Gov't of the Virgin Islands v. Gereau

• Decision Date: 23 July 1973
• Docket Number: Crim. No. 97-1972
• Citation: 10 V.I. 53
• Parties: GOVERNMENT OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS, Plaintiff v. BEAUMONT GEREAU, ISHMAEL LA BEET, WARREN BALLENTINE, MERAL SMITH, and RAPHAEL JOSEPH, Defendants
• Court: U.S. District Court — Virgin Islands

10 V.I. 53

GOVERNMENT OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS, Plaintiff v. BEAUMONT GEREAU, ISHMAEL LA BEET,WARREN BALLENTINE, MERAL SMITH,and RAPHAEL JOSEPH, Defendants

Crim. No. 97-1972

District Court of the Virgin Islands Div. of St. Croix

July 23, 1973

Motion to dismiss, or suppress evidence. District Court, Young, J., held that statements obtained from all five defendants were not obtained through brutality or compulsion, but that the statements of two were obtained in violation of right to counsel and would be suppressed, as would evidence obtained thereby which police would not eventually have found anyway.

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JULIO BRADY, ESQ., United States Attorney, Christiansted, St. Croix, V.I., for plaintiff

MARIO N. DECHABERT, ESQ., Christiansted, St. Croix, V.I., for defendant Gereau

WILLIAM M. KUNSTLER, ESQ., New York, N.Y., for defendant Gereau

RONALD T. MITCHELL, ESQ., St. Thomas, V.I., for defendant La Beet

CHAUNCEY ESKRIDGE, ESQ., Chicago, Illinois, for defendant La Beet

LEROY MERCER, ESQ., Christiansted, St. Croix, V.I., for defendant Ballentine

MARGARET L. RATNER, ESQ., New York, N.Y., for defendant Ballentine

LEROY MERCER, ESQ., Christiansted, St. Croix, V.I., for defendant Smith

RONALD T. MITCHELL, ESQ., St. Thomas, V.I., for defendant Joseph

YOUNG, Judge

OPINION ON MOTION TO SUPPRESS

This matter came before the Court on the defendants' Motion to Dismiss or Suppress. The motion was filed December 20, 1972, on behalf of all defendants.¹ It asks the Court to dismiss the information, or, in the alternative, to suppress any statements taken from the defendants and any tangible evidence obtained as a result thereof. By an Order dated March 9, 1973, I granted the defendants' application for an evidentiary hearing in connection with their motion. The hearing commenced April 16 and consumed twenty-one full court days (and 5,460 transcript pages of testimony). The present Opinion represents my conclusions from that hearing.

I. INTRODUCTION

This is a prosecution for the mass murders, assaults, and robberies committed on September 6, 1972, at the Fountain Valley Golf Course in St. Croix. The crime was reportedly committed by a number (5 to 7) of heavily armed young men wearing masks and army fatigues. The men entered the clubhouse area in the middle of the afternoon and at some point opened fire indiscriminately with a variety of weapons, including a .45 caliber submachine gun. Eight people were killed and four others wounded. The gunmen robbed some of the victims, apparently after they were shot. They also took the money from the snack bar cash register and the Sales Area cash drawer and then fled into the hills surrounding the golf course. By nightfall they had still not been apprehended despite intensive search. The police then directed their principal efforts toward a more systematic investigation of the crime.They were aided in this by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose agents began to arrive in St. Croix on the following day. A command post and headquarters for the enlarged force of law officers was set up in the Pro-shop of the golf course.²

Defendants La Beet, Ballentine and Joseph became the immediate suspects. All three had been sought for sometime and had been in hiding, or at least had escaped the eye of the police, for several months. The police were aware that they would be difficult to locate directly. About thirty other young men, contemporaries and associates of the prime suspects, were therefore sought out and brought to Fountain Valley for questioning. These individuals were not considered suspects themselves but rather as possible leads for locating the missing trio. Defendants Smith and Gereau were among this group. Attention began to focus on Smith when, on the morning of his arrest, the police searched his room and discovered ammunition, a bandanna that appeared to be a mask, a Fountain Valley matchbook, and other items tending to link him with the crime. Attention focused on Gereau when the police learned that he had been seen in the company of the trio the night before the murders and that he had been seen leaving his father's house with "a long gun." Both men were extensively questioned and ultimately made statements which implicated the remaining three defendants. La Beet, Ballentine and Joseph were finally located on September 12 and were also taken into custody.

[1] During their investigation, the police accumulated a considerable body of evidence. This includes confessions from each of the defendants and a sizeable collection of weaponry and army clothing. Among the weapons is a .45caliber machine gun. The defendants have now moved to suppress all evidence and have assigned a number of reasons for doing so. The reason most strongly pressed, and the one which I will examine first, is a claim that the police resorted to systematic tortures in order to obtain confessions from them. If this were so, the confessions would of course be inadmissible. Most of the tangible evidence, through a more or less complex investigative chain, would then become "fruits of the poisonous tree" and inadmissible as well.

After prolonged consideration, assisted by the excellent and (perhaps necessarily) lengthy briefs filed by both sides, I find myself unable to accept the claim that tortures were used against these defendants. Accordingly no evidence will be suppressed on this ground. On the other hand, however, I do believe that the police improperly questioned Smith and Joseph in the absence of an attorney. Any statements taken from these defendants will therefore be inadmissible at trial. For similar reasons, although confined to a single episode, any statements given by Gereau on September 14 will likewise be excluded. Finally, I will also suppress certain tangible evidence to which Joseph led the police; his assistance in this regard must be seen as a fruit of his earlier and improperly-obtained confession. All remaining evidence, however, will not be suppressed.

With that, I shall turn first to the most important issue presented: the allegation that during the arrest and questioning of these defendants the police consistently resorted to torture, brutality, or otherwise coercive tactics.

II. VARIOUS ACCOUNTS OF POLICE CONDUCT

The brutality issue does not lend itself to a terse statement of each side's factual contentions. On the contrary, most of the four week suppression hearing was taken upwith sharply conflicting accounts of almost every phase of the police investigation. This issue is being considered first because it lies at the foundation of many of the reasons which the defendants advance for suppressing evidence. They urge that not only were confessions coerced, and hence not admissible in evidence, but furthermore that such unlawful confessions were the basis for subsequent arrests and searches. While I have resolved in my mind what actually happened, the statement of my conclusion seems best deferred until the later sections in which I will examine the credibility of the witnesses. At this point I will merely relate the defendants' versions and then the Government's version of the facts.

1. Smith.—Smith was the first defendant to be arrested, being taken into custody just before dawn on September 7th, the morning after the murders. He claims that brutality began immediately, even before he reached the police headquarters at Fountain Valley for questioning. He was knocked to the ground as he emerged through a window of his room; he was kicked, banged with the police car door and repeatedly threatened. Events took a still more serious turn after Smith was brought to Fountain Valley. He was tortured at intervals throughout the entire day, chiefly in a small storage room. These tortures included pistol whippings, electric shocks to the ears and genitals, and beatings with fists, blackjacks and the shock club. Police officers Hatcher and Hansen were apparently the chief tormentors. Similar tortures were inflicted on the following day,³ and were supplemented by a hanging at about noon. Smith claims he was taken to a tree near the putting green, jerked off the ground about twenty timesin a fifteen minute period, and then returned for further questioning. It was not until the evening of the second day that he finally broke and made his first statement. Similar tortures preceded the additional confessions which he gave on the third day.

The Government's report of these days is radically different. A large number of police and FBI officers testified as to this period, accounting for all the significant time which Smith spent in custody. The arresting officers testified that the defendant was taken without incident to a waiting car. Thereafter, at Fountain Valley, he was questioned intermittently and without violence. Throughout the day, even after some incriminating evidence had been found in his room, he was still regarded as a lead to the primary suspects rather than as being himself a potential participant in the murders. Smith was taken to the Frederiksted jail for the night and was returned for more questioning the following morning. The interview began about 3:30 and ended—after the local Chief of Detectives Ann Schrader assured Smith that his companions could not take reprisals—when he signed a statement at 8:35 that evening. On the third morning Smith was told that Gereau had implicated him. He thereupon furnished two additional statements describing the crime in more detail. Throughout all of the sessions, the Government witnesses maintain, Smith was never in any way threatened or maltreated.

2. Gereau.—Gereau was arrested a day after Smith, in the midmorning of September 8th. He was likewise taken to Fountain Valley and interrogated at intervals throughout the day. He made no statement that day, nor does he claim that any physical force was used against him. The only...