Com. v. Magee

• Decision Date: 01 August 1996
• Citation: 423 Mass. 381,668 N.E.2d 339
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Joyce J. MAGEE.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 339

668 N.E.2d 339

423 Mass. 381

COMMONWEALTH v. Joyce J. MAGEE.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts,

Suffolk.

Argued April 3, 1996.

Decided Aug. 1, 1996.

Martin F. Murphy, Assistant District Attorney, for Commonwealth.

Tamar Augst, Cambridge (Geoffrey Packard with her), for defendant.

Before LIACOS, C.J., and WILKINS, LYNCH, O'CONNOR and GREANEY, JJ.

LYNCH, Justice.

This case is before the court on an interlocutory appeal from an order by a Superior Court judge suppressing certain statements made by the defendant, Joyce J. Magee, to law enforcement officials. After hearing testimony from several witnesses, the judge ordered the statements suppressed on the grounds that: (1) the defendant's waiver of her Miranda rights was not valid and (2) the statements were not voluntary. The Commonwealth was granted leave to appeal from the order of the Superior Court, pursuant to Mass.R.Crim.P. 15(b)(2), 378 Mass. 882 (1979). A single justice reported the appeal to the full court. We affirm.

1. Facts. We summarize the motion judge's findings of fact: Late in the evening of July 3, 1994, the defendant and her boy friend, Roger Montmarquet, began a heated and emotional discussion that lasted into the morning hours. In the course of the discussion, the defendant became upset and sobbed repeatedly. She told Montmarquet that she needed help and that, if Montmarquet knew what she had done, he would not want to be with her. Montmarquet assumed the defendant was referring to the death of her twenty-eight day old son in 1988, which she had referred to on occasion. ¹ At about 4 A.M. on July 4, the two decided to go to the police station in Dracut to get help in having the defendant committed to a mental health facility. ²

When they arrived at the police station at about 5 A.M., Montmarquet told Dracut police Captain Thomas McNiff that the defendant needed help and needed to talk to someone about the death of her baby in 1988. At the time, it had been ruled a SIDS death, Montmarquet told the police, but there may have been more to it.

McNiff asked the defendant whether she wanted to talk; the defendant nodded her head. ³ McNiff brought the defendant to a small office in the police station ⁴; at the defendant's request, Montmarquet joined her there. McNiff read the defendant her Miranda rights and she orally agreed to waive them. When advised of her right to have an attorney present, the defendant responded that she did not know any attorney to call or how to get one to the police station at that hour. McNiff responded by stating that she could call anyone she wished.

McNiff then questioned the defendant. During the interview, the defendant repeatedly asked for help and to be committed. McNiff understood her to be asking for the help of a trained mental health professional. In response to these requests, McNiff told the defendant that she would get help if she explained what she needed and what the problem was. In the course of the questioning, the defendant spoke about the circumstances leading up to the death of her son in 1988, and she indicated that it may not have been caused by SIDS. When pressed for the details of her involvement in the child's death, the defendant repeatedly refused to answer McNiff's questions. She said that, if she told the police what she thought had happened, they would arrest her. Throughout the interview with McNiff, the defendant was exhausted, emotionally distraught, and disheveled, and her responses to questions were interrupted by periods of sobbing and shaking.

At about 5:50 A.M., Dracut Detective James Wagner arrived to continue the questioning. He was informed that the defendant was seeking help and that she was upset about the death of her son in 1988. Wagner administered a second set of Miranda warnings at about 6 A.M.; at that time, the defendant signed a form acknowledging that she waived her rights. Wagner conducted his interview of the defendant in the same room where McNiff's interview had occurred. Present were the defendant, Montmarquet, McNiff, and Wagner. Wagner's questioning focused on the defendant's role in her son's death. The defendant continued to refuse to answer questions about her direct involvement. She also continued to ask for help in being involuntarily committed to a mental health facility. She continued to look distraught and disheveled, with periods of sobbing and shaking.

After about twenty-five more minutes of questioning, McNiff and Wagner told the defendant they had called for assistance, and asked the defendant and Montmarquet to wait until the additional people arrived. The defendant and Montmarquet were offered food and coffee, and accepted coffee. At about 9 A.M., State Trooper Owen Boyle arrived, along with an assistant district attorney. ⁵ Boyle was briefed by McNiff and Wagner about the morning's events and the defendant's statements regarding the death of her son and her request for help.

During the next two hours, Boyle questioned the defendant regarding the death of her son. The questioning took place in the same office as the prior interviews, with Montmarquet, McNiff, and Wagner present. In response to the defendant's requests for help, Boyle said he would help with her problem, but that he needed more information before he could do so. During the interview with Boyle, the defendant was tense and distraught, although her forceful crying had stopped.

Miranda warnings were administered at some time after Boyle began questioning the defendant. During the questioning, the defendant eventually stated that she believed she had suffocated her child. Boyle typed the substance of the statement onto his computer and printed it out for the defendant to sign. She looked over the three pages, made minor corrections and then signed the statement. By then it was noon. After the defendant signed the statement, she was told that arrangements had been made for a mental health evaluation at Solomon Mental Health Center in Lowell (Solomon). Montmarquet then drove the defendant to Solomon, with police following.

The duty nurse at Solomon noted that the defendant was distraught and disheveled on arrival, that her eyes were red, indicating prolonged crying, that she was crying, at times forcefully, and was suffering from lack of sleep. The defendant told the nurse that she had no memory of actually asphyxiating her son but that she felt responsible for his death. Based on the defendant's extreme level of distress and her suicidal ideation, she was involuntarily committed to Anna Jacques Hospital in Newburyport. A few days later, Dracut police arrested her there, and charged her with the murder of her son.

2. Standard of review. The motion judge granted the defendant's motion to suppress her statements to the police principally because the Commonwealth failed to sustain its heavy burden that the defendant's waiver of her Miranda rights was voluntary and that the defendant's statements were voluntary. In reviewing the judge's action, we "accept[ ] the judge's subsidiary findings of fact absent clear error, give[ ] substantial deference to the judge's ultimate findings and conclusions of law, but independently review[ ] the correctness of the judge's application of constitutional principles to the facts found." Commonwealth v. Mello, 420 Mass. 375, 381 n. 8, 649 N.E.2d 1106 (1995). See Commonwealth v. Mandile, 397 Mass. 410, 412-413, 492 N.E.2d 74 (1986).

3. Custody. "Miranda warnings are only necessary for 'custodial interrogation.' " Commonwealth v. Jung, 420 Mass. 675, 688, 651 N.E.2d 1211 (1995), quoting Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1612, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). Therefore, before asking whether the defendant's waiver of Miranda rights was valid, we must determine whether Miranda warnings were necessary at all. Custodial interrogation is "questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way." Id., quoting Miranda v. Arizona, supra. The following factors are relevant in determining whether custodial interrogation has occurred: "(1) the place of the interrogation; (2) whether the investigation has begun to focus on the suspect, including whether there is probable cause to arrest the suspect; ⁶ (3) the nature of the interrogation, including whether the interview was aggressive or, instead, informal and influenced in its contours by the suspect; and (4) whether, at the time the incriminating statement was made, the suspect was free to end the interview by leaving the locus of the interrogation or by asking the interrogator to leave, as evidenced by whether the interview terminated with the defendant's arrest." Id. at 688, 651 N.E.2d 1211, quoting Commonwealth v. Bryant, 390 Mass. 729, 737, 459 N.E.2d 792 (1984).

Here, the defendant was interrogated while in police custody and therefore Miranda warnings were required. The defendant was interviewed in a closed room at a police station by a succession of three law enforcement officers over a period of approximately seven hours. The questions focused almost exclusively on her possible criminal involvement in the death of her son in 1988. She was never told she could leave, and was told at least once to wait for the next officer to arrive. On several occasions she told her interrogators that, if she told them everything, she would be arrested. Throughout the interviews, she sought help in being committed to a mental facility, and was repeatedly told that she would not receive that help until she answered the interrogators' questions. Together, these facts support the judge's finding that the defendant was in custody. See Commonwealth v. Damiano, 422 Mass. 10, 13, 660 N.E.2d 660 (1996); Commonwealth v. A Juvenile, 402 Mass. 275, 277-278, 521 N.E.2d 1368 (1988).

The Commonwealth argues that other facts indicate that the defendant was not in custody. They point to the...