State v. McKee, 05-199.
| Decision Date | 10 January 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. 05-199.,05-199. |
| Parties | STATE of Montana, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Daniel N. McKEE, Defendant and Appellant. |
| Court | Montana Supreme Court |
For Appellant: Michael J. Sherwood, Michael J. Sherwood P.C., Missoula, Montana.
For Respondent: Honorable Mike McGrath, Attorney General; John Paulson, Assistant Attorney General, Helena, Montana, Fred Van Valkenburg, County Attorney; Suzy Boylan-Moore, Deputy County Attorney, Missoula, Montana.
¶ 1 On February 22, 2005, subsequent to a plea of guilty, the District Court sentenced sixteen-year-old Danny McKee to ten years with the Department of Corrections, with five years suspended, on three counts of Assault with a Weapon, a felony, as specified in § 45-5-213, MCA. The convictions are to run concurrently. McKee appeals from the court's judgment. We affirm in part and reverse in part.
¶ 2 We restate the issues as follows:
¶ 3 1. Did the District Court err when it denied McKee's motion to dismiss the information?
¶ 4 2. Did the District Court err when it denied McKee's motion to suppress admissions he made prior to the time law enforcement contacted his parents?
¶ 5 3. Did the District Court err when it denied McKee's motion to suppress his admission made at the scene of the investigatory stop?
¶ 6 On the evening of February 4, 2004, officers responded to a report that a female bicyclist had been hit in the head by a blunt object as she rode home on River Road in Missoula, Montana. The victim explained that she had been riding her bicycle home from work when a car approached from behind and the passenger in the front seat struck her head with what she described as a shovel or a bat, knocking her to the ground. The victim, who was wearing a helmet, suffered a concussion. The victim told the police that she did not see who did it, but knew the assailants were in a blue car.
¶ 7 Shortly thereafter, law enforcement received a report of a male bicyclist who had been riding in an alley north of Eighth Street when a blue car pulled up slowly behind him. He felt a blunt object, which he believed might be a bat, narrowly miss striking him, just grazing the hat on his head. The victim saw the person who struck him hanging out the passenger car window. The victim also reported that had the bat not narrowly missed hitting him, he could have been seriously injured.
¶ 8 A third victim called the police that same day, reporting that he had been threatened by two juveniles at the Holiday Store at Russell and Third Streets. He reported that two males had asked him to buy them beer, to which he responded in the negative. The man went inside to tell the store staff, and as he exited, the two juveniles were sitting in a blue car; the passenger told him, "You're a dead man." A few minutes later the youths came up behind the man in their vehicle and the passenger swung a bat at him several times. The victim had to repeatedly dodge the bat to keep from getting hit.
¶ 9 Officer Ken Guy responded to the area and located a vehicle matching the description, with two males inside. Noting an inoperative rear tail light, Officer Guy turned his patrol car around to stop the car, at which point the vehicle sped off. Officer Guy followed the car for several blocks and because of snow tracks was able to locate where it had been driven into an alley, over a curb, and into a yard. Officer Guy arrived just as two males exited a blue Ford Tempo; he ordered the juveniles to stop and stand facing the side of a nearby garage while he called for backup. The assailants identified themselves as Jacob Elam and defendant, Daniel McKee, fifteen and sixteen-years-old, respectively.
¶ 10 At the evidentiary hearing, Officer Hoffman testified that upon arriving at the scene, he approached McKee and directed him to walk with him a distance from Elam and asked him what they had been doing that night. In talking with McKee, Officer Hoffman stated that a woman had reportedly been hit by a baseball bat or some blunt instrument and knocked off her bike by two males in a blue car. Officer Hoffman further advised McKee that he, Elam and their vehicle matched the reported description. McKee responded by stating: "I only hit one of them." Officer Hoffman inquired as to whether McKee's response meant that Elam had hit others, to which McKee did not respond. At the evidentiary hearing, Officer Hoffman conceded that he used McKee's admissions to obtain information from Elam. Throughout this interaction, officers never advised McKee of his Miranda rights.
¶ 11 McKee and Elam were placed under arrest and transported to Missoula City Police Department for further questioning. Officers took no steps to contact McKee's parents; nor did they inform McKee of his right to have officers notify his parents of his whereabouts. An officer on duty that evening later testified that law enforcement had no obligation to call McKee's parents, nor did it have to obtain a waiver from McKee with regard to contacting his mother and father.
¶ 12 Around midnight, two officers took McKee into a room, obtained a waiver of his Miranda rights, and interrogated him for approximately an hour and a half. The officers successfully obtained McKee's admissions that he had struck a woman with a small wooden bat while holding it out the window of a moving vehicle driven by Elam. McKee also admitted that he had tried to strike two other males in a similar fashion. At approximately 1:30 a.m. police contacted McKee's father, who subsequently called his ex-wife to inform her that their son was in police custody. Based upon McKee's admissions and those made by Elam, the police further detained McKee, transferring him to Missoula County Detention Center. The next day McKee was transported to Missoula County District Court where the court signed a detention order.
¶ 13 The prosecution filed an affidavit and motion to charge McKee as an adult by way of information with three counts of felony assault with a weapon. McKee did not receive a hearing regarding whether he should be transferred to Youth Court prior to the filing of the information; instead, the court provided McKee with a hearing eight days after the State charged him as an adult.
¶ 14 McKee filed consolidated pretrial motions which included: (1) a pre-trial motion pursuant to § 46-13-101, MCA, to dismiss the information charging McKee as an adult without first filing in Youth Court and conducting a transfer hearing; (2) a motion to suppress any statements made by McKee after the stop and any evidence that was a product of those statements; and (3) a motion to suppress McKee's statements obtained by officers at the police station without notifying his parents. After the evidentiary hearing, the District Court denied all three of McKee's pre-trial motions.
¶ 15 McKee subsequently entered a conditional plea agreement which allowed him to appeal all adverse pre-trial rulings by the court. He then pled guilty to all three counts of felony assault. The District Court sentenced McKee as an adult to ten years with the Department of Corrections, with five years suspended on each count to run concurrently. McKee appeals the court's adverse pre-trial rulings.
¶ 16 State v. Mallak, 2005 MT 49, ¶ 13, 326 Mont. 165, ¶ 13, 109 P.3d 209, ¶ 13 (citation omitted).
¶ 17 We review a district court's denial of a motion to suppress evidence by determining whether the district court's findings of fact are clearly erroneous and whether those findings were correctly applied as a matter of law. State v. McCollom, 2005 MT 61, ¶ 7, 326 Mont. 251, ¶ 7, 109 P.3d 215, ¶ 7.
Did the District Court properly deny McKee's motion to dismiss the information?
¶ 18 McKee argues that before the prosecution filed the information, he was entitled to a hearing to determine whether it was appropriate to prosecute him in district court rather than in youth court. To support his argument, McKee cites State v. Butler, 1999 MT 70, ¶ 32, 294 Mont. 17, ¶ 32, 977 P.2d 1000, ¶ 32, in which this Court held "that the District Court violated Butler's right to due process as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution when it allowed the prosecution to file an information in District Court pursuant to § 41-5-206, MCA (1997), without first affording Butler a hearing." (Emphasis added.)
¶ 19 Importantly, at the time we decided Butler, the provisions of § 41-5-206, MCA, differed from today's version in that the statute did not include any transfer hearing requirement. Because we determined that the decision to prosecute a youth in district court rather than youth court could mean the difference between detaining a minor defendant until age twenty-five or losing his life, we concluded that a decision to transfer a youth to district court "is critically important" warranting a hearing. Butler, ¶ 26.
¶ 20 Subsequent to Butler, the Legislature amended § 41-5-206, MCA, to provide in subsection (3) that "[w]ithin 30 days after leave to file the information is granted, the district court shall conduct a hearing to determine whether the matter must be transferred back to the youth court, unless the hearing is waived by the youth or the youth's counsel in writing or on the record." While this provision contradicts Butler insofar as it permits a hearing to be held within thirty days after the information is filed, rather than prior to a filing, we conclude that the statute satisfies the concern we addressed in Butler that due process requires the court to afford a youth "the opportunity with the assistance of coun...
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