People v. Chapple

• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Writing for the Court: FUCHSBERG; BREITEL; COOKE
• Citation: People v. Chapple, 38 N.Y.2d 112, 378 N.Y.S.2d 682, 341 N.E.2d 243 (N.Y. 1975)
• Decision Date: 04 December 1975
• Parties: , 341 N.E.2d 243 The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. David K. CHAPPLE, Appellant.

Page 682

378 N.Y.S.2d 682

38 N.Y.2d 112, 341 N.E.2d 243

The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. David K. CHAPPLE, Appellant.

Court of Appeals of New York.

Dec. 4, 1975.

Peter E. Murphy, Plattsburgh, for appellant.

Ara Asadourian, Dist. Atty. (Norman J. Dame, Plattsburgh, of counsel), for respondent.

FUCHSBERG, Judge.

The question before us is whether defendant's confession was voluntary and admissible, given the circumstances under which it was obtained. The County Court, after a Huntley hearing, determined that it was admissible, and the Appellate Division affirmed, two Justices dissenting. We reverse.

On December 3, 1971, at about 1:15 A.M., the defendant and a friend, Albert Beshon, were walking along the side of Route 22, headed toward Plattsburgh. State Police Investigator Gerald Luck driving by in the opposite direction, saw the pair and swung his car around into oncoming traffic in order to pull up beside them. Both Chapple and Luck agreed that Luck asked Chapple where he was going and then got out of the police car.

Luck himself admitted that he told Chapple he wanted to talk to him and ordered him to get into the police car. He further admitted that he 'put' Chapple into the car, pushing him under the steering wheel and over into the passenger seat. According to Luck, he then questioned Chapple about several burglaries in the area, one of which had occurred just that night. Luck stated that he drove Chapple to the site of this burglary, where Chapple freely admitted his guilt and showed Luck where he, Chapple, and Beshon had broken into the building. Luck testified that he then gave Chapple his Miranda warnings and continued to question him. He drove Chapple to the sites of two more burglaries, where Chapple admitted to each of these and also to a fourth a little farther away. Luck stated that he then drove Chapple to police headquarters.

Once there, he questioned Chapple about each burglary, beginning with the latest one and working backward in time. After each round of questioning, Luck stated that he then typed up a confession and had Chapple read it. When this had produced four confessions, one for each burglary, he took Chapple before a local notary public to sign the four confessions. All of this activity consumed about four hours from the time Luck saw Chapple on the road.

Chapple's own testimony confirms the sequence of events in substance. His story differed from Luck's only in the following respects: Chapple testified that Luck hit him while in the police car, bashed his head against a briefcase in the front seat, and threatened to throw Chapple off a nearby bridge if he did not confess to the burglaries. According to Chapple, he originally refused to get into the police car unle Luck had a warrant and unless he was under arrest, and refused to talk to Luck unless he was given a lawyer. Chapple testified that Luck repeated his threats periodically during the typing and signing procedures at the police station. He also testified that he believed these threats and was frightened of Luck during the entire procedure.

The majority below affirmed Chapple's conviction, upon his plea of guilty to one count of burglary, on the authority of People v. Tanner, 30 N.Y.2d 102, 331 N.Y.S.2d 1, 282 N.E.2d 98. In that case we affirmed the conviction of a defendant whose testimony, directed toward the 'cat out of the bag' theory (see United States v. Bayer, 331 U.S. 532, 67 S.Ct. 1394, 91 L.Ed. 1654), the lower courts found wholly incredibile. The credibility of that defendant was for the lower courts to assess; we did not review their conclusions. Moreover, we refused to adopt any rule which would have the effect of automatically invalidating a confession. (See, also, People v. Stephen J. B., 23 N.Y.2d 611, 615, 298 N.Y.S.2d 489, 493, 246 N.E.2d 344--347; People v. Jennings, 33 N.Y.2d 880, 352 N.Y.S.2d 444, 307 N.E.2d 561, affg. 40 A.D.2d 357, 363, 340 N.Y.S.2d 25, 30.)

The case before us, however, unlike Tanner, is not premised on the theory that the defendant may have made his second confession on constraint of his first one. Chapple's defense, as noted by the dissenters in the Appellate Division, is premised instead on the theory that the sequence of events, beginning with his inpulsive and apparently illegal arrest ^* and ending with the four signed confessions, was, in reality, a single continuous chain of events. Because it focused on the Tanner approach, the majority made no findings of fact with respect to the continuous chain of events in this case. We hold that, as a matter of law, such a theory may support a claim that a confession such as this one is inadmissible because not truly voluntary.

For authority we need look no further than Westover v. United States, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, the companion case to Miranda itself. (Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694.) In Westover, the defendant was arrested by local police and questioned about a particular crime. After several hours of interrogation, he was turned over to FBI agents in the same police station for questioning about two other crimes. Although the FBI agents administered warnings before beginning their questioning, and, though its agents constituted a separate interrogating team and represented a different...