Crawford v. State

• Decision Date: 19 July 1979
• Docket Number: No. 6,6
• Citation: 285 Md. 431,404 A.2d 244
• Parties: Jeannie Yvonne CRAWFORD a/k/a Jeannie Yvonne Purnell v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 431

285 Md. 431

404 A.2d 244

Jeannie Yvonne CRAWFORD a/k/a Jeannie Yvonne Purnell v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 6.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

July 19, 1979.

Geraldine Kenney Sweeney, Asst. Public Defender, Baltimore (Alan H. Murrell, Public Defender, Baltimore, on the brief), for appellant.

William Henry Kenety, V., Asst. Atty. Gen. (Stephen H. Sachs, Atty. Gen., Baltimore, Sandra A. O'Connor, State's Atty., and Mark Kolman, and Asst. State's Atty., for Baltimore County, Towson, on the brief), for appellee.

Argued before MURPHY, C. J., and SMITH, DIGGES, ELDRIDGE, ORTH, COLE and DAVIDSON, JJ.

ORTH, Judge.

Lillie May Crawford died on 9 May 1978. The cause of death was "(i)ncised wounds of the neck and chest." ¹ The manner of death was homicide. Jeannie Yvonne Crawford, also known as Jeannie Yvonne Purnell, ² was charged with the homicide. She was tried before a jury in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County, convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to life imprisonment. She appealed to the Court of Special Appeals, and we ordered the issuance of a writ of certiorari on our own motion before decision by that court. The issue for decision is whether the trial court erred in admitting into evidence certain portions of taped recordings of interrogations of the accused by the police. We find that the admission was erroneous, reverse the judgment and remand for a new trial.

The police conducted two custodial interrogations of the accused. The first was shortly after her arrest on the morning the crime was committed and lasted two hours. The second, two days later, continued for about an hour and a half. The interrogations were recorded on tape, and transcriptions were made of the recordings. The accused has never claimed that the statements she made during the interrogations were involuntary in the traditional sense or obtained in violation of the dictates of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966); at the trial she expressly waived any objection on those grounds. She filed a pretrial motion to suppress this evidence, however, which the court denied upon hearing.

From the moment of her arrest the accused readily admitted that she had stabbed the victim, but she maintained throughout that she had acted in self-defense. She was steadfast in her adherence to that position during the interrogations, and throughout the questioning the police attempted to have her recant her version of the incident by indicating their disbelief in her story, by exhorting her to tell the truth and arguing with her, by recounting what other persons, some named, some unnamed, had told them, by stating their opinions as to what had occurred, and by referring to what the victim had said when deposed five months before her death in a civil proceeding regarding custody of the accused's daughter Renee. At the hearing on the motion and during the trial when the challenged evidence was offered, defense counsel made clear that there was no objection to the statements made by the accused. What he wanted kept from the jury was the comments of the police "I think the record should show I have no objection to the answers she gave. I have objections to the testimony, or the alleged testimony of the officers (included in the recordings)." And later he told the court: "Let me just explain myself. I say I have no objection to the statements she made. What I object to is the statement that the cops make, not only in this area (how the victim's throat was cut) but all through later on. It's it's their statements, not hers. The question is, should her statements be admitted? The answer is yes, everything that she said." In that context, defense counsel presented the bases for the motion to suppress. The first was that replete throughout the recordings were statements by the police which, if admitted, would deny the accused her constitutional right to be confronted by her accusers. The transcript of the hearing reads:

THE COURT: Well, that is a stupid argument. Confrontation means the witnesses on the witness stand. And how confrontation and the right thereto can be involved in this motion is beyond me.

MR. (R. CLARK) KINSLEY (defense counsel): Do you want to hear my reasons?

THE COURT: No. Next reason.

MR. KINSLEY: The statements I would, of course, like to expand upon it.

THE COURT: No. You have made the point for the record. You say that your right of confrontation has been infringed upon.

MR. KINSLEY: I think the record should also show that Your Honor is pushing this case too rapidly.

THE COURT: Mr. Kinsley, I will run this court. You have made your objection on the record. I have declined to permit you to expand on that.

Would you please state your next basis for objection.

The next basis for objection was that the recordings contained "opinions of the State Police not based on fact, but opinions and that this type of evidence should not be presented to the jury, opinions of police officers." The court set out the procedure it thought would solve this problem:

The jury will be instructed that statements made by way of questions are not evidence and are not to be considered. That is akin to the same type of questioning that occurs every day in a trial court. The jury is instructed they don't pay any attention to the question, it's the answer that they get. And this Court will instruct the jury on all occasions, perhaps even before that piece of evidence is offered, that they are not to consider anything within the content of a question or a statement made, they are merely to consider the answer given by the defendant.

All right. You have made your point.

Defense counsel was not satisfied:

MR. KINSLEY: But the statement refers to people that the police have talked to, not identifying who they are.

THE COURT: Right.

MR. KINSLEY: And saying what they found out, or allegedly found out, from those people.

THE COURT: Right.

MR. KINSLEY: It also contains a reference to a custody proceeding and refers to alleged happenings at the custody proceeding, such as knife throwing, which is a very vital factor.

THE COURT: It may be. It may well be that as the testimony is offered, that there might be portions thereof that are irrelevant, and as the questions are offered to the jury, appropriate objections can be made at that time.

MR. KINSLEY: If the Court please, throughout this, questions are repeatedly asked, and they don't even wait for an answer, so all we have coming before the jury is THE COURT: If a question is unanswered, it will be stricken out.

MR. KINSLEY: But if they play a tape

THE COURT: They have not yet offered a tape. They may offer a printed transcript of it.

MR. KINSLEY: Then I would ask that the tape be suppressed and only the written transcript be used, so that the Court

THE COURT: I may suggest that that might be the appropriate way to handle the evidentiary problems.

MR. (MARK) KOLMAN (Assistant State's Attorney): Your Honor, the State had intended to offer both for purposes of clarity to the jury. I think it's important in the situation, considering the type of case we have got, that the jury actually hear the defendant's words.

THE COURT: All right.

MR. KINSLEY: They will be ringing a bell.

THE COURT: Well, it may well be, but that problem can be taken up when we come to it.

Okay. Next objection, Mr. Kinsley.

The next objection to the receipt of the recordings was that they contain "repeated argument, not opinions, not evidence, not testimony, nothing but pure argument on the part of the troopers, arguing with the defendant, not questions, not answers, but just pure argument." The court merely said: "All right. I understand the objection. Next." Defense counsel asked that the recordings be suppressed "for those reasons." The motion to suppress was denied.

After discussion of other procedural matters, defense counsel returned to the matter of the tapes:

MR. KINSLEY: Now, if the Court please, I would like to know how we should proceed in the introduction of the statement, questions and answers by the State Police.

THE COURT: Well, we'll wait until we get to that point. We're going to swear a jury in. That's all that's necessary. That's what you do, number one. Then you make your opening statement to the jury. That's number two. Then the State proceeds to call witnesses. That's number three. And we'll try this case just like any other. When the State offers testimony, you object to it, and we'll take it up when we come to it.

The jury was sworn and trial proceeded.

There came a point in the trial when the State offered the tapes and a transcript of them. Defense counsel's objection was summarily overruled and the tapes and transcript were received in evidence. The prosecutor asked that "the jurors be allowed to view the copy of the transcript so that they may follow along with the tape, as it's played." The court said: "It certainly is preferable, because I never have seen or heard a tape yet that didn't have some static to it or difficulty." Defense counsel reminded the court:

But, now, if the Court please, you know, I earlier raised this objection, and you agreed that there's a possibility that some of the testimony, some of the questions, some of the statements of the police is purely objectionable, and you would rule it out.

The court replied: "When that time comes, I will instruct the jury to disregard it. I will follow the tapes, as well." This did not console the defense: "It would seem to me," observed Mr. Kinsley, "that it would be more appropriate if they didn't understand and the State's Attorney could read from the transcript, or the officer could. . . . But if they're going to read what is objectionable, then the bell has already rung." The court responded: "This is the expedient way to do it, and I think it's proper, and the Court will, as I say, as the expression goes, ride herd on it." At this point, defense counsel pointed out...