State v. Lambert

• Decision Date: 22 December 1997
• Docket Number: No. 96-487-C,96-487-C
• Citation: 705 A.2d 957
• Parties: STATE v. Michael LAMBERT. A.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

Page 957

705 A.2d 957

STATE v. Michael LAMBERT.

No. 96-487-C.A.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

Dec. 22, 1997.

Annie Goldberg and Aaron Weisman, Assistant Attorneys General, for Plaintiff.

Paula Rosin, Janice Weisfeld, Assistant Public Defenders, Mark Smith, for Defendant.

Before WEISBERGER, C.J., and LEDERBERG, BOURCIER, FLANDERS and GOLDBERG, JJ.

OPINION

LEDERBERG, Justice.

This case came before the Supreme Court on the appeal of the defendant, Michael Lambert (Lambert or defendant), from a judgment of conviction of murder in the second degree and of committing a crime of violence while armed with a firearm. For the following reasons, we sustain the convictions. A summary of the facts pertinent to this appeal follows.

Facts and Procedural History

At about 6:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1994, Lambert, two months before turning eighteen, and William Page (Page), aged eighteen, were walking in downtown Providence near the I-95 on-ramp at Francis Street. Lambert was throwing rocks as the pair approached the train tracks that run under the overpass. Sylvester Gardiner (Gardiner), a homeless man who was living under the highway, apparently shouted at the teenagers, and a confrontation between Gardiner and the youths ensued. Lambert testified at trial that Page approached Gardiner and pulled out a BB gun that looked like a bullet-firing pistol. Lambert further testified that after having forced Gardiner to lie on the ground, Page directed Lambert to find a rope with which Page then hog-tied the victim. Although acknowledging that the gun actually belonged to him rather than Page, Lambert claimed that he was unaware that Page had it with him that night. Page's statements to the police about what transpired that night differed significantly from Lambert's, but it is undisputed that Gardiner was the victim of a savage and brutal beating that resulted in his death. In their statements to the police both youths admitted delivering at least some of the blows that fell upon Gardiner. These statements were later introduced as evidence in their separate trials. Gardiner's body was found by the police on the morning of Saturday, November 26, 1994, after they had been led to the scene of the crime by one Harry Smiley, a homeless man who knew both Page and Lambert from the streets.

The same day that Gardiner's body was found, Major Stephen McCartney (McCartney) of the Providence police department, patrolled the Smith Hill area of Providence with photographs of the two suspects. At approximately 11:30 p.m., McCartney apprehended Page and Lambert as they were walking in that vicinity. The police had been given their names in connection with Gardiner's murder by several other young people who lived downtown. McCartney testified at trial that upon apprehending the pair, he asked Lambert and Page to identify themselves but did not question them further. At the time, Lambert told McCartney that he was "Michael Nickerson," although he later identified himself with his correct name at the police station, where the two suspects were held separately before Lambert was transferred to the Juvenile Bureau.

At the police station Lambert was questioned by Detective James Allen (Allen) in the early morning hours of November 27, 1994. Allen knew that Lambert was a juvenile and asked Lambert about contacting his mother or father. Lambert responded that he had not been in touch with his parents for several years and that he did not know how to reach them. Lambert did tell the detective that he was a ward of the Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), that he was supposed to be living at a nearby group home but had run away, and that he had a social worker from DCYF named Jennifer Harrison. The police made no effort to notify either DCYF or the group home that Lambert was in police custody.

Allen and Detective Niko Katsetos (Katsetos) had Lambert read a form that stated his Miranda rights. The form was reviewed with Lambert, who then signed it after initialing each right to indicate his comprehension thereof. Lambert then proceeded to give the police a statement that implicated both himself and Page in the beating of Gardiner.

On March 3, 1995, Lambert and Page were charged by indictment with the murder of Gardiner. Lambert's pretrial motion to suppress his statement to the police was denied by the trial justice. His trial in January 1996 resulted in a jury verdict of second-degree murder and of committing a crime of violence while armed. Lambert's motion for a new trial was heard and denied on February 1, 1996, and on April 4, 1996, the trial justice sentenced Lambert to a term of life imprisonment on the murder count and an additional ten-year sentence, to run consecutively, on the count of committing a crime of violence while armed with a firearm.

Lambert filed a timely notice of appeal with this Court in which he cited four errors: (1) his statement to the police should have been suppressed because he did not knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently waive his rights to counsel and against self-incrimination; (2) the trial justice improperly allowed a witness to testify at the trial regarding certain out-of-court statements made by Page; (3) the trial justice erred in instructing the jury on the law of aiding and abetting; and (4) the trial justice erred in refusing to instruct the jury on the legal relevance of admitted evidence about Lambert's "good character." Additional facts will be provided as necessary in discussing the issues raised by this appeal.

Validity of Waiver of Miranda Rights

The defendant argued that the trial justice committed reversible error by denying his motion to suppress the statement that he gave to the police. Specifically, defendant claimed that he had not knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily waived his right to counsel and his right against self-incrimination because he "did not understand the consequences of speaking freely to the police * * * [and because the police] made no attempt to contact an adult interested in the well being of [defendant] before interrogating him about the murder." In addition, defendant averred, the waiver of his Miranda rights was deficient because he "was never told that he could be tried in adult court and sentenced to a term of life imprisonment." Moreover, he continued, his subsequent statement to the police was involuntary because it was the product of "coercive police activity." We disagree with defendant's contentions.

It is well settled that "the validity of a juvenile's waiver of his or her rights should be evaluated in light of the totality of the circumstances surrounding that waiver." State v. Campbell, 691 A.2d 564, 567 (R.I.1997) (quoting In re Kean, 520 A.2d 1271, 1276 (R.I.1987)). Such an evaluation conforms to the directive of the Supreme Court of the United States in Fare v. Michael C., 442 U.S. 707, 725, 99 S.Ct. 2560, 2572, 61 L.Ed.2d 197, 212 (1979). As we have observed,

"[T]he totality-of-the-circumstances test requires consideration of all of the circumstances surrounding the interrogation of a juvenile suspect, including the juvenile's age, experience, education, and intelligence, his or her capacity to understand the Miranda warnings and the consequences of waiver, and the presence of a parent, a guardian, or an interested adult." Campbell, 691 A.2d at 567 (citing In re Kean, 520 A.2d at 1274-75).

It is undisputed that Allen did not attempt to contact either defendant's parents or a DCYF social worker, whose name had been furnished to the police by defendant. It is further undisputed that defendant was not informed that he could be tried as an adult and sentenced to a term of life imprisonment. We have held, however, that the absence of a parent, a guardian, or an interested adult at the time of waiver does not, alone, render the waiver constitutionally infirm, In re Kean, 520 A.2d at 1276, inasmuch as a juvenile has no constitutional right to have an adult present at an interrogation. Fare, 442 U.S. at 725-26, 99 S.Ct. at 2572, 61 L.Ed.2d at 213. Therefore, in the absence of a statutorily imposed affirmative duty on police officials to locate a parent, guardian, or interested adult prior to advising a juvenile in custody of his or her rights and taking a statement from that juvenile, the police are under no obligation to do so. We decline defendant's invitation to impose such an obligation judicially and adhere to the view that, in the context of juvenile waivers, "[w]e are not prepared to place further requirements upon police officers beyond those suggested by the Supreme Court of the United States [in Fare ]." In re Frances J., 456 A.2d 1174, 1176 (R.I.1983).

Moreover, we have held that the failure to inform a juvenile defendant that he or she may be prosecuted as an adult is not dispositive of the constitutionality of the subsequent waiver of his or her rights to remain silent and to have counsel present during interrogation. Campbell, 691 A.2d at 569. Rather, we examine the circumstances in their entirety as they existed at the time of the defendant's waiver and statement to the police. In this case, the record disclosed that at the time of his arrest, defendant was within two months of his eighteenth birthday and was, according to his own testimony, "on the run" from a DCYF group home. The defendant had completed the eighth grade. Prior to Gardiner's murder, defendant had appeared before the Rhode Island Family Court on various charges on about four or five occasions and each time had been represented by the same attorney from the Office of the Public Defender. Approximately four months prior to his arrest for the murder of Gardiner, defendant had pleaded guilty in a Connecticut court to a charge of third-degree burglary and, having been charged as an adult, received a suspended sentence of three years with three years' probation.

Prior to taking a statement from defendant, Allen testified that he...