State v. Laurie

• Decision Date: 16 April 1992
• Docket Number: No. 90-324,90-324
• Citation: 135 N.H. 438,606 A.2d 1077
• Parties: The STATE of New Hampshire v. Carl LAURIE.
• Court: New Hampshire Supreme Court

Page 1077

606 A.2d 1077

135 N.H. 438

The STATE of New Hampshire v. Carl LAURIE.

No. 90-324.

Supreme Court of New Hampshire.

April 16, 1992.

John P. Arnold, Atty. Gen. (Diane M. Nicolosi, Asst. Atty. Gen., on the brief and orally), for the State.

W. Kirk Abbott, Jr., Asst. Appellate Defender, Concord, on the brief and orally, for defendant.

JOHNSON, Justice.

The defendant, Carl Laurie, was convicted of first degree murder. On appeal, he argues that the Trial Court (Manias, J.) improperly admitted his confession to the police into evidence. We affirm.

The trial court order established the following facts. On April 21, 1989, the body of Lucien Fogg was found in the woods near his Franklin home. Mr. Fogg had been beaten and stabbed to death several days earlier. On April 22, 1989, the defendant was interviewed by two Franklin police officers regarding the murder. He denied any involvement.

On April 26, 1989, a Franklin police officer and a State police officer interviewed the defendant for a second time at the Franklin police station. The officers informed the defendant of his Miranda rights. The defendant indicated that he understood his rights, signed a waiver form, and agreed to talk. The interview began at 5:34 p.m. The defendant maintained his innocence throughout the interview and asked to be taken home at approximately 12:08 a.m. At that time, all further questioning ceased. The defendant, however, was arrested on an unrelated outstanding bench warrant and transferred to the county jail at approximately 1:00 a.m.

On the following morning of April 27, 1989, the defendant, after sleeping for approximately three hours, was arraigned at the Franklin District Court for the outstanding charges and taken to the booking room. At the booking room, the Franklin Police Chief, Douglas Boyd, approached the defendant and asked him how he was feeling. The defendant responded that he had eaten a good breakfast and felt well. Chief Boyd then asked the defendant if he would answer further questions regarding the Fogg murder. Although Chief Boyd informed the defendant that he could decline to be interviewed further, the defendant agreed to be questioned in the chief's office. This third interview got underway at approximately 1:06 p.m. Once again, the defendant signed a written waiver of his Miranda rights. Approximately 1 1/2 hours later, he confessed to murdering Lucien Fogg. This confession was used against the defendant at trial.

The defendant raises two issues on appeal. First, he claims that his confession of April 27 was inadmissible at trial because it was attained after he expressed his desire to remain silent at the two prior interviews. Second, the defendant claims that his confession was involuntary and thereby violated his due process rights. For the reasons that follow, we affirm the trial court's findings to the contrary.

In Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), the Supreme Court held that if an accused in police custody "indicates in any manner, at any time prior to or during questioning, that he wishes to remain silent, the interrogation must cease." Id. at 473-74, 86 S.Ct. at 1627. The Court reasoned that "[w]ithout 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." Id. at 474, 86 S.Ct. at 1628.

In a later case, Michigan v. Mosley, 423 U.S. 96, 96 S.Ct. 321, 46 L.Ed.2d 313 (1975), the Supreme Court recognized that although Miranda clearly indicated that "the interrogation must cease" when a defendant invokes his right to remain silent, it did not address the circumstances under which interrogation may be resumed. The Mosley Court rejected the view that a defendant's expression of his desire to remain silent created a per se prohibition on all future questioning. It explained:

"[A] blanket prohibition against the taking of voluntary statements or a permanent immunity from further interrogation, regardless of the circumstances, would transform the Miranda safeguards into wholly irrational obstacles to legitimate police investigative activity, and deprive suspects of an opportunity to make informed and intelligent assessments of their interests. Clearly, therefore, neither this passage nor any other passage in the Miranda opinion can sensibly be read to create a per se proscription of indefinite duration upon any further questioning by any police officer on any subject, once the person in custody has indicated a desire to remain silent.

A reasonable and faithful interpretation of the Miranda opinion must rest on the intention of the Court in that case to adopt 'fully effective means ... to notify the person of his right of silence and to assure that the exercise of the right will be scrupulously honored....' The critical safeguard identified in the passage at issue is a person's 'right to cut off questioning.' Through the exercise of his option to terminate questioning he can control the time at which questioning occurs, the subjects discussed, and the duration of the interrogation. The requirement that law enforcement authorities must respect a person's exercise of that option counteracts the coercive pressures of the custodial setting. We therefore conclude 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.' "

Id. 423 U.S. at 102-04, 96 S.Ct. at 326 (citations omitted).

We held in State v. Phinney, 117 N.H. 145, 370 A.2d 1153 (1977), that a confession is a special type of evidence, the voluntariness of which must be determined beyond a reasonable doubt under the State Constitution. It follows that since both federal and State constitutional protections were raised, our analysis of the validity of confessions, including any Miranda prerequisites, is a matter of State constitutional law in the first instance.

As a preliminary matter, we must determine whether Mosley's "scrupulously honored" standard adequately protects a defendant's privilege against self-incrimination under part I, article 15 of the New Hampshire Constitution. State v. Ball, 124 N.H. 226, 231-32, 471 A.2d 347, 350-51 (1983); see also Mosley, 423 U.S. at 120, 96 S.Ct. at 334 (Brennan, J., dissenting) (Justice Brennan invites state courts to "impose higher standards" under state law). We agree with the Mosley Court's analysis of Miranda, quoted above, and conclude that whenever a suspect in custody exercises his option to cut off questioning, the police must scrupulously honor the suspect's desire to remain silent.

We now turn to the question of whether the officers who conducted the April 27 interview scrupulously honored the defendant's right to cut off questioning. In Mosley, the Court determined that the defendant's rights were scrupulously honored because the following four factors existed: (1) the police "immediately ceased the interrogation"; (2) the police did not resume questioning until "the passage of a significant period of time"; (3) the police provided a "fresh set of [Miranda ] warnings"; and (4) the police "restricted the second interrogation to a crime that had not been the subject of the earlier interrogation." Mosley, supra, 423 U.S. at 106, 96 S.Ct. at 327. Unfortunately, the Court "did not indicate which, if any, of the factors present in Mosley are essential to satisfy the [scrupulously honored] standard." Geoffrey R. Stone, The Miranda Doctrine in the Burger Court, 1977 Sup.Ct.Rev. 99, 134.

The defendant correctly notes that because the April 27 interview involved the same crime as the first and second interviews, the fourth Mosley factor was not met. Thus, he argues, the April 27 confession automatically violated Mosley. We disagree. "Far from laying down inflexible constraints on police questioning and individual choice, Mosley envisioned an inquiry into all of the relevant facts to determine whether the suspect's rights have been respected." United States v. Hsu, 852 F.2d 407, 410 (9th Cir.1988). Accordingly, numerous federal courts have expressly found that confessions made in response to reinterrogation involving the same crime as a prior interrogation are not per se unconstitutional. See, e.g., Kelly v. Lynaugh, 862 F.2d 1126, 1131 (5th Cir.1988), cert. denied, 492 U.S. 925, 109 S.Ct. 3263, 106 L.Ed.2d 608 (1989); Hsu, supra at 410-11; United States v. Udey, 748 F.2d 1231, 1242 (8th Cir.1984), cert. denied, 472 U.S. 1017, 105 S.Ct. 3477, 3478, 87 L.Ed.2d 613 (1985). We find that although the fourth Mosley factor should be given considerable weight in the "scrupulously honored" analysis, see State v. Hartwig, 123 Wis.2d 278, 287, 366 N.W.2d 866, 871 (1985), its absence does not automatically prohibit a finding that the police scrupulously honored a defendant's desire to remain silent. However, we do not preclude the possibility that the first, second, or third factors (all of which were met in this case) may be deemed indispensable to the Mosley analysis in the future. The New Jersey Supreme Court, for example, has written persuasively that a fresh set of Miranda warnings is indispensable to a finding that a defendant's right to cut off questioning was scrupulously honored. See State v. Hartley, 103 N.J. 252, 267, 511 A.2d 80, 87-88 (1986).

We now turn to the defendant's argument that even if subsequent interrogation regarding the same crime may sometimes be permitted under Mosley, the trial court nonetheless erred in finding that the police scrupulously honored the defendant's request to remain silent. The trial court's determinations with regard to this matter will be upheld "unless, when viewed in the light most favorable to the State, the decision is contrary to the manifest weight of the evidence." State v. Gravel, 135 N.H. 172, ---, 601 A.2d 678, 680 (1991).

In a...