State v. Bouffanie

• Decision Date: 13 November 1978
• Docket Number: Nos. 61477,61478,s. 61477
• Citation: 364 So.2d 971
• Parties: STATE of Louisiana v. Dale BOUFFANIE.
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court

Page 971

364 So.2d 971

STATE of Louisiana v. Dale BOUFFANIE.

Nos. 61477, 61478.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

Nov. 13, 1978.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 14, 1978.

Leslie J. Clement, Jr., Wilbert J. Tauzin, II, Thibodaux, for defendant-appellant.

William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Barbara Rutledge, Asst. Atty. Gen., Francis Dugas, Dist. Atty., John J. Erny, Jr., Asst. Dist. Atty., for plaintiff-appellee.

DENNIS, Justice.

Defendant, Dale Bouffanie, was originally charged by bills of indictment with two offenses of first degree murder and two offenses of armed robbery. The district court, after a hearing, denied defendant's motions to suppress physical evidence and a confession. The bills of indictment were amended to accuse defendant of two offenses of second degree murder. Defendant pleaded guilty to these offenses reserving his right to appellate review of the trial judge's rulings on the motions to suppress. The trial judge sentenced defendant to two consecutive sentences of life imprisonment at hard labor. Defendant appealed, relying on sixteen assignments of error, two of which were not briefed or argued.

A tortuous factual pattern surrounds the contested seizures of evidence and the confession. A warrant for the arrest of defendant Bouffanie for criminal neglect of family was issued on January 17, 1977. Police officers made several trips to the defendant's residence to arrest him but were told on each occasion that Bouffanie was not there. On the morning of February 7, 1977, the bodies of Boone Terrebonne and Rowena Theriot were discovered near Milo's Lounge in Galliano. The police renewed their efforts to locate the defendant when it developed that he possibly had committed the two homicides and a burglary. In the late afternoon of February 7, 1977, police officers began surveillance of the house in which the defendant resided with Mrs. Mona Bouzigard Guidry. Upon seeing Bouffanie enter the house with Mrs. Guidry and her brother, Ronald Bouzigard, the officers approached the house with the intention of arresting him for criminal neglect of family. After answering their knock, Mrs. Guidry denied that defendant was present and consented to a search of the premises. The grounds as well as the inside of the house were inspected. The defendant was not found but a duffel bag containing rifles and a back-pack filled with pistols were found beneath the house near the back steps.

Mona Guidry and Ronald Bouzigard were taken to the Galliano jail for questioning and advised of their rights. Guidry gave an inculpatory statement which implicated the defendant in a local burglary involving the rifles and pistols found at the house. She was arrested, charged as an accessory after the fact to simple burglary and put in jail. Bouzigard gave no statement and was allowed to leave.

Early the next morning, on February 8, 1977, police officers found defendant sleeping in a car outside the house where he was last seen and arrested him for criminal neglect of family. Defendant complained of pain, and was taken to the Galliano hospital where he received treatment in the emergency room from Dr. Barry Simon. According to the doctor, the defendant was incapable of rational conversation and unable to give a patient history. One of the officers told the doctor that Bouffanie was suffering from heroin withdrawal, and the defendant told the doctor that he had been stabbed in New Orleans. The doctor incorporated this information in his written diagnosis. Doctor Simon administered a sedative and prescribed additional librium capsules to be given to the defendant, if needed, every four hours. After the medical treatment was completed at about 4:00 a. m., Bouffanie was taken to the jail.

Later the same day the police, after receiving information that Mona Bouzigard Guidry and Ronald Bouzigard were involved in the homicides and robberies under investigation, interrogated them and obtained a statement from each implicating Bouffanie, Guidry and Bouzigard in the murders and armed robberies of Boone Terrebonne and Rowena Theriot. Guidry and Bouzigard both stated that, after dropping Bouffanie at the place where he planned to rob Terrebonne, they later picked him up and drove him to his residence where a bullet was removed from his body, melted in a spoon and thrown in a trash can. Based on these statements, search warrants were issued authorizing the inspection of the defendant's person and the house. In executing the warrant to search the house the officers found and seized as evidence against Bouffanie the melted bullet, spoon and some bloody clothing.

At approximately 11:00 p. m. on February 8, 1977, Doctor Robicheaux, the parish coroner, examined Bouffanie's chest pursuant to the search warrant and found a bullet wound and another kind of wound. Defendant's blood alcohol and drug screen tests were negative. After talking to the defendant for approximately twenty-five minutes, Doctor Robicheaux turned him over to the police and advised the officers that he would prescribe a sedative if defendant later complained of nervousness. However, the doctor did not recall that the defendant was in pain at that time.

Immediately upon being returned to the jail at 11:57 p. m., Bouffanie signed a waiver of rights form and gave a statement confessing to the murders and armed robberies of Terrebonne and Theriot. After the interrogation, which lasted about one hour, defendant was transported to the jail in Thibodaux. As they passed a hospital on the way defendant requested some medication. He was taken into the emergency room where he received some medicine. The record reflects that defendant was administered a mild sedative but does not indicate whether he received any additional treatment. Apparently, Bouffanie was then taken to the Thibodaux jail after only a brief stop.

ASSIGNMENT OF ERROR NO. 1

In his first assignment of error defendant contends that the district court should have suppressed his confession because it was coerced by police officers who withheld medical assistance from him during his acute heroin withdrawal until he gave them the statement.

Before a confession or inculpatory statement can be introduced in evidence the State must prove affirmatively and beyond a reasonable doubt that it was free and voluntary and not made under the influence of fear, duress, intimidation, menaces, threats, inducements or promises. La.R.S. 15:451; La.C.Cr.P. art. 703(C); State v. Glover, 343 So.2d 118 (La.1977). In reviewing the trial judge's ruling as to the admissibility of a confession, his conclusions on credibility are entitled to the respect due those made by one who saw the witnesses and heard them testify. State v. Bias, 352 So.2d 1011 (La.1977); State v. Cobbs, 350 So.2d 168 (La.1977); State v. Adams, 347 So.2d 195 (La.1977). However, because of the State's burden, it is required to rebut specific testimony introduced on behalf of defendant concerning factual circumstances which indicate coercive measures or intimidation. State v. Simmons, 328 So.2d 149 (La.1976).

Despite conflicts in the testimony, our review of the record reflects that the evidence supports the trial judge's finding that the State sustained its burden on the issue of voluntariness. Although one officer testified that Bouffanie complained of pain the night his confession was given, all of the other officers testified that he appeared nervous but coherent and did not request medication. All of the officers testified that no inducements, promises or threats were made or offered to defendant before he signed the confession. Bouffanie testified that his confession resulted from his confusion, his need of medical attention, and his psychological intimidation by the police officers' questions about his wound. However, the police officers' testimony rebutted these contentions, and Bouffanie himself admitted that he signed a waiver of rights form and was fully aware of the meaning of his confession.

Doctor Simon and two other medical experts called by the defendant testified that it was possible that Bouffanie was experiencing drug withdrawal at the time of his confession, and, if so, it was possible that he may have been induced by his condition to give a confession that he otherwise would not have made. However, each witness indicated that because of the many variables he could not state that either proposition was more probable than not.

The testimony of the doctor who examined defendant immediately prior to the taking of the confession provided even less basis for finding that the statement was involuntary. Doctor Robicheaux did not recall that the defendant told him that he was in pain. He administered no medicine to the defendant at that time, although he had treated the defendant before and was aware of his drug problem. Doctor Robicheaux's medical examination of the defendant related primarily to the execution of the body search warrant, but the doctor testified that the defendant, although frail, was physically sound and in possession of his mental faculties.

On the record presented for our review we cannot say that the trial judge erred in finding that the State had borne its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant confessed voluntarily.

This assignment lacks merit.

ASSIGNMENTS OF ERROR NOS. 3, 10, 11, 13

In these assignments defendant contends that the initial search and the seizure of the guns at his residence were unconstitutional. Consequently, he argues, all fruits of those unlawful acts should have been suppressed, including the guns, the confessions of Guidry and Bouzigard, and the evidence obtained with the two search warrants.

As the officers were looking for Bouffanie at the house, a detective observed what he thought was a person hiding underneath the house near the back steps. He ordered the person to come out and received no answer. Upon pulling the object from under the house he discovered that it was a cloth backpack...