State v. Bounds
| Decision Date | 08 March 1985 |
| Citation | 71 Or.App. 744,694 P.2d 566 |
| Parties | STATE of Oregon, Respondent, v. Steven Mark BOUNDS, Appellant. 10-82-05974; CA A29086. |
| Court | Oregon Court of Appeals |
David E. Groom, Deputy Public Defender, Salem, argued the cause for appellant. With him on the brief was Gary D. Babcock, Public Defender, Salem.
Robert E. Barton, Asst. Atty. Gen., Salem, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Dave Frohnmayer, Atty. Gen., and James E. Mountain, Jr., Sol. Gen., Salem.
Before BUTTLER, P.J., and WARREN and ROSSMAN, JJ.
Defendant appeals his conviction for sodomy in the first degree, ORS 163.405, claiming that his confession was involuntary and the court erred in admitting evidence of the victim's statements to her mother. We affirm.
The victim is defendant's four-year-old daughter. Defendant and his wife were separated at the time of the events described in this case. Evidence at trial established that, at approximately 2:30 p.m. on July 3, 1983, defendant picked up his daughter at his wife's house and took her to his house. At approximately 5:00 p.m., the victim's mother joined defendant and her daughter at defendant's house. She noticed that her daughter had a bruise on her face and the child told her immediately that defendant had slapped her. Defendant denied it. The three of them had dinner. Mother and daughter left at approximately 7:30 p.m. The mother's testimony explained as follows:
The victim's mother then called the police and took the child to the hospital. The medical examination showed a bruise on the child's right cheek and a reddened area along the right side of her perineal region around her vagina and anus area consistent with sexual abuse. The victim related essentially the same story to the emergency room doctor that she told her mother earlier.
On July 9, 1983, a police captain for the City of Oakridge contacted defendant at his place of employment. The officer took defendant to the Oakridge Police Department and read him his Miranda rights. The officer started talking to defendant and told him that, if he thought he had a problem, maybe this was the best way to get himself some help. He explained that there would be charges but that the courts and the district attorney were not going to "crucify" him.
Defendant confessed. He said that he was taking care of his daughter and rubbed some lotion on her body after he took her clothes off. He laid her on her stomach and entered her anus approximately one inch with his penis. She said that it hurt, and he took her to the bathroom and wiped her. He checked to ensure that there was no bleeding. Then he washed her off with a wash cloth and put it in the laundry. Defendant wrote a statement to this effect.
Defendant pled not guilty to the charge of sodomy in the first degree. Following a trial to the court, he was found guilty and sentenced to the custody of the Corrections Division for a period not to exceed seven years.
In his first assignment of error, defendant claims that the court erred in denying his motion to suppress his statement to police, because the officer induced his confession by offering treatment as opposed to any criminal sanction against defendant.
A confession induced by an express or implied promise of immunity from prosecution is involuntary as a matter of law. State v. Ely, 237 Or. 329, 334, 390 P.2d 348 (1964); State v. Bodi, 223 Or. 486, 491, 354 P.2d 831 (1960). Defendant claims that our decision in State v. Capwell, 64 Or.App. 710, 669 P.2d 808 (1983), requires reversal in his case. In Capwell, we found an implied promise of immunity from prosecution, when the substance of the officer's conversation with the defendant was that the defendant would receive treatment "instead of" or "as opposed to" being incarcerated, if he admitted the charges.
In this case, as in Capwell, the issue is whether the officer's statements reasonably can be construed as impliedly promising that defendant would get treatment instead of incarceration if he admitted the criminal charges. The trial court found no such express or implied promise, and the evidence supports that conclusion. Defendant's claim of coercion rests solely on a statement by the officer that the courts and the DA were not going to "crucify" him if he confessed. Although defendant, on hearing this statement, may have inferred on his own that it would go easier on him if he admitted his acts, the statement does not amount to a promise of immunity from prosecution rendering the confession involuntary as a matter of law. Defendant was told he would be prosecuted. The totality of the facts and circumstances convinces us that defendant's confession was not coerced and need not be suppressed.
In his second assignment of error, defendant claims that the trial court erred when it permitted the victim's mother to testify as to statements made by the child set out earlier in this opinion. Over defendant's objection on hearsay grounds, the court ruled that the statements were admissible as substantive evidence under OEC 804(3)(f), which provides:
The state and defendant stipulated that the declarant was incompetent to testify because of her age; for this reason she was unavailable as a witness. 1 We conclude that her statements have "equivalent circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness" to those admissible under the specific hearsay exceptions. The victim was four years old, and her statements were made within the first few minutes that she was outside of defendant's presence after the sexual attack and while she continued to suffer the pain of the assault. The child's statement was corroborated by the physical evidence on her person. The slap mark on her face was visible. The examining physician observed a reddened area along the right side of the perineal region consistent with the sexual attack described. See United States v....
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