State v. Cotton
| Decision Date | 13 December 1976 |
| Docket Number | No. 58196--A,58196--A |
| Citation | 341 So.2d 355 |
| Parties | STATE of Louisiana v. Joseph COTTON. |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
Frank J. Gremillion, Hynes & Gremillion, Baton Rouge, for defendant-appellant.
William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Barbara Rutledge, Asst. Atty. Gen., Ossie Brown, Dist. Atty., Warren J. Hebert, Asst. Dist. Atty., for plaintiff-appellee.
By bill of indictment filed April 17, 1974 Joseph Cotton was charged with the February 22, 1974 armed robbery of Charles David. After trial by jury Cotton was convicted of simple robbery and sentenced to five years at hard labor. One assignment of error is urged by Cotton on this appeal.
Some familiarity with the circumstances of the offense giving rise to this prosecution will facilitate an understanding of the issues presented by the defense. These facts are essentially agreed upon:
About six o'clock on the evening of February 22, 1974 Charles David, Pierre W. Brignac and Arthur C. Brister arrived at Brister's place of business, a used car lot on Scenic Highway in East Baton Rouge Parish. Brister approached a mobile home used by him as an office and, upon observing its condition, called to David and Brignac something to the effect that the place had been ransacked. About this time a tall black man later identified as Paul Smith burst through the door and shot and killed Brister. Immediately thereafter two more men emerged from the trailer and ran off some distance. Smith then robbed David and fled the scene.
Cotton was arrested early on the morning of February 26, 1974 and transported directly to the sheriff's office. Upon his arrival he was advised of his Miranda rights by Detective Sergeant Fluker of the sheriff's department, who had the rights read to Cotton by Sergeant Gerald. Cotton also read the rights form and signed it. Although he would not make a statement at that time, he did deny knowledge of the robbery and killing.
In the late afternoon of the same day Cotton was placed in a lineup held to determine whether he could be identified by David and Brignac, the two surviving victims. Prior to the lineup, the trial judge appointed counsel to represent Cotton at the lineup. This attorney did attend and assisted in the selection of inmates of the jail to stand with Cotton. The Assistant District Attorney who tried this case was also present at the lineup. He was aware that counsel had been appointed to represent Cotton. No one identified Cotton at the lineup.
After the lineup Cotton was interviewed by his appointed counsel in a small room nearby. As the lawyer left he admonished Cotton not to make any statements. He was overheard by Sergeant Robinson of the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office who was nearby in the hall. Robinson was in charge of the investigation of the crime for which Cotton had been arrested. When his lawyer departed, Cotton was placed in a large room known as the 'drunk tank'. Sergeant Robinson then resumed his occupation with other matters.
Sometime shortly thereafter, Ralph Stassi, a detective with the Iberville Parish Sheriff's Office, sought permission from Sergeant Robinson to speak to Cotton in connection with an investigation Stassi was conducting of a burglary in Iberville Parish involving Paul Smith, a matter unrelated to the offense with which Cotton was charged. Stassi's interest was to ascertain the whereabouts of Smith but when Cotton was unable to furnish the information Stassi discontinued the interview.
After a while Cotton told a jail deputy he wanted to speak to Robinson. Because he was occupied with other matters, and realized Cotton had been admonished not to speak to anyone, Robinson at first disregarded the request. When Cotton continued to send word, perhaps three times in all, Robinson finally joined Cotton in a small interview room. There Robinson told him he wouldn't talk to him until he received the Miranda warnings, and waived his rights.
Robinson thereupon carefully explained each of the Miranda warnings contained on a waiver of rights form to Cotton in the presence of Detective Stassi, who had been called into the interview room to witness the conversation. Cotton acknowledged that he understood his rights and signed the waiver form also signed by Robinson and Stassi as witnesses.
When the signing had been accomplished, the first thing Cotton wanted to know was whether he had been picked out of the lineup. Robinson told him 'that two people had said they saw him on the lot that day.' Then, according to Robinson, who made notes of the interview, Cotton, to make it perfectly clear that he didn't have anything to do with the actual shooting of Brister, outlined the details of the robbery and killing on February 22, referred to briefly in the beginning of this opinion. The interview was of short duration. It consisted mainly of narration by Cotton with occasional questions by Robinson. At no time during the interview did Cotton ask for his attorney or seek permission to call him, nor did he ask to terminate the interview.
As Robinson left the interview room at the end of the interview, he encountered the Assistant District Attorney who was drinking coffee in the hall. Having been assigned to the case, the attorney was there for the purpose of acquainting himself generally with the progress of the investigation. It was the practice of that office for the attorney assigned to the case to keep in touch with the investigation if it involved a capital crime. When he asked Robinson if he had obtained a statement, Robinson replied that he had. With this information the Assistant District Attorney went into the interview room with Robinson's notes, read them to Cotton, and Cotton verified their correctness. At one point in the reading Cotton made a correction in the price of a handgun he had used on February 22 and later sold. Before being returned to the lockup, Cotton was permitted to use a telephone to ask his mother to retrieve the gun he had sold.
At the trial, on motion of the State, the jury was removed and an extended hearing was conducted to obtain a ruling on the admissibility of the exculpatory and inculpatory statement obtained by Robinson from Cotton. At the hearing the facts outlined. above were established.
When Cotton took the stand on the predicate, outside the presence of the jury, he acknowledged that the waiver of rights form had been read to him twice on February 26; once shortly after his arrest as soon as he arrived at the Sheriff's Office and again immediately prior to the statement given to Sergeant Robinson. He also admitted that he had signed the waivers on both occasions.
When Cotton had been interrogated by both counsel, the trial judge devoted 45 minutes to a meticulous and indepth interrogation of Cotton to determine whether he understood, and knowingly and intelligently waived, his right to the presence of counsel and the other Miranda rights.
In his ruling the trial judge held that the confession was knowingly and voluntarily made, and, under the totality of the circumstances, Cotton's statement was a free and voluntary act on his part. He said, 'I have absolutely no difficulty with the question whether or not Mr. Cotton understood what his rights were, (or) whether or not he knowingly and intelligently waived them.' The judge continued The trial judge took into consideration that Cotton was a youth with a ninth grade education, finding him to be articulate and intelligent and not overly affected by the presence of police or his incarceration.
The defense contention was that Sergeant Robinson, though not in bad faith, unintentionally tricked Cotton into making a statement by telling him that someone had identified him at the lineup as a person present on the car lot at the time of the offense. The effect of this, according to the defense, was to induce Cotton to make a statement to exculpate himself of the actual shooting and, at the same time, unknowingly inculpate himself as a participant in the robbery and murder.
In considering this contention, the trial judge reasoned that, while ethical considerations may have been involved when Robinson took the statement knowing that Cotton had been admonished by his appointed attorney not to make any statement, ethical considerations, when balanced against the rights of society, should not militate against the admissibility of the statement if all other factors bearing upon the voluntary nature of the confession were present as they were in this case.
While the trial judge observed that the conduct of Sergeant Robinson may be considered reprehensible according to standards of lawyers and judges, he did not find that it was overly reprehensible in the case of the Sergeant and Detective Stassi, especially since all concede that Robinson's statement to Cotton was, in Robinson's opinion, correct and was not made in bad faith. It was the trial judge's understanding that the general tenor of the cases he had studied supported the conclusion that though an accused has counsel, this does not have the effect of hamstringing the police in their search for the facts if the accused wants to talk to them. In the judge's opinion, the accused is not bound by the admonition of his counsel not to talk. He remains free to choose to follow or not follow his counsel's advice.
There are some subtle coercive influences in any statement obtained from an accused, the trial judge observed. Examples are the effects of arrest and incarceration; these are coercive influences which do not invalidate the voluntary nature of a confession. So, too, Sergeant Robinson's mistaken belief that Cotton had been identified at the lineup may have misled Cotton. But Robinson's statement was not made in bad faith or to mislead Cotton. There was no design to trick.
No confession shall be used against any person accused of crime unless freely and...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
State v. Ruth
...915, 97 S.Ct. 2988, 53 L.Ed.2d 1101 (1977); Shreeves v. United States, supra; State v. Yatman, 320 So.2d 401 (Fla.App.1975); State v. Cotton, 341 So.2d 355 (La.1977); Watson v. State, 282 Md. 73, 382 A.2d 574 (1978), cert. denied 437 U.S. 908, 98 S.Ct. 3100, 57 L.Ed.2d 1140 (1978); People v......
-
State v. Harper
......Siegel, 366 So.2d 1358 at 1360, (La.1978), quoting State v. Cotton, 341 So.2d 355 at 359 (La.1977). A defendant may waive his sixth amendment right to legal representation when the government interrogates him after the commencement of adversarial proceedings, but "it is incumbent upon the [prosecution] to prove an intentional relinquishment of a known right or ......
-
State v. Hattaway
...arose under the 1921 Louisiana constitution and, therefore, were not governed by our current state constitution. See, e.g., State v. Cotton, 341 So.2d 355 (La.1977); State v. Lawrence, 294 So.2d 476 (La.1974); State v. Taylor, 347 So.2d 172 (La.1977); State v. Johnson, 327 So.2d 388 (La.197......
-
State v. West
......Thucos, supra, at 1285. . The defendant had been admonished by counsel not to make any statements in State v. Cotton, 341 So.2d 355 (La.1977). The police were aware of counsel's advice. The defendant initiated conversation with the officer and signed a rights waiver form. The statements were admissible because the defendant waived his right to counsel in making them. . Page 1121 . State v. ......