Agent Pelligrino and again signed a written waiver form. In response to the agent's questions regarding appellant's activities in the previous two weeks, appellant gave varying stories regarding his travels. When confronted with the many inconsistencies in his different accounts, appellant changed his version of events several times. He specifically denied any knowledge of Officer Bowser's disappearance, but stated that if he had been involved in the matter, he would "have his mouthpiece right here doing the talking."

Appellant's next visitors in the Florida jail were Corporal Thomas Brennan of the Pennsylvania Sate Police and Special Agent Pat Kelly of the Harrisburg FBI. Again appellant signed a written waiver form relinquishing his right to remain silent or be provided with legal representation. During the interview, appellant gave several different accounts of his activities in Pennsylvania and Florida that directly contradicted his earlier statements. He named additional participants in the theft of the van in North Carolina and said he knew of two men in Harrisburg whose job it was to "get rid of bodies." Appellant also said he could make a telephone call and find out the location of Officer Bowser's body.

One week later, appellant was transported from Florida to Pennsylvania by Corporal Brennan, Trooper Jack Holtz and Dauphin County District Attorney Detective Gregg Benedek. The three men traveled with appellant by car. During the trip north, several statements were elicited from appellant, each of which was prefaced by a waiver of rights. Each statement differed from the others and in each appellant implicated himself slightly more than he had previously. Ultimately, appellant conceded his presence with Pflugler, who he claimed committed the various crimes. He also eventually admitted that he assisted Pflugler in covering the officer's body on the roadside, but consistently denied involvement in the kidnapping and murder of the victim.

Once back in Pennsylvania, appellant led Brennan and Holtz to Officer Bowser's body. Later, while incarcerated and awaiting trial, appellant twice contacted the troopers and gave them additional statements. Each time, appellant varied the facts of his "confession" but never admitted to shooting the victim. ⁴

At the suppression hearing, all of the law enforcement officials who took statements from appellant testified to the circumstances surrounding the admissions. ⁵ Each officer testified to the waivers he obtained from appellant prior to taking the statements and each stated that appellant never asked for an attorney nor requested that the questioning cease.

Appellant, on the other hand, testified that he made numerous requests for a lawyer, that he was under the impression that the waivers were "standard police procedure," that he signed the waivers in order to get legal assistance and that the substance of the statements was false and created by the law enforcement officials. In addition, appellant claimed that during one of the Florida interviews, FBI Agent Kelley used profane language and threatened him. He further testified that he contacted authorities only once after leading them to the victim's body and that the purpose of his call was to request that his family be left alone.

On appeal, appellant frames the suppression issue as follows:

Did the suppression Judge commit harmful and prejudicial error in finding that defendant-appellant, who was detained on an auto theft charge in Florida, made a knowing, voluntary and intelligent waiver of his constitutional right to remain silent prior to his interrogation in seven instances; when in the initial instance, a waiver of his Miranda rights was secured without first advising the defendant of the general nature of the investigation, namely the kidnapping and potential homicide of a missing police officer?

Appellant's primary argument concerns his interview with Detective Bruce in Florida. Appellant, who executed a written waiver of his rights prior to speaking with Detective Bruce, argues that because Bruce failed to inform him that he would be asked about Officer Bowser, his waiver was not knowing and intelligent. Specifically, appellant claims that the statements he gave in response to questions regarding Officer Bowser's disappearance should not have been admitted at trial because he was unaware he would be subjected to such questioning when he waived his Miranda rights.

Further, appellant argues, his subsequent statements to other law enforcement officials, which included his admissions to being present at the burglary, kidnapping and murder, were tainted as a "product of exploitation of the original illegality" and should have been excluded. ⁶ Appellant's brief at 17.

Appellant relies primarily on our supreme court's decision in Commonwealth v. Dixon, 475 Pa. 17, 379 A.2d 553 (1977). There, Linda Dixon, the mother of a two-year-old boy, had been convicted of malicious mischief. Her sentence required her to make restitution payments to the injured party in the amount of $50.00 each month. She was told that in the event she defaulted on the payments, a warrant would issue for her arrest and police would be dispatched to take her into custody. Dixon defaulted and an arrest warrant was issued for her. Two days before the warrant issued, police found the decomposed body of Dixon's son in a wooded area and, ultimately, began to suspect Dixon in the child's death. Less than three weeks later detectives, armed with the arrest warrant for the restitution violation, arrived at Dixon's residence and asked her to accompany them to police headquarters. Dixon complied and when asked if she knew why the officers wanted to question her she replied "yes." After being given her Miranda warnings, Dixon waived her rights and agreed to speak with police. When shown a picture of her son and asked of his whereabouts, she promptly confessed that she "had done it." She was convicted of second degree murder.

On appeal, Dixon argued that her...