Commonwealth v. Hilton
| Decision Date | 04 November 2004 |
| Citation | 823 NE 2d 383,443 Mass. 597 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. KATHLEEN HILTON. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Present: MARSHALL, C.J., GREANEY, IRELAND, SPINA, COWIN, SOSMAN, & CORDY, JJ.
Marcia H. Slingerland, Assistant District Attorney (David Dunbar Livingston, Assistant District Attorney, with her) for the Commonwealth.
Michael F. Natola for the defendant.
The defendant has been indicted on charges of murder in the second degree (five counts), burning a dwelling (G. L. c. 266, § 1), and causing injury to a fire fighter (G. L. c. 265, § 13D ½). The defendant moved to suppress her statement to the police (in which she ultimately made a full confession) and her later statement to a court officer following her arraignment (in which she confirmed that she had lit the fire in question). After an evidentiary hearing, the motion judge concluded that the police interrogation of the defendant was custodial in nature, and suppressed the entirety of her statement on the ground that the Commonwealth had failed to prove that the defendant's waiver of her Miranda rights was knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. With respect to the defendant's statements to the court officer, the judge denied the motion to suppress the defendant's initial spontaneous remarks, as they were not the product of any improper questioning, but suppressed the defendant's answers to subsequent specific questions on the ground that the court officer had posed those questions in derogation of the defendant's right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Both the Commonwealth and the defendant were granted leave to appeal the judge's decision, and we transferred the case to this court on our own motion. With respect to the defendant's statement to the police, we hold that the judge erred in concluding that the interrogation was custodial at its inception, and therefore reverse the ruling insofar as it suppressed the statements made during the initial noncustodial phase of the interview. We see no error in the judge's finding that the defendant's mental infirmities were such that she did not understand the Miranda warnings, and we therefore conclude that statements made after the interrogation did become custodial were properly suppressed. We find no error in the partial suppression of the statements made to the court officer, and therefore affirm that portion of the judge's ruling.
1. Facts. The motion judge's detailed findings of fact are summarized as follows. At 10:57 P.M. on February 24, 1999, the Lynn fire department responded to an alarm at a three-family dwelling. Five people were killed in the blaze. Suspicion initially centered on the defendant's son, Charles Loayza. Loayza's estranged girl friend, Krystina Sutherland, and their two children lived in the building; Loayza had argued with Sutherland that very afternoon and had threatened to burn the building; and Loayza had set fire to a wreath on the door of Sutherland's apartment just two months earlier.
At approximately 2:15 A.M. on February 25, Sergeant Michael Cronin of the State police, accompanied by a Lynn police captain, went to the defendant's apartment (approximately one-quarter mile from the scene of the fire) attempting to locate Loayza. Cronin informed the defendant that they were investigating a fire, told her they were looking for her son, and asked her some questions about him. The defendant told them that Loayza lived with her; that he had recently broken up with Sutherland; that he had been upset that evening after speaking with Sutherland on the telephone; and that he had left the apartment to go to work at approximately 7:30 P.M. This interview of the defendant lasted approximately twenty minutes. A few hours later, still unable to locate Loayza, Cronin returned to the defendant's apartment and asked her to come to the police station for further questioning concerning her son. She voluntarily accompanied him to the station, where she was questioned by Cronin and a Lynn police detective. As with the initial interview, the focus of the questioning pertained to Loayza's whereabouts and the police suspicion that Loayza was responsible for the fire. The defendant insisted that Loayza would not have lit the fire, because he would not have wanted to hurt his own children. She again described Loayza's telephone call to Sutherland the previous evening, which he had made in order to speak to the children. She reiterated that Loayza had been extremely upset after that call, crying and fearful that he would never see his children again, and expressing thoughts of killing himself. At the end of the interview (which lasted a little more than one-half hour), the police drove the defendant back to her apartment.
Thereafter, the police found Loayza and arrested him on an outstanding warrant unrelated to the fire. Loayza provided an account of his whereabouts on the night of the fire, and the police were able to confirm his alibi. The police also received information that the defendant herself may have been involved in setting other fires, and the investigation therefore shifted its focus from Loayza to the defendant.
On the afternoon of February 27, Cronin returned to the defendant's apartment, this time accompanied by a State trooper. They were in plain clothes and driving an unmarked vehicle. They asked the defendant to come to the police station again and give a further statement. The defendant agreed, and was driven to the station and taken to the same interview room where she had been questioned two days earlier. She was left on her own for approximately five minutes. Cronin then returned, accompanied by the same police captain who had been with him when the defendant was first questioned at her home on the night of the fire.
At the outset of the interview, Cronin advised the defendant of her Miranda warnings, reading them off of a sheet; she said that she understood the warnings, and all three signed the sheet. The interview began along the same lines as the earlier interview, with questions concerning Loayza and the information the defendant had previously given to the police. Cronin did not inform the defendant that Loayza had an alibi and was no longer a suspect, nor did he advise her that she had become a suspect herself. The defendant stated that after Loayza left for work on the night of the fire, she stayed home watching television. When she heard sirens and saw blue lights, she went outside, saw the smoke, and realized that Sutherland's house was on fire. She ran to the scene and asked an officer if her grandchildren had escaped the blaze. She then saw the children as they were being put into an ambulance, and she rode in the ambulance with them to the hospital. From the hospital, she walked home.
Approximately fifty minutes into the interview, the defendant asked to use the bathroom. They took a break, and a female trooper escorted the defendant to the bathroom.1 When questioning resumed, Cronin began to ask the defendant about two other fires. She denied any involvement in those other incidents. Cronin asked her again about her son's relationship with Sutherland. In her response, the defendant stated that she was angry over the way Sutherland had treated her son. She stated that she had not started the fire, explaining that she only went to the scene when she saw the smoke. Cronin asked the defendant what she thought should happen to the person who did set the fire, to which the defendant replied that that person should apologize to Loayza, and she then opined that the person who did it might not have meant to. This portion of the questioning lasted approximately one hour and fifteen minutes, at which time the officers and the defendant took a ten-minute break.
When they resumed, the officers suggested to the defendant that there was a "possibility" that she had set the fire. The defendant adamantly rejected that suggestion, pointing out that she had no reason to set the fire and would not do anything to hurt her own grandchildren. She said that she did not know who started the fire, but that neither she nor her son had done so. The officers then took another brief break to discuss how they were going to proceed.2
When the interview resumed, the defendant appeared very upset. The officers adopted a sympathetic tone, suggesting that it would be "better" if the defendant told them exactly what happened. The defendant then said that her "babies" had been hurt enough, and that her son would hate her and never forgive her. Cronin suggested that she just "tell [them] what happened." At that point, the defendant said that she had started the fire using a lit cigarette and some oil thrown on the stairway. She explained that her hope had been that if Sutherland had nowhere to stay, Sutherland and the children would return to Loayza.
The interrogating officers left briefly to get State Trooper Kevin Condon from the fire marshal's office, as he was familiar with the forensic evidence concerning the origin and nature of the fire. Condon introduced himself to the defendant, and Cronin explained to her that Condon investigated fires. The defendant then related in detail how she started the fire, with Condon asking specific questions about those details. Condon also drew a diagram of the building, and asked the defendant to supply specific information to be placed on the diagram. In addition to providing details about how and where she started the fire, the defendant further described her motive, explaining that Sutherland had treated Loayza badly, and that Sutherland was not a good mother. The defendant expressed relief that the children had not been hurt in the fire, and stated that she had not known that there were other children on the top floor of the building.3 After another brief break, there was further questioning by Condon in the same vein concerning the details of the fire itself....
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