Sparks v. State, 30669

• Citation: 229 N.E.2d 642,248 Ind. 429
• Decision Date: 20 September 1967
• Docket Number: No. 30669,30669
• Parties: Donald Hurcle SPARKS, Appellant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee.
• Court: Supreme Court of Indiana

Page 642

229 N.E.2d 642

248 Ind. 429

Donald Hurcle SPARKS, Appellant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee.

No. 30669.

Supreme Court of Indiana.

Sept. 20, 1967.

John R. Jett, Terre Haute, for appellant.

John J. Dillon, Atty. Gen., of Indiana, Carl E. Van Dorn, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.

JACKSON, Judge.

Appellant was charged by indictment in the Vigo Circuit Court of Vigo County, Indiana, with the crime of First Degree Murder as the result of the death of Brenda Dawn Frederick from a gunshot wound.

The shooting and death occurred on October 8, 1962. On that date appellant was seventeen years of age, and the victim of the shooting, Brenda Dawn Frederick, was three years and four months of age. Brenda's father, Peter Frederick, is appellant's half brother.

Appellant had been employed to take care of the Frederick children (including Brenda) during the day while the children's parents worked. On the day in question appellant had sent the two older children to school. Brenda remained at home with the appellant, and later a neighbor boy, Jimmie Walker, aged four years, came to the house to play with her.

About 11:35 a.m. on October 8, 1962, the police received a call from appellant to come to the Frederick home where they found the body of Brenda on the floor and appellant present. Brenda had been shot in the head. The gun, a 22 caliber revolver, was lying on a tricycle seat a few feet from the body. The police took appellant to the City Hall with instructions to 'Hold for Probation Department.' On the way to the City Hall and while there, the police interrogated appellant as to what had occurred at the Frederick home. Appellant first stated that Brenda had shot herself and signed a statement or confession to that effect, which was introduced at the trial as State's Exhibit No. 11.

Later, on October 8, 1962, after having talked to Jimmie Walker and after requiring appellant to submit to a paraffin test of his hands, in which test nitrate was found on the right hand, the police obtained a second statement from appellant of what had happened. This statement was introduced in evidence as State's Exhibit No. 12. This statement in substance was to the effect that he saw Brenda with the gun in her hand, he rushed over to her, placed his left arm around her and with his right hand attempted to get the gun away from her, and in the process the gun went off resulting in her injury and death. These two confessions were made on the afternoon of October 8, 1962, at the Terre Haute City Hall.

Thereafter, appellant was taken by the police to the Frederick home where, in the presence of and at the direction of the police, he re-enacted the shooting 'along the things that he had stated in his second statement. Detective Long had the statement in his possession as Donald re-enacted the events.'

The police officers interrogated appellant on October 9, 1962, and on the morning of October 10, 1962, he was, with permission from his father, taken from Terre Haute to Indianapolis by Terre Haute police officers and given a lie detector test. After such test, he was returned to Terre Haute where he was again intensively interrogated by the police officers and finally by Mr. Berry the Prosecuting Attorney. After being interrogated by Mr. Berry, appellant signed the third confession on October 10, 1962, which confession was introduced in evidence as State's Exhibit No. 14. The third confession was to the effect that he had pointed the gun at Brenda to scare her. When she did not become scared, but merely pushed the gun away, he became angry and shot her.

On October 11, 1962, appellant was for the first time charged with the commission of a crime, to-wit: Murder in the first degree, when taken to the court of Hon. Lee Easton, Justice of the Peace of Harrison Township, Vigo County, Indiana. Appellant entered a plea of not guilty to the indictment and requested trial by jury. The jury, after trial, by its verdict, found appellant guilty of the crime of Second Degree Murder and sentenced him to imprisonment in the Indiana State Prison for life.

After verdict and before judgment was rendered thereon, appellant filed his motion for a new trial, such motion contained one hundred thirteen grounds. Thereafter appellant filed his supplemental motion for a new trial containing two additional grounds, for a total of one hundred fifteen grounds for new trial. Obviously it is impossible to set out, in an opinion of reasonable length, all of these grounds. Generally the grounds related to alleged error in giving certain numbered instructions tendered by the State; refusing to give certain numbered instructions tendered by the appellant; error in overruling appellant's motion for directed verdict; error in overruling objections to statements made by the State and refusing to withdraw the submission of the cause from the jury; error in allegedly permitting the Sheriff's department to move appellant about the court house in view of the jury while shackled; numerous objections to questions propounded various witnesses, such objections being embodied in objections designated as stipulated objections Nos. 1, 2 and 3. These objections and others were interposed numerous times to certain questions propounded to witnesses produced by the State.

These objections go to the several constitutional rights of the appellant therein allegedly violated, as well as the right of the State to introduce, in the case in chief, three separate and several contradictory confessions obtained from appellant, a seventeen year old boy with no previous police record, without benefit of counsel or an opportunity to consult with his parents, or anyone else, outside the presence of the police, while being held by the police without warrant and without charge.

The Assignment of Errors contains four specifications as follows:

'1. The Court erred in overruling Defendant's Motion for New Trial.

'2. The Court erred in overruling Defendant's Supplemental Motion for New Trial.

'3. That the verdict of the Jury is contrary to law.

'4. That the verdict of the Jury is not sustained by sufficient evidence.'

While there are many grounds contained in the Motion for New Trial and properly saved, we deem it unnecessary to encumber this opinion with a discussion of any of them other than the question as to the admissibility of the confessions.

On the weight of authority it appears that the true test as to the admissibility of a confession is that it be voluntarily made and that in making it the accused was aware of the probable consequences of his act.

One of the early decisions relating to the use of such confessions antedates the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court in that field, but enunciates the correct principal of law later followed by that court wherein it has long been held '(t)he law will not suffer a prisoner to be made the deluded instrument of his own conviction.' 2 Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown 595, (8th Ed. 1824).

The question whether a confession was coerced depends upon whether the defendant's will was overborne at the time he confessed, for if such was the case, his confession cannot be deemed the product of a rational intellect and a free will.

'* * * It is true that the police have to interrogate to arrest; it is not true that they may arrest to interrogate. I would hold that any confession obtained by the police while the defendant is under detention is inadmissible, unless there is prompt arraignment and unless the accused is informed of his right to silence and accorded an opportunity to consult counsel.'

Reck v. Pate (1961), 367 U.S. 433, 448, 81 S.Ct. 1541, 1550, 6 L.Ed.2d 948, 958.

The true test of the admissibility of a confession is whether it was made freely, voluntarily and without compulsion or inducement of any sort.

The use of an involuntary confession requires reversal of the judgment of conviction even though there is sufficient other evidence in the record from which the jury might have found guilt.

Haynes v. State of Washington (1963), 373 U.S. 503, 83 S.Ct. 1336, 10 L.Ed.2d 513.

'The abhorrence of society to the use of involuntary confessions does not turn alone on their inherent untrustworthiness. It also turns on the deep-rooted feeling that the police must obey the law while enforcing the law; that in the end life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves. Accordingly, the actions of police in obtaining confessions have come under scrutiny in a long series of cases.'

Spano v. People of State of New York (1959), 360 U.S. 315, 320, 321, 79 S.Ct. 1202, 3 L.Ed.2d 1265, 1270. (For cases cited see footnote 2 at p. 321.)

'The police were not therefore merely trying to solve a crime, or even to absolve a suspect. * * * They were rather concerned primarily with securing a statement from defendant on which they could convict him. The...