State v. Caouette

• Decision Date: 23 June 1982
• Citation: 446 A.2d 1120
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. Robert CAOUETTE, Jr.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 1120

446 A.2d 1120

STATE of Maine v. Robert CAOUETTE, Jr.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued May 6, 1982.

Decided June 23, 1982.

William R. Stokes, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen. (orally), Fernand LaRochelle, Asst. Atty. Gen., Augusta, for plaintiff.

Marshall, Raymond, Beliveau, Dionne & Bonneau, John Beliveau, Judith Andrucki (orally), Lewiston, for defendant.

Before McKUSICK, C. J., and NICHOLS, ROBERTS, CARTER, VIOLETTE and WATHEN, JJ.

WATHEN, Justice.

The State appeals pursuant to 15 M.R.S.A. § 2115-A (1980) and M.R.Crim.P. 37B from an order of the Superior Court (Androscoggin County) suppressing statements made by the defendant when first placed in custody. ¹ We deny the appeal.

I

Defendant was indicted on April 14, 1981 for murder (17-A M.R.S.A. § 201(1)(A) and (B) (Supp.1981)) and for hindering the apprehension and discovery of another person charged with murder (17-A M.R.S.A. § 753(1)(C) (Supp.1981)). Defendant was taken into custody at the Androscoggin County Jail on the afternoon of the day the indictment was returned. At 8:30 in the evening defendant became ill and was allowed to go to the medical room of the jail. The Deputy Sheriff in charge examined defendant and was told by defendant that he had been vomiting since the supper hour. Defendant was permitted to call his wife, and after the call he began to cry. Stating that he was feeling ill again, he asked to stay in the medical room and talk. The deputy testified that he repeatedly told defendant that he did not want to discuss his case because he was not the investigating officer. He also told defendant that anything he said could be used against him. Subsequently defendant made admissions which could be considered inculpatory. The deputy testified that after each such statement he repeated the warnings. There is no testimony indicating that the deputy asked any questions, although he did offer to contact the investigating officers. Finally, unable to stop the defendant from talking, the deputy returned him to the cell area. Defendant testified at the suppression hearing that he did not remember much about the events following his arrest because he was sick, frightened, and unfamiliar with his surroundings. He stated that he had not intended to discuss the case with anyone.

Defendant moved to suppress the oral statements made by him on April 14, 1981 on the grounds that they were not voluntary and that their use violated his rights under the Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. ² The court granted the motion and suppressed the statements. Based upon a consideration of all the circumstances, including the defendant's illness, emotional state and unfamiliarity with the custodial surroundings, the presiding justice ruled that he was unable to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the April 14th statements were voluntary. The justice did not find that the statements were compelled or elicited by police conduct. The question is therefore clearly posed: In the absence of police compulsion or elicitation, may a statement nevertheless be held to be involuntary because the circumstances of incarceration and the physical and emotional condition of the defendant preclude a finding that his statements resulted from the exercise of free will and rational intellect? The Superior Court ruled affirmatively and until now this Court has never squarely addressed the issue.

II

The prosecution argues that applicable federal and state law does not prohibit the use of a statement volunteered by a defendant under the circumstances presented in this case. It is the view of the State that in order for a defendant's statement to be considered involuntary, police elicitation is necessary. It is contended that the trial court's decision to suppress is based on a misconception of the due process concept of voluntariness. ³ We disagree.

The State relies principally upon a number of United States Supreme Court decisions which suggest that voluntariness is linked to freedom from compulsion or elicitation by the police. Undoubtedly these cases have as their factual foundations conduct by police and prosecution in securing statements from a defendant. The descriptions of the minimal standards of voluntariness and the procedural standards mandated for proving voluntariness reflect these factual contexts and for the most part are aimed at deterring impermissible police conduct. Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 57 L.Ed.2d 290 (1978); Lego v. Twomey, 404 U.S. 477, 92 S.Ct. 619, 30 L.Ed.2d 618 (1972); Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963); Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U.S. 199, 80 S.Ct. 274, 4 L.Ed.2d 242 (1960).

To accede to the State's request to construe such opinions as expressing a limitation upon the scope of the privilege against self-incrimination would be to stand the state-federal relationship and the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States on their heads. In State v. Collins, Me., 297 A.2d 620 (1972), this Court noted that federal decisions do not serve to establish the complete statement of controlling law but rather to delineate a constitutional minimum or universal mandate for the federal control of every State. The relationship between federal and state control is demonstrated clearly by Collins and the preceding Supreme Court decision in Lego v. Twomey, supra. In Lego the United States Supreme Court held on due process grounds that the prosecution must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that a defendant's statement was voluntary in order for it to be admissible. The Supreme Court stated, however: "Of course, the States are free, pursuant to their own law, to adopt a higher standard. They may indeed differ as to the appropriate resolution of the values they find at stake." In Collins this Court exercised its authority and adopted the more stringent standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt to secure more effectively the guarantee of freedom from self-incrimination.

Although Lego and Collins deal with a procedural issue, the same state-federal relationship prevails in determining the substantive content of the privilege against self-incrimination to be applied in the courts of Maine. It must be remembered that the privilege exists in this case by virtue of the Maine Constitution. The Fifth Amendment is a limitation upon the federal government and has no direct reference to state action except to the extent incorporated as a requirement of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The maximum statement of the substantive content of the privilege and the requirements of voluntariness must be decided by this Court--as a matter of Maine law.

Our prior decisions dealing with the term voluntary have not required that we address the latent conceptual ambiguity exposed by this case. In State v. Collins, 297 A.2d at 626, n.5, we explicitly recognized that a statement could be involuntary even where police conduct was exemplary. The holding was premised upon an underlying value broader than the need to deter lawless police conduct:

The constitutional privilege against self-incrimination ... reflects a high priority commitment to the principle that excluded as available to government is any person's testimonial self-condemnation of crime unless such person has acted "voluntarily" i.e., unless he has "waived" his constitutional privilege against self-incrimination by choosing, freely and knowingly, to provide criminal self-condemnation by utterances from his own lips.

Id. at 626 (emphasis added).

Since the Collins decision, most cases presented to this Court have arisen under circumstances involving some form of police conduct or interrogation. See, e.g., State v. Bleyl, Me., 435 A.2d 1349 (1981); State v. Ashe, Me., 425 A.2d 191 (1981); State v. Theriault, Me., 425 A.2d 986 (1981); State v. Catlin, Me., 392 A.2d 27 (1978); State v. Tardiff, Me., 374 A.2d 598 (1977). A case so postured neither generates nor requires an all-inclusive definition of voluntariness. The rarity of cases claiming compulsion in the absence of police conduct undoubtedly accounts for the paucity of Maine law on the subject. In Gladden v. Unsworth, 396 F.2d 373, 380 (9th Cir. 1968) the Ninth Circuit concluded that the same definitional ambiguity under federal case law was occasioned by the same phenomenon:

In these [referring to the U.S. Supreme Court decisions relied upon by the State in the present case] and most other cases where the voluntariness of a confession has been discussed, there has been the element of police interrogation. Where there is such interrogation, the likelihood of finding...