People v. Whitehead

• Decision Date: 25 January 2000
• Docket Number: Docket No. 203626.
• Citation: 604 N.W.2d 737,238 Mich App 1
• Parties: PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Derrick WHITEHEAD, a/k/a Darrick J. Walls, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Michigan — District of US

604 N.W.2d 737

238 Mich App 1

PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Derrick WHITEHEAD, a/k/a Darrick J. Walls, Defendant-Appellant.

Docket No. 203626.

Court of Appeals of Michigan.

Submitted June 17, 1999, at Detroit.

Decided October 8, 1999, at 9:00 a.m.

Released for Publication January 25, 2000.

Jennifer M. Granholm, Attorney General, Thomas L. Casey, Solicitor General, John D. O'Hair, Prosecuting Attorney, Timothy A. Baughman, Chief of Research, Training, and Appeals, and Brian T. Moody, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for the people.

State Appellate Defender (by P.E. Bennett), for the defendant on appeal.

Before: BANDSTRA, C.J., and WHITBECK and TALBOT, JJ.

BANDSTRA, C.J.

Introduction

In Riverside County v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44, 56, 111 S.Ct. 1661, 114 L.Ed.2d 49 (1991), the United States Supreme Court held that, following an arrest without a warrant, "a jurisdiction that provides judicial determinations of probable cause within 48 hours of arrest will, as a general matter, [be found to] comply with the promptness requirement" of the federal constitution's Fourth Amendment. Police authorities who hold an arrestee for more than forty-eight hours without an arraignment can constitutionally do so only if they can "demonstrate the existence of a bona fide emergency or other extraordinary circumstance" that would justify the delay. Id. at 57, 111 S.Ct. 1661. While the majority in Riverside stated "[e]veryone agrees that the police should make every attempt to minimize the time a presumptively innocent individual spends in jail," id. at 58, 111 S.Ct. 1661 Justice Scalia would have gone farther than the majority by considering twenty-four hours to be the time limit presumed as constitutional, id. at 70, 111 S.Ct. 1661 (Scalia, J., dissenting).

Riverside was applied by a panel of this Court in People v. McCray, 210 Mich.App. 9, 533 N.W.2d 359 (1995). The case was remanded to the trial court for a determination whether the police could justify holding the defendant for more than forty-eight hours. The panel noted that "[t]he facts suggest that the police were motivated by a desire to gain additional information to justify the arrest and may have intentionally delayed arraigning McCray in hopes of eliciting an incriminating statement." McCray, supra at 12, 533 N.W.2d 359. McCray was decided on April 21, 1995.

Less than eight months later, defendant in the present case was arrested by the Detroit Police Department on December 16, 1995. Again,¹ as in McCray, the Detroit police held defendant without a judicial determination of probable cause justifying his arrest for a period far in excess of forty-eight hours. Again, the circumstances of this case indicate that defendant may have been detained for the purpose of securing his confession regarding the crimes at issue. In any event, defendant did make a statement on December 20, nearly four full days after his arrest, regarding his involvement in the crimes.

We today conclude that any error resulting from the use of defendant's confession at trial was harmless. Nonetheless, we publish this case to reiterate the importance of the constitutional principles reviewed in Riverside. We emphasize to police authorities across Michigan the importance of securing a judicial determination of probable cause within forty-eight hours of an arrest without a warrant in all but the most extraordinary situations. Finally, this decision provides a warning that statements made by an accused person during a longer detainment may well be found inadmissible for purposes of securing a conviction at trial.

Facts

Following a jury trial, defendant was found guilty as charged of three counts of assault with intent to rob while armed, M.C.L. § 750.89; MSA 28.284, and one count of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, M.C.L. § 750.227b; MSA 28.424(2). Defendant was sentenced to concurrent terms of eight to twenty years' imprisonment for the convictions of assault with intent to rob while armed and a consecutive two-year sentence for the felony-firearm conviction. Defendant appeals his convictions as of right.

This case began with a shooting at a record store that was open late on the evening of December 16, 1995. The proprietors of the store and their son testified that three men came into the store brandishing firearms and that one of the men shot the son at close range. After hearing the gunshots, a witness on the street observed three men enter a car and drive away. The witness immediately called the police using a cellular phone, and a chase ensued. Defendant was found hiding under a car and was brought to the police station. Almost four days later, after being repeatedly questioned by various police officers, defendant signed a statement admitting that he was one of the men who entered the store and committed the assaults.

Before trial, defendant requested and was granted a Walker² hearing where he challenged the admissibility of his statement, contending that it was not voluntarily made. The trial court considered the largely contradictory testimony of defendant and the police witnesses and, concluding that defendant's account was less credible, determined that the confession was voluntary. Accordingly, evidence regarding defendant's statement was used against him at trial.

On appeal, defendant argues that his statement should not have been admitted not only because it was involuntary but also because it was elicited in violation of his Miranda³ rights and during a detainment that was excessively long under Riverside. Defendant also argues that there was insufficient evidence to establish the corpus delicti of the charges, particularly the intent to rob.

Analysis

We first consider defendant's argument that, for a number of reasons, his statement to the police should have been suppressed and that, because it was used against him, he should be granted a new trial. In other words, defendant argues that admitting the statement was error and also that the error was not harmless. To accept this argument and grant defendant a new trial, we would have to conclude that both of these contentions have merit.

"Judicial expediency allows courts to address issues according to their ease of resolution." People v. Graves, 458 Mich. 476, 479-480, n. 2, 581 N.W.2d 229 (1998). Of the two questions presented by defendant's argument—whether the statement should have been suppressed and, if so, whether admission of the statement was harmless error—we find the second to be easier to resolve.⁴ Accordingly, assuming without deciding that it was error for the trial court to allow the confession to be used against defendant at trial, we consider whether that constituted harmless error. If any error that might have occurred was harmless, we need not consider whether, in fact, there was error in admitting the confession.

Defendant argues that his confession was admitted at trial in contravention of constitutional rights under People v. Walker (On Rehearing), 374 Mich. 331, 132 N.W.2d 87 (1965) (involuntary confession), Riverside, supra (excessive detainment), and Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966) (privilege against self-incrimination). We must first determine whether the alleged error in admitting the confession is structural or nonstructural. Graves, supra at 482, 581 N.W.2d 229.

First, a court must ask if the error is a "structural defect[ ] in the constitution of the trial mechanism, which def[ies] analysis by `harmless-error' standards." These errors include the total deprivation of the right to trial counsel, an impartial judge, excluding grand jury members who are the same race as defendant, denial of the right to self-representation, denial of the right to a public trial, and a constitutionally improper reasonable doubt instruction....

At the other end of the spectrum ... are trial errors that "occur[ ] during the presentation of the case to the jury, and which may therefore be quantitatively assessed in the context of other evidence presented in order to determine whether its admission was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt." [People v. Anderson (After Remand), 446 Mich. 392, 405-406, 521 N.W.2d 538 (1994) (citations omitted).]

The United States Supreme Court has determined that the erroneous admission of a confession into evidence is a nonstructural defect that does not justify automatic reversal but, instead, requires a harmless-error analysis. Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 295, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991).

Before a constitutional error can be held harmless, "the court must be able to declare a belief that it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt." Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824,17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967).⁵ The court must "determine, beyond a reasonable doubt [,] that there is no `reasonable possibility that the evidence complained of might have contributed to the conviction.'" Anderson, supra at 406, 521 N.W.2d 538, quoting Chapman, supra at 23, 87 S.Ct. 824. To make this determination, we examine the entire record and consider both defendant's statement and its use by the prosecutor during arguments. Id.

As defendant argues, it is clear from the record in this case that his confession was highly incriminating because it constituted an admission that he was involved in the crimes committed at the record store. The prosecutor used the confession to contradict the story that defendant told at trial, i.e., that he had nothing to do with the crimes at issue here but, when he heard police in the area, had retreated to a hiding place to avoid apprehension for unrelated drug offenses. Accordingly, we cannot conclude that admission of defendant's confession played no part in the jury's determination of his guilt at trial.

However, we do not consider that to be the relevant inquiry for purposes of determining whether the confession "contributed to the conviction" under Chapma...