People v. Medina, No. 00SA361.
| Decision Date | 25 June 2001 |
| Docket Number | No. 00SA361. |
| Citation | 25 P.3d 1216 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff/Appellant. v. Joseph Lorence MEDINA, Defendant/Appellee. |
| Court | Colorado Supreme Court |
David J. Thomas, District Attorney, Donna Skinner Reed, Chief Appellate District Attorney, Golden, CO, Attorneys for Plaintiff/Appellant.
Kenneth A. Padilla, Denver, CO, Attorney for Defendant/Appellee.
In this interlocutory appeal, we review the trial court's order suppressing statements it found to be involuntary. The trial court concluded that the challenged statements resulted from a police threat, which was calculated to and did result in the defendant's confession. The record supports the trial court's findings of fact and conclusions of law that the interrogating detective's threat to have the child taken from both parents, unless the defendant confessed to injuring the child, had a significant role in inducing his confession. We therefore uphold the trial court's suppression order.
On March 30, 2000, Joseph Medina (Medina) pled not guilty to two counts of child abuse resulting in serious bodily injury, pursuant to section 18-6-401(1)(a) & (7)(a)(III), 6 C.R.S. (1999), a class three felony. Medina filed a motion to suppress statements he made in two separate interviews with the police as involuntarily given. The trial court held four hearings on the motion between August 31 and October 16, 2000, and issued its suppression order on November 13, 2000. On the issue of whether Medina's statements to the police were voluntary, the evidence in the record upon which the trial court based its suppression order included the following.
On November 24, 1999, the Lakewood Police Department assigned a detective to investigate a possible child abuse incident involving a ten-week-old child. That evening, the detective traveled to Children's Hospital in Denver to see the victim (the child) and interview the family and treating physicians. Doctors at Children's Hospital conducted tests on the child; these tests showed brain injuries and fractured and bruised ribs. The doctors concluded that the injuries were consistent with someone having violently shaken the child.
While at the hospital, the detective spoke with the child's mother, Selena Sandoval (Selena). Selena told the detective that she had taken the child to a babysitter that morning. Approximately two hours after she left the child, the babysitter called, stating that the child was having a seizure. Selena said that Medina, the child's father, might be responsible for the child's injuries.
At the hospital, the detective also spoke with a caseworker assigned by the Jefferson County Department of Social Services, Tanis Doyle (Doyle), the child's maternal grandmother, Mary Sandoval (Mary), and the child's paternal grandmother, Lori Moore (Moore), as well as Medina. After speaking with Medina, the detective told Doyle and Selena that Medina "as much as" admitted to shaking the child and the detective felt certain that he was the perpetrator. Doyle testified that the detective's child abuse investigation at the hospital focused "on Joe Medina."1 Selena was not a suspect. The detective advised Selena that he had asked Medina to leave the hospital, to have no contact with the child, and to call him at the Lakewood Police Department for an interview. Medina told the detective he would call to set up the interview and intended to cooperate.
Moore testified that the detective asked Medina, her son, to talk with him out in the hall. Medina returned after a ten-minute conversation with the detective. He told Moore that the police "think that I did it," and the detective had ordered him to leave the hospital and to have no contact with his son. Moore confirmed with the detective that he had asked Medina to leave. She asked the detective "what the next step would be for Joseph to be able to be reunited with his son and his family, and [the detective] told me that they would get the help for Joe that he needed, and Joe had his business card and he was to give him a call."
Moore and her husband, Lorence Medina (Lorence), drove Medina to their house to stay because of the detective's directive that Medina have no contact with the child or Selena. Moore described Medina after the hospital episode as being "suicidal," "crying," and talking about "putting a gun in his mouth and blowing his head off." Moore said Medina told her, recounting his encounter with the detective at the hospital the day before, that "unless someone was found responsible for the accident that caused [the child] to be in the hospital, that both parents would not be able to have custody of [the child], that [the child] would go into the foster care system."
When Medina called the detective to schedule the interview at the police station, the detective told him, referring to Medina and Selena, that "if one person wasn't named as a claimed suspect, if one person wasn't found at fault, that they were going to take [the child] from both of us and I wouldn't see him."
The first interview was videotaped and occurred at the police station on November 26. At this interview, Medina made statements about shaking his son ten days earlier, on November 14, when the child fell off the couch, hit his head, and was not breathing. Medina said the November 14 shaking incident occurred in an effort to get the child to start breathing again. He denied shaking the child in connection with the November 24 injury. Outside the interrogation room, after this interview was completed, Medina asked the detective about whether he could see his son. The detective replied, "[Y]ou didn't help anything ... why should I."
The next day, on Saturday, November 27, Medina called the detective to arrange a second interview. Lorence testified that he drove Medina to the Monday, November 29 interview after trying to persuade him not to go back to the police station. Lorence testified:
Well, I asked him why he was going to go down, and he told me that he was going to go down and tell the detective that he was the one that was responsible. And I asked him why, because he told me that he didn't do it. I asked him why. And he said, this way at least [the child] will be with Selena. They would give custody to Selena if he was to come forward.
In a short audiotaped interview at the police station on November 29, Medina confessed to shaking the child on November 24.
At the suppression hearing, the detective denied telling Medina at the hospital or on the phone that the child would be taken from him and Selena and that Medina would be arrested if he did not confess to injuring the child. The detective recalled: "I did say that the child was placed in the custody of the Social Services and that it wouldn't be appropriate for the parents to be around the child after the custody."
The trial court considered the voluntariness of Medina's statements in light of the Fifth Amendment, Miranda,2 fruit of the poisonous tree, and the right to counsel. The trial court decided that Medina was not in custody during the police interviews at either the hospital or the police station. He went to the police station voluntarily, and before each of the interviews commenced, the police told him he was free to leave. Because Medina was not in custody during either interview, the trial court determined that Miranda did not apply.
The trial court ruled, however, that Medina's statements to the police on November 26 and 29 at the police station were the product of a continuing threat by the police that rendered those statements involuntary. The trial court's factual findings about the threat and its continuance throughout the interviews with the police include the following. In regard to the hospital encounter between the detective and Medina, the court found:
[T]he detective probably made statements to the Defendant concerning the child being taken from his custody and that of his wife. The court does not find the detective told Defendant that he would speak with the district attorney and that the district attorney would be lenient if Defendant cooperated.
In regard to the November 26 interview, the trial court found that the detective referred to a prior conversation with Medina when asking questions about his family relationships at the November 26 videotaped interview. The trial court found that the detective stated:
In regard to why Medina called the police the day after the November 26 interview and confessed on November 29 to shaking the baby, the court found:
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