State v. Ladd

• Decision Date: 30 June 1981
• Citation: 431 A.2d 60
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. Frank E. LADD, Jr.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 60

431 A.2d 60

STATE of Maine v. Frank E. LADD, Jr.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued March 3, 1981.

Decided June 30, 1981.

Janet Mills, Dist. Atty., John C. Sheldon (orally), Asst. Dist. Atty., Farmington, for plaintiff.

Christopher S. Beach (orally), Wilton, for defendant.

Before McKUSICK, C. J., and WERNICK, GODFREY, NICHOLS, GLASSMAN, ^* and CARTER, JJ.

McKUSICK, Chief Justice.

A Superior Court jury in Franklin County found defendant Ladd guilty of committing arson, 17-A M.R.S.A. § 802 (Supp.1980), at the Magno apartment building in Farmington on February 9, 1980. At trial the principal evidence against defendant consisted of a confession he gave five days after the fire during interrogation at the Farmington police station. On appeal he contends that his confession should not have been admitted in evidence because, he claims, it was obtained in violation of his Miranda ¹ right to cut off police interrogation and also it was the fruit of an invalid arrest warrant. We reject both claims and accordingly affirm the judgment of conviction entered on the jury verdict.

I.

At the outset we can narrow the Miranda issue that is in dispute before this court. At all times defendant has conceded that he received proper Miranda warnings before any police interrogation that resulted in his confession. For its part the State does not now make any contest over the custodial nature of defendant's interrogation by the police. The parties are, however, in sharp dispute over whether the two officers whose questioning led up to the critical confession "scrupulously honored" Ladd's right to cut off questioning.

As the Supreme Court of the United States stated in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 at 473-74, 86 S.Ct. at 1627 (1966):

Once warnings have been given, the subsequent procedure is clear. If the individual indicates in any manner, at any time prior to or during questioning, that he wishes to remain silent, the interrogation must cease. At this point he has shown that he intends to exercise his Fifth Amendment privilege; any statement taken after the person invokes his privilege cannot be other than the product of compulsion, subtle or otherwise. Without the right to cut off questioning, the setting of in-custody interrogation operates on the individual to overcome free choice in producing a statement after the privilege has been once invoked.

The propriety of continued police interrogation after a suspect has asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege was clarified by Michigan v. Mosley, 423 U.S. 96, 104, 96 S.Ct. 321, 326, 46 L.Ed.2d 313 (1975). There the Court held "that the admissibility of statements obtained after the person in custody has decided to remain silent depends under Miranda on whether his 'right to cut off questioning' was 'scrupulously honored'." Under our Maine rule the State bears the burden of proving the facts necessary for admissibility beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Stone, Me., 397 A.2d 989, 995 (1979); State v. Capitan, Me., 363 A.2d 221, 222 (1976). Only by imposing this strict standard on the State can the justice hearing the suppression motion

thereby the better 'insulate his mind' from a confession's inherent surface tendency to project a

'near certainty of guilt and make a dispassionate judgment ...'

concerning operation of the factors whether they be the special prophylactic requirements of Miranda v. Arizona or the traditional generalized due process 'voluntariness' upon which the evidentiary admissibility of an extra-judicial confession depends.

State v. Collins, Me., 297 A.2d 620, 627 (1972) citing and quoting State v. Merrow, 161 Me. 111, 122, 208 A.2d 659, 664 (1965) (Webber, J., concurring).

In the case at bar, after a full hearing on defendant's pretrial motion to suppress his confession to the Magno arson, as well as confessions to three previous arsons, the Superior Court found that the state has established beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant's confessions to the four crimes were knowingly and voluntarily made and that the state has in all other respects met the requisite burden for the admissibility of defendant's statements.

That compendious finding includes, we must assume, a finding beyond a reasonable doubt that the officers did scrupulously honor Ladd's right to cut off questioning, see State v. Broucher, Me., 388 A.2d 907, 909 (1978), and we must sustain that finding if the record furnishes "rational support for the conclusions reached," see State v. Stone, supra at 995. The record does contain that necessary support.

The Magno apartment building arson was investigated by State Police Detective Emery and Farmington Police Sergeant Wilcox. After completing their initial investigation, upon the basis of which they obtained a warrant for defendant's arrest, ² the officers on February 14, 1980, sought out defendant at his place of employment. Upon meeting defendant, the officers did not execute the arrest warrant or even tell him of it. Rather, they asked him if he would be willing to talk with them about the Magno fire. Defendant agreed and went voluntarily with them to the Farmington police station.

At the station defendant, after receiving the Miranda warning, agreed to being questioned without having an attorney present. Although Sergeant Wilcox remained in the room throughout the interrogation, Detective Emery conducted the initial questioning and tape-recorded the exchange. After about an hour the discussion between defendant and Detective Emery became heated, and defendant told Emery, "I got no more questions. I'm not going to answer anything." And he added, "Because I ain't done nothing." Thereupon, Detective Emery told Sergeant Wilcox to serve defendant with the arrest warrant and angrily left the room, turning off the tape recorder as he went. Although Sergeant Wilcox did not then execute the warrant, he did stay in the room with defendant.

Wilcox, who, unlike Detective Emery, had known defendant for some ten years, then asked defendant, "Do you want to talk to me anymore alone?" In response, defendant said that "he needed help with an alcohol problem" and "that the alcohol had gotten to him and the only time he'd do anything like this is when he was under the influence." It was during this discussion of defendant's alcohol problem that he confessed to the Magno arson and gave Wilcox the Bic cigarette lighter he had used to set the fire. Sergeant Wilcox then put defendant under arrest and took him to the Franklin County jail for booking. The entire episode at the Farmington police station, starting at about 5:00 p. m., covered a couple of hours. He confessed to the three other unrelated arsons the following day at the Franklin County sheriff's office. Those other confessions are not here in issue.

Whether in the circumstances defendant's statement to Detective Emery:

I got no more questions. I'm not going to answer anything. Because I ain't done nothing.

was ambiguous, thereby entitling Sergeant Wilcox to make limited inquiry solely for clarification, was a question of fact to be resolved by the Superior Court justice who heard all the testimony. On appeal the Law Court's function is a limited one, namely, solely a review function of determining whether the justice below could on this record, considering the extensive oral testimony given by all three participants, rationally have found as a fact beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant's statement was ambiguous. See State v. Smith, Me., 415 A.2d 553, 558 (1980). We conclude that he could.

The justice was warranted in finding that, in the context in which defendant made his statement, ambiguity existed in at least one critical respect. Even if his statement amounted to something more than an assertion of innocence or an impatient protest against Emery's questioning, cf. Fare v. Michael C., 442 U.S. 707, 727, 99 S.Ct. 2560, 2573, 61 L.Ed.2d 197 (1979), defendant left it unclear whether he was refusing to answer further questions from either officer or only from Detective Emery, who up to that time had alone questioned him. At the suppression hearing, Sergeant Wilcox testified that defendant "gets upset easily" and that he, Wilcox, understood defendant's statement to be an angry outburst against Detective Emery whose questioning had annoyed him. In any event, on this evidence the Superior Court justice acted rationally in concluding that defendant's statement was not unambiguous. In face of that finding of ambiguity Sergeant Wilcox cannot be faulted for asking a single, specifically directed question to determine Ladd's desires. All Wilcox did was to ask that one clarifying question, "Do you want to talk to me anymore alone?" Ladd responded affirmatively by himself opening up the conversation in regard to his alcoholism problem.

An all-important distinction must here be drawn

between on the one hand, an inquiry for the limited purpose of clarifying whether the defendant is invoking his right to remain silent or has changed his mind regarding an earlier assertion of the right and, on the other hand, questioning aimed at eliciting incriminating statements concerning the very subject on which the defendant has invoked his right.

United States v. Lopez-Diaz, 630 F.2d 661, 665 (9th Cir. 1980). Cf. Nash v. Estelle, 597 F.2d 513, 517-18 (5th Cir. 1979); Vail v. State, Alaska, 599 P.2d 1371, 1378-79 (1979). The record before the justice amply supported his finding beyond a reasonable doubt that Wilcox's inquiry was calculated innocently to clarify defendant's statement, rather than improperly "to persuade (defendant) to reconsider his position," Michigan v. Mosley, supra 423 U.S. at 104, 96 S.Ct. at 326, or otherwise to infringe upon his right to silence.

On its face the successive questioning by Detective Emery and Sergeant Wilcox does have some of the appearance of the "rough guy-nice guy" interrogation technique. ³ See White, Police Trickery in Inducing Confessions, 127...