Holt v. State

• Citation: 372 So.2d 370
• Parties: In re Alfred HOLT v. STATE of Alabama. Ex parte Alfred Holt. 77-150.
• Decision Date: 04 August 1978
• Court: Supreme Court of Alabama

Page 370

372 So.2d 370

In re Alfred HOLT v. STATE of Alabama.

Ex parte Alfred Holt.

77-150.

Supreme Court of Alabama.

Aug. 4, 1978.

Benjamin Daniel, Birmingham, for petitioner.

William J. Baxley, Atty. Gen., and James L. O'Kelley, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

BEATTY, Justice.

Certiorari was granted in this case to consider the application by the Court of Criminal Appeals of the "collateral benefit rule" regarding confessions to the facts of this case. The pertinent facts are reported in Holt v. State, 372 So.2d 364 (Ala.Cr.App.1977).

The collateral benefit rule states that if a confession (or inculpatory admission) is induced by a promise of Collateral benefit, with no assurance of benefit to the defendant in respect to the crime under inquiry, such a promise will not suffice to show that the confession was involuntary. See Smith v. State, 248 Ala. 363, 27 So.2d 495 (1946); McCullars v. State, 208 Ala. 182, 94 So. 55 (1922); Hunt v. State, 135 Ala. 1, 33 So. 329 (1903).

The Court of Criminal Appeals found that when asked by the petitioner:

(I)f I tell you about it, I was not involved in the case, what about my robbery charge,

Sergeant Wallace of the Birmingham Police Department responded:

I'll do anything I can for you on the robbery, but it's not my case and I have nothing to do with it, but all I'll do is anything I can do to help you with it.

That court held that this was an offer of assistance on another offense and not an offer related to the case under inquiry, hence the confession induced by the officer's offer of assistance was not involuntary in law. Petitioner contends that this decision is in conflict with O'Tinger v. State, 342 So.2d 1343 (Ala.Cr.App.1977).

In O'Tinger the Court of Criminal Appeals reversed a conviction of grand larceny, having found the evidence undisputed that the defendant confessed to that crime in return for a pair of boots, and recognized no meaningful distinction in the fact that the defendant made the initial offer rather than the interrogating officer. O'Tinger v. State, supra, at 1345. In holding that the admission of such a confession adversely affected his constitutionally protected right against self incrimination, that court stated:

Any inducement of profit, Benefit, or melioration held out, . . . is enough to render the confession inadmissible. . . .

In distinguishing the present case from O'Tinger, however, the court stressed the facts that in O'Tinger the boots were a previously withheld necessity, and that this was a type of physical abuse that made the confession given for their return involuntary.

Without addressing the difficult problems this distinction would unleash, I. e., of what is, or is not, a necessity for a prisoner, and which necessities when withheld would or would not be the basis of physical abuse, we must agree with the petitioner that O'Tinger is in conflict with the present case. It cannot reasonably be argued that a promise of a pair of boots, and a promise of help with another offense, both of which having induced confessions, are so distinguishable that the former makes the confession involuntary, but the latter is of no legal effect. Because the boots in O'Tinger were a collateral benefit and not a benefit with respect to the particular crime under inquiry it is clear that the Court of Criminal Appeals in that decision impliedly overruled the collateral benefit rule, whatever the position of that court on the issue presently.

Whether the distinction between a collateral as opposed to a direct benefit is sufficiently meaningful to deserve recognition in criminal jurisprudence is another matter. Any such distinction must fully comply with the well-recognized injunction, that an accused should be free from involuntary self-incrimination. The wide sweep of this limitation upon criminal evidence, and its applicability here, was explained by Mr. Justice White in Bram v. United States, 168 U.S. 532, 542, 18 S.Ct. 183, 187, 42 L.Ed. 568 (1897), in which he made an extensive survey of the reasons for the rule and the decisions applying it. He quoted from 3 Russell on Crimes (6th ed.) 478:

'But a confession, in order to be admissible, must be free and voluntary: that is, must not be extracted by any sort of threats or violence, nor obtained by Any direct or implied promises, however slight, nor by the exertion of any improper influence. . . . A confession can never be received in evidence where the prisoner has been influenced by any threat or promise; For the law cannot measure the force of the influence used, or decide upon its effect upon the mind of the prisoner, And therefore Excludes the declaration if any degree of influence has been exerted.' (emphasis added)

Justice White added that "(t)he statement of the rule is . . . in entire accord with the decisions of this court on the subject." He cited Hopt v. Utah, 110 U.S. 574, 4 S.Ct. 202, 28 L.Ed. 262 (1884); Sparf v. United States, 156 U.S. 51, 55, 15 S.Ct. 273, 39 L.Ed. 343 (1895); Pierce v. United States, 160 U.S. 355, 16 S.Ct. 321, 40 L.Ed. 454 (1896); and Wilson v. United States, 162 U.S. 613, 16 S.Ct. 895, 40 L.Ed. 1090 (1896). It must be conceded, however, that Bram was decided under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and prior to the time when that Amendment and decisions rendered under it were made applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. Cf. Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 84 S.Ct. 1489, 12 L.Ed.2d 653 (1964). Shortly after Bram was decided, this Court rendered a decision in Hunt v. State, 135 Ala. 1, 8, 33 So. 329, 331 (1902) which recognized the collateral benefit rule:

The fact that incriminating statements of a defendant are made upon a promise of officers or citizens having him in custody that, if he will tell the truth, they will protect him against the wrath and vengeance of persons who are implicated, or whom his statement implicates, in the offense, does not render such statements inadmissible, if they are otherwise voluntary.

The Promise which will render a confession involuntary, in the eyes of the law must have relation to the legal consequences of the offense itself. It must involve some assurance of benefit to the defendant in respect of the crime under inquiry, as that he will not be prosecuted or that his punishment will be mitigated . . . . The mere Collateral benefit of protection from the personal violence of those who acted with him in the commission of the crime will not suffice.

This statement of principle was unsupported by any citation of authority. Moreover, it emphasized, not the effect of the promise upon the mind of the defendant, but rather the form of the promise itself. That is, no consideration was given to the fact that such a promise might be just as conducive to a confession of the offense as would a promise relating to some mitigation in connection with that offense. Nevertheless, it was quoted as authority in a later case, Elmore v. State, 223 Ala. 490, 137 So. 185 (1931). In that case the defendant was induced to confess his guilt by the threat of law enforcement officers to arrest his mother for the offense. In commenting on the effect of this inducement upon the voluntariness of the confession, a majority of this Court stated:

A personal benefit to the accused, the saving of himself from the distress of mind caused by his mother's arrest, may be easily inferred to have been a moving inducement to the confession. But this also was a collateral benefit under this rule (requiring the promise to relate to the offense itself).

We are far from saying that the saving of a loved one from arrest may not induce a confession, Be the accused guilty or not guilty. (emphasis added)

Under imaginable conditions, The untrustworthiness of a confession thus obtained should lead to its rejection. (emphasis added)

But we are not impressed that the confession in the instant case should be excepted from the general rule . . . .

In dissenting from what is patently an equivocal majority opinion upon the all-inclusiveness of the collateral benefit rule, Justice Brown, joined by Justice Sayre, believed that this confession was an "exception to the rule relating to (a) promise of collateral benefits, such as that the officer will let the accused see his wife (6 Am.St.Rep. 247), or 'to give the accused liquor,' or to 'release him from solitary confinement and allow him to associate with other prisoners,' or to 'take him to a priest' (1 R.C.L. 556, § 103), or the offer of a reward to deliver a saddle (McIntosh v. State, 52 Ala. 355), or to employ the accused to commit another's crime (Stone v. State, 105 Ala. 60, 17 So. 114), or to divide a reward for detection of the guilty party (McKinney v. State, 134 Ala. 134, 32 So. 726)." Justice Brown, however, predicated his dissent upon the rule of exclusion which...