Com. v. Lahti

• Decision Date: 18 December 1986
• Citation: 398 Mass. 829,501 N.E.2d 511
• Parties: , 55 USLW 2411 COMMONWEALTH v. Russell M. LAHTI.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 511

501 N.E.2d 511

398 Mass. 829, 55 USLW 2411

COMMONWEALTH v. Russell M. LAHTI.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Norfolk.

Argued Sept. 9, 1986.

Decided Dec. 18, 1986.

Stephanie Martin Glennon, Asst. Dist. Atty., for commonwealth.

Joseph T. Doyle, Jr. (William P. Smith, Boston, with him) for defendant.

Before HENNESSEY, C.J., and WILKINS, LIACOS, ABRAMS and O'CONNOR, JJ.

O'CONNOR, Justice.

A grand jury returned five indictments charging the defendant with rape of a child and three indictments charging him with indecent assault and battery on a child under fourteen years of age. The indictments named two victims. The defendant moved to suppress the alleged victims' testimony. A judge ruled that the victims' testimony constituted "fruit of the poisonous tree," see Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963), and allowed the motion. A single justice of this court granted the Commonwealth's application for an interlocutory appeal and referred the case to the full court. We affirm.

The question on appeal is whether the judge correctly concluded that the victims' anticipated testimony was tainted fruit of the defendant's involuntary statements to the police. Because the standards applicable under art. 12 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights have not been separately argued by the parties, we confine our review to the constitutional standards applicable under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The order from which the Commonwealth appeals, suppressing the victims' testimony, was preceded by the allowance by a different judge of the defendant's motion to suppress incriminating statements he had made to the police. The earlier motion, which we shall refer to as the first motion, was allowed on the ground that those statements were made involuntarily. The correctness of that ruling is not in issue. The first motion judge found that on March 22, 1985, the defendant met with detectives at the Quincy police station and discussed an incident of sexual abuse of children "for which he had been brought in." That incident did not involve the victims named in the present indictments. The detectives told the defendant that they had information implicating him in other incidents of sexual abuse of children. They also told him that, if he cooperated with the investigation by waiving his right against self-incrimination and his right to have an attorney present at the questioning, his statements would not be used as the basis of criminal charges against him. In addition, they told him that, if he cooperated, they would recommend to the district attorney that he be included in a sexual offenders' diversion and treatment program rather than be prosecuted. Lastly, the detectives told the defendant that, if he were accepted into that program without having disclosed other sexual experiences he had had with children, there was a risk that the police would discover those incidents and he would be expelled from the program and prosecuted.

On the following day, March 23, 1985, the defendant telephoned one of the detectives and described several incidents involving the victims named in the present indictments. The judge found that the defendant's statements were induced by the detectives' promise of leniency and by the threat that a failure to confess everything would result in harsher treatment. He concluded that the promise and threat were a "calculated attempt to raise an expectation of leniency," that the statements were involuntary, and that their suppression was required. The Commonwealth did not appeal from the allowance of the defendant's motion to suppress his statements.

Thereafter, the defendant moved to suppress the testimony of the two children named as victims in the present indictments on the ground that their testimony would be the fruit of his involuntary statements and therefore inadmissible under Wong Sun v. United States, supra, and its progeny. We shall refer to this motion as the defendant's second motion. After a hearing, the second motion judge adopted the findings of the first motion judge, which procedure neither party challenges, and made additional findings. We set forth immediately below the relevant additional findings, quoting them in large measure.

The judge found as follows:

"1. The corpus delicti of the crime and the identity of the victims were not known to the police until the defendant told them.

"2. As a result of the defendant's statements to the police, the mother of the children was indirectly informed that the defendant had confessed wrongdoing with her children.

"3. Having thus been informed by a third party, the mother then contacted the police department and was advised by the police that the defendant had made a statement involving sexual misconduct with her children. The police advised her to talk to the children about this, but cautioned that care should be taken in the manner in which the children were informed because the defendant had claimed that the children were asleep when the sexual acts took place....

"4. The mother did question her children separately and in a guarded manner, not indicating that the defendant had admitted wrongdoing with them. Ultimately, the children did describe to their mother the sexual acts performed by the defendant on them and only then did the mother indicate that the defendant had admitted the story to the police.

"5. Within a day or two, the children went to the police station of their own free will and told their story to the police officer. The mother has expressed a willingness for the children to testify in the trial in the courtroom.

"6. The children would testify upon questioning that they told their mother of the assaults by the defendant and that she advised them that the defendant admitted the story to the police."

The judge further found that "[t]he Commonwealth clearly did not 'coerce' the children to testify. Their mother was first informed of the defendant's admissions, not by the police, but by her friend, the defendant's girlfriend. The mother then voluntarily called the police and followed their advice on questioning her children in a guarded manner.... They later spoke voluntarily to the police. I find no State coercion in this chain of events." The judge concluded that the officers' "intervention ... trigger[ed] a chain of events that would produce ... victim/witness[es] willing to press charges and to testify against the defendant." The judge also concluded that the officers "must have realized" that that chain of events would occur, and that the officers "deliberately and intentionally extracted the identities of these witnesses/victims from the defendant."

As we explain below, our decision in this case rests on the judge's findings that the police obtained the defendant's involuntary statement for the very purpose of obtaining information, previously unknown to them, of other crimes committed by the defendant and the identity of victims whose testimony might be used as proof, and that the effort of the police was successful. The evidence warranted those findings. The Commonwealth in its brief states that "there is no suggestion that the third party was prompted by any official to make [the] disclosure" to the alleged victims' mother about the assaults. If that statement was meant to be an assertion that there was no evidence that the mother's friend was prompted by the police to tell the mother about the defendant's assaults against her children, we reject it. The judge clearly was warranted in finding that the police used promises and threats to stimulate the defendant to disclose crimes and victims' names for law enforcement purposes. As the judge observed, "[i]t was particularly shocking to learn from the officers' testimony that, although the defendant was encouraged to 'come clean' and to tell all, in fact, the longer a suspect has been involved in the sexual abuse of children, the less likely he is to be accepted into the program, and the more likely he is to be indicted" (emphasis in original). The evidence disclosed that, promptly after the defendant told the police about his abuse of the victims, in keeping with the police objectives, the mother's friend notified the mother about the incidents to which the defendant had confessed, and advised her to call the police. The judge was justified in concluding that that chain of events was other than coincidental.

We turn to a discussion of the applicable Federal law. It is well established that the exclusionary rule applies not only to the direct results of police misconduct but also to the "fruits" of official illegality. See Wong Sun v. United States, supra at 484, 83 S.Ct. at 415. This broad exclusionary rule follows from the fact that "[t]he essence of a provision forbidding the acquisition of evidence in a certain way is that not merely evidence so acquired shall not be used before the Court but that it shall not be used at all." Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385, 392, 40 S.Ct. 182, 183, 64 L.Ed. 319 (1920). Equally well-established precepts qualify this sweeping exclusionary principle, however....