State v. Piansiaksone
| Decision Date | 13 February 1998 |
| Docket Number | No. 960170,960170 |
| Citation | 954 P.2d 861 |
| Parties | 337 Utah Adv. Rep. 9 STATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Vongpachan PIANSIAKSONE, Defendant and Appellant. |
| Court | Utah Supreme Court |
Jan Graham, Attorney General, Joanne C. Slotnik, Assistant Attorney General, Howard Lemke, Salt Lake City, for plaintiff and appellee.
L. Clark Donaldson, Richard G. Uday, Salt Lake City, for defendant and appellant.
A jury found Vongpachan Piansiaksone guilty of murder, a first degree felony, pursuant to Utah Code Ann. § 76-5-203, for shooting and killing Sichan Or. On appeal, Piansiaksone asserts that the trial court erred by (1) admitting evidence of his confession to San Diego police detectives, (2) refusing to ask voir dire questions that would have enabled him to make a more intelligent use of his peremptory challenges, (3) directing the jury to follow a particular order in considering the charged offense and the lesser included offense of manslaughter so that the jury was prevented from considering the lesser included offense, and (4) instructing the jury incorrectly on the law of manslaughter.
In late July 1994, Piansiaksone returned to his parents' home in West Valley City from San Diego, where he had been staying for several months. He was sixteen years old at that time. Early in the afternoon of July 31, Piansiaksone went to a barbecue that was also attended by Anouphong Khamsiharath, known as "Nuk." Piansiaksone and Nuk, who had known each other for two years, are related through a cousin by marriage, although Nuk characterized his relationship with Piansiaksone as being like a cousin or an older brother. Sometime during the barbecue, Nuk told Piansiaksone that he was angry with Sichan Or ("Clay"), who was married to Nuk's sister Yong, because Clay "had been beating up on [Yong] and just doing things that [Nuk] didn't like." Nuk testified at trial that he was also angry with Clay because Clay had made sexual advances or "had been trying to rape" Nuk's wife, Da, while both couples were living with Nuk's parents earlier in 1994. (In May 1994, when Nuk learned about this from his wife, he moved his family out of his parents' home to get away from Clay.) However, Nuk did not tell Piansiaksone until after the shooting that his anger with Clay stemmed in part from these advances.
On the day of the barbecue, Nuk told Piansiaksone that he "wanted to kill Clay" and asked or instructed Piansiaksone to shoot Clay for him. Nuk testified that he wanted Piansiaksone to do the shooting in part because Piansiaksone was a juvenile, while Nuk was an adult with a wife and child, evidently assuming that Piansiaksone's youth would result in a lighter penalty. They took Nuk's "Tech-9" semiautomatic pistol and went out in Nuk's truck looking for Clay, with Nuk driving and Piansiaksone riding in the passenger seat. The gun had been stowed beneath the passenger seat in a bag. They located Clay on a street near the Lakepark Apartments, which appears to be where Clay was living. After Nuk stopped the truck, Clay walked up to the driver's side window to speak with Nuk. Piansiaksone then took the gun out from under the seat and shot Clay three times at close range in the upper chest and left arm. Clay died shortly thereafter.
Piansiaksone and Nuk fled, going first to San Diego and then to Las Vegas. Nuk testified that in San Diego, Piansiaksone agreed that if they were arrested he would take all the blame for shooting Clay and say that Nuk did not know anything about it. Nuk was arrested in Las Vegas a few days after the shooting. Piansiaksone avoided arrest at that time and returned to San Diego. West Valley City law enforcement officers asked the San Diego Police Department for assistance in apprehending Piansiaksone, and early in the morning of August 15, San Diego police detective Michael Gallivan was informed where Piansiaksone was staying in San Diego. Gallivan and other officers went to that residence and found Piansiaksone sleeping on the dining room floor. They awoke him and arrested him at 4:15 a.m. The officers informed him that he was under arrest for homicide, transported him to the police station, and gave him the Miranda warnings. 1 Gallivan and another officer questioned Piansiaksone, and the interview was videotaped. Piansiaksone confessed almost immediately to shooting Clay. Although the detectives pressed Piansiaksone about Nuk's involvement, he maintained that Nuk did not actively participate in the shooting.
Piansiaksone was certified to stand trial as an adult. Prior to trial, he moved to suppress evidence of his confession to the San Diego detectives. The trial court denied the motion. Following jury selection, Piansiaksone objected to the court's refusal to give certain of his proposed voir dire questions. He also raised objections to the jury instructions on several grounds. The jury returned a guilty verdict on the murder charge, and this appeal followed.
Piansiaksone asserts that the trial court erred in denying his pretrial motion to suppress evidence of his confession to San Diego police detectives. He contends that the detectives used "physical and psychological manipulation" to coerce his confession and that evidence of the confession should therefore have been suppressed. The State responds that denial of the motion was correct because Piansiaksone failed to produce any evidence of police coercion and to show how any such coercion caused him to confess.
At the time Piansiaksone was arrested, he had been sleeping for about twenty-four hours. The arresting officers awoke him, gave him a partial Miranda warning, allowed him to put on additional clothing, and transported him to the station. He did not fall asleep while riding to the station in the patrol car. At the station, he was taken to an interview room, where the detectives questioned him. An edited videotape of this interrogation was entered into evidence at the trial. The videotape shows that Detective Gallivan first questioned Piansiaksone about his vital statistics, i.e., his name, age, background, family, home address. Piansiaksone and the detectives then left the room so that he could be photographed. After their return, Gallivan continued the interrogation at 5:37 a.m. by explaining why Piansiaksone, also known as Mac, had been arrested:
How are you doing, Mac? Are you all right? Okay. Let me--let me explain to you, okay, you know, why you're here. Okay, the reason why we arrested you--and, and, as you said, you already know why you're here, because I told you when we picked you up--is that we have a warrant for your arrest, okay, for a homicide--murder, all right? And this murder occurred in West Valley City, Utah.
Gallivan introduced himself and the other detective, noted that Piansiaksone was read his rights when arrested, stated that he was going to explain those rights again "[b]ecause we would like to hear your side of the story," and proceeded to give Piansiaksone the Miranda warnings. After Piansiaksone stated that he understood those rights and that he was still willing to speak to the detectives, the following exchange took place Gallivan: And it's August 15th, '94 and it's 5:38 in the morning. Okay, here's the thing, okay? We don't know much about you--I mean, we're going to be honest with you. We know very little about you. We do know that there was a shooting that resulted in the death of a person in West Valley City. Okay? And there was an investigation. During that investigation you were identified as one of the two suspects, okay? Why don't you tell us in your own words what happened? I mean, what we want is we want to get your side of the story. I mean, there's always two sides of the story. Okay? Evidently something set you and your friend off that you would shoot somebody--and why don't you tell us what that was? What happened? You see, here's the thing, Mac, this is your chance to tell us what happened, okay? About what happened. All right, we don't know and nobody else is going to know until you tell us, okay? So why don't you go ahead and tell us what happened?
Piansiaksone: Let's see. I don't know. It's just--you know--that day I was doing four or five things, you know? Then I did that. He's from--you know, that guy that I shot, he's from here.
Gallivan: He's from here?
Piansiaksone: Yeah, he's from San Diego, and he's from some gang that, you know, I don't get along with, and that's OBS.[ 2
Gallivan: You don't get along with OBS?
Piansiaksone: No.
Gallivan: Okay.
Piansiaksone: And, you know, he was just down there and then, you know, I saw him. I saw my friend and I asked him to use his gun. And then, you know, he was like--he was telling me no and all this stuff, you know. But then, you know, he brought it out. He didn't think--he didn't know I was going to do it. And I--you know, we brought it out, and then it was--it was just in the car with us, and we just rode by, and then I saw that guy, you know, like before, so I brought it out and then, you know, I shot him.
Gallivan: Who was the guy?
Piansiaksone: Clay.
The tape shows that this confession took place three to four minutes after the beginning of the interrogation. During the course of the interrogation, the detectives repeatedly pressed Piansiaksone to discuss Nuk's involvement in the crime; however, it was not until near the end of the interview that he conceded that he was trying to cover for Nuk and that Nuk knew he was going to shoot the victim.
Piansiaksone argues that the trial court should have suppressed his confession because of a Fifth Amendment violation, not because the police failed to give any warnings required by Miranda. The Fifth Amendment "protects individuals from being compelled to give evidence against themselves." State v. Troyer, 910 P.2d 1182, 1188 (Utah 1995). Although the United States Supreme Court adopted the prophylactic Miranda warnings to preserve and reinforce the Fifth Amendment...
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...the detection of actual bias ... and the collection of data to permit informed exercise of the peremptory challenge.” State v. Piansiaksone, 954 P.2d 861, 867 (Utah 1998) (alteration and omission in original) (internal quotation marks omitted). “The scope and conduct of voir dire examinatio......
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