State v. Collins

• Court: Supreme Judicial Court of Maine (US)
• Writing for the Court: Before DUFRESNE; WERNICK; In the decision by this Court in the case of State v. Merrow, supra, the concurring opinion of Webber
• Citation: 297 A.2d 620
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. David Conrad COLLINS.
• Decision Date: 08 December 1972

Page 620

297 A.2d 620 STATE of Maine
v.
David Conrad COLLINS. Supreme Judicial Court of Maine. Dec. 8, 1972.

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Peter T. Dawson, Peter Culley, Asst. Attys. Gen., Augusta, for plaintiff.

Brown & Tibbetts by Francis A. Brown, Calais, William B. Talbot, Machias, for defendant.

Before DUFRESNE, C. J., and WEBBER, WEATHERBEE, POMEROY, WERNICK and ARCHIBALD, JJ.

WERNICK, Justice.

A Superior Court jury (Washington County) found defendant (who had pleaded 'not guilty' and 'not guilty by reason of insanity') guilty of unlawfully killing another human being in manner constituting murder. ¹ His appeal from the judgment of conviction raises several points for decision.

I

Defendant maintains that his motion for a change of venue, grounded on allegedly prejudicial effects of pre-trial newspaper publicity, was erroneously denied.

The ruling of the presiding Justice will be upheld unless there was an abuse of sound discretion. State Hale, 157 Me. 361, 172 A.2d 631 (1961); State v. Bobb, 138 Me. 24, 25 A.2d 229 (1942). With broad freedom constitutionally guaranteed to the press, the evaluation entails a special sensitivity by the Courts to avoid abridgement of the rights of the press and yet to protect defendant's constitutional right to a fair and impartial trial. State v. Coty, Me., 229 A.2d 205 (1967).

Defendant has relied heavily on a claim that the pre-trial publicity described the victim of the alleged crime as a man with a family and defendant as coming from outside of Maine (from Oregon).

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The information was factually correct and reported without distortion. Defendant, therefore, lacks valid basis for complaint since he points only to

"straight news stories rather than invidious articles which would tend to arouse ill will and vindictiveness." State v. Coty, at p. 212, quoting from Beck v. Washington, 369 U.S. 541, 82 S.Ct. 955, 8 L.Ed.2d 98 (1962); Rule 21(a) M.R.Crim.P.

In further support of his position defendant adverts to the quantity of the publicity-that its sheer voluminousness made defendant well-known and easily recognized.

That a defendant already was, or was made by pre-trial publicity, a well-known or readily recognized personage in the county in which he stands charged with crime is insufficient, in itself, to establish that the denial of a change of venue is an abuse of a sound discretion to provide defendant with opportunity for a fair, impartial trial.

Absent here was any showing, most important to indicate incompatibility between the retention of the usual venue and opportunity for a fair trial to the defendant, of a

'Continuous and persistent vehemence and intensity which tends to infect a whole community' State v. Coty, 229 A.2d at p. 212

rendering

'genuine impartiality . . . unattainable.' State v. Coty, at p. 212.

Appearing in the record is the voir dire examination of sixty-six prospective jurors. It confirms that an impartial and unbiased jury was not only attainable but had in fact been selected. ² Thus, the record definitively negatives

'any suggestion that public hostility was an appreciable factor' State v. Coty, at p. 212

to preclude a fair trial to defendant and to establish as an abuse of sound discretion a denial of change of venue.

II

Defendant next argues that the presiding Justice committed error in admitting, and allowing to remain, in evidence a written confession given by defendant to the Maine State police while defendant was in the custody of the Canadian police in Sydney, Nova Scotia.

It is undisputed that the confession had been given after the defendant (1) had in that been told by the Maine State police of his constitutional rights as prescribed by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966) and (2) to all reasonable external appearances had plainly and explicitly waived those rights.

Yet, defendant argues inadmissibility of the confession because (1) he says that he had been advised of his rights by a hasty, mechanical 'going through the motions' recitation from the so-called 'Miranda card', and this precluded an effective understanding by him of his rights and (2) defendant had been incarcerated for a

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week prior to the giving of his confession, a fact which, combined with alleged subjective mental, emotional and other behavioral infirmities of defendant is said to have: (a) rendered defendant legally incompetent effectively to waive the special rights conferred upon him by Miranda or (b) in any event, precluded a 'voluntary' confession as required by federal Fourteenth Amendment 'due process.'

Defendant's claim of a hasty, casual use of the so-called 'Miranda card', ineffectively communicating to defendant the full import of his constitutional rights, is without merit.

The record reveals clearly that defendant was informed of his constitutional rights in a manner neither perfunctory nor contemptuous. After each specification of his rights was stated, the Maine State police scrupulously inquired of defendant whether he understood. He responded affirmatively in each instance and then explicitly waived each one of his various rights. When a stenographer was later brought in so that the confession could be repeated for transcription, the warnings were again given and waived by the defendant.

The manner in which defendant was warned of his constitutional rights, as prescribed by Miranda, was clearly adequate and did not preclude a free and intelligent relinquishment by defendant of those rights.

Defendant had been confined in a jail for a week by the Canadian authorities before a detective of the Maine State police had come to Nova Scotia to talk with him. In themselves the external circumstances of defendant's incarceration cannot be said to have impaired the legal validity of defendant's purported waiver of constitutional rights.

Defendant had managed, without being detected, to cross the border between the United States and Canada, apparently in the vicinity of Montreal. He then chose, entirely of his own volition, to turn himself in to the Royal Canadian Mounted police in Sydney, Nova Scotia-informing them at that time that he was a parole violator from the United States. Thereupon, he was incarcerated in a county jail, an institution run by Canadian personnel charged only with the operation of the jail and having no responsibility for the enforcement of laws other than those relating to county ordinances.

Neither the Royal Canadian Mounted police nor any other agency in Nova Scotia was aware that defendant might have been a murder suspect in the State of Maine-at least during the period prior to the time when the Maine State police first learned of defendant's whereabouts; this was one day before a representative of the Maine State police arrived in Nova Scotia. Moreover, during this one day interval when the Canadian police might have known that defendant was a murder suspect and before the Maine State police had come to Nova Scotia, defendant was not interrogated by the Canadian police. Cf. Westover v. United States, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966) (companion case of Miranda v. Arizona, supra). Nothing suggests that the incarceration of defendant in Nova Scotia had been calculated, or was of a nature likely, to affect defendant's health or powers and thus 'soften up' the defendant; and no external circumstances are indicated to show that the incarceration of defendant had in fact affected his health or functional capacities.

We turn, therefore, to evaluation of the possible impact of any claimed accompanying subjective mental, emotional or other behavioral deficiencies of defendant.

Defendant argues on the basis of the import of the evidence at two distinct times in the trial: first, as the evidence existed when the presiding Justice conducted a preliminary hearing in the absence of the jury and made his determinations of the confession's admissibility; and, second, as the evidence, when completed and as including

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additional testimony adduced during later portions of the trial, might have required that the confession be stricken before the case was submitted to the jury.

We find it unnecessary to make the discrete time separations asserted by defendant. Even if we allow fullest play to defendant's contention, by hypothesizing defendant to have the benefit of the totality of the evidence, we conclude that the presiding Justice ruled correctly in admitting defendant's confession. ³

Review proceeds on the basis that the presiding Justice will be sustained if, in accordance with the correct legal principle specifying the ultimate burden and requisite cogency of proof, the evidence provides rational support for the conclusions he reached. State v. Grover, 96 Me. 363, 365, 366, 52 A. 757 (1902); State v. Priest, 117 Me. 223, 228, 103 A. 359 (1918); State v. Merrow, 161 Me. 111, 120, 208 A.2d 659 (1965); State v. Smith, Me., 277 A.2d 481 (1971).

Hitherto, the law of Maine has failed definitively to designate the bearer of the burden, and the degree of proof necessary, to establish those factors upon which the evidentiary admissibility of a confession depends.

A passing statement in State v. Grover, supra, that at an earlier time

'the courts were ordinarily and properly quite strict in keeping from the jury evidence of confessions when there was any reasonable doubt of their being voluntary' (96 Me. p. 364, 52 A. p. 758) (emphasis supplied)

(because of 'humanitarian' concern for a defendant who could not have counsel and could not testify in his own behalf) might properly be regarded at the time of Grover, when defendant could have counsel and could testify in his own behalf, as a reference to history rather than the statement of a legal principle held currently operative. See also: State v. Priest, 117 Me. 223, 228, 229, 103 A. 359 (1918).

In the more recent expositions in the Maine cases, State v. Merrow, supra; State v. Warner, Me., 237 A.2d 150...