State v. Primes, 694A84

• Decision Date: 13 August 1985
• Docket Number: No. 694A84,694A84
• Citation: 314 N.C. 202,333 S.E.2d 278
• Parties: STATE of North Carolina v. James Lee PRIMES.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

Page 278

333 S.E.2d 278

314 N.C. 202

STATE of North Carolina v. James Lee PRIMES.

No. 694A84.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Aug. 13, 1985.

Lacy H. Thornburg, Atty. Gen. by J. Michael Carpenter, Sp. Deputy Atty. Gen., Raleigh, for the State.

L. Michael Dodd, Raleigh, for defendant appellant.

EXUM, Justice.

Defendant by this appeal presents three issues for determination: (1) Whether certain evidence was seized from defendant, a prisoner, during a period in which he was unlawfully detained, in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Federal Constitution ¹ or in violation of certain North Carolina statutes; (2) whether the court erred in denying defendant's motion for mistrial, and (3) whether the court erred in denying defendant's motion to dismiss. We answer these questions in the negative and find no error in defendant's trial.

I.

The evidence offered by the state tended to show the following:

On 19 May 1975, Jennette Fish was employed as a dental assistant at the Triangle Correctional Center, a minimum custody facility adjacent to Central Prison in Raleigh. Defendant was an inmate at the Triangle facility assigned to work duty in the dental clinic. Fish was working alone in the dental clinic on 19 May, since her supervisor was attending a conference, and had been instructed not to see patients but to prepare paper work.

Two coworkers of Fish were with her until approximately 2 p.m., at which time they observed her unlocking and entering her office. One of them, Jacob Lane, warned Fish that she was alone on the hall.

Louis Smith, a dental technician at Triangle, escorted defendant and another inmate to the dental lab shortly after 12:30 p.m. Approximately an hour later, defendant complained that he was sick and returned to the Triangle facility. Defendant was seen entering the dental office where Fish worked at approximately 3:45 p.m. by honor grade inmate James Brooks.

At approximately 4:55 p.m., James Inscoe, a correctional superintendent at Triangle, encountered defendant in the hallway as Inscoe moved toward the restroom. Defendant was perspiring and said he wished to speak with Inscoe. Inscoe asked him to wait. When Inscoe returned, defendant informed him that something was wrong with "the lady in the dental clinic." Defendant said she was lying on the floor and that he tried putting water on her but she didn't move.

Inscoe escorted defendant to the nearby control center and left him there. He then entered the dental clinic and discovered the body of Fish. Her face and neck were swollen and discolored and her clothes partially displaced. Inscoe then returned to defendant and removed him to an inner office. After calling an ambulance, Inscoe later returned to defendant and, for the first time, noticed scratches on defendant's neck. At this point, Inscoe placed a guard outside the office containing defendant. State Bureau of Investigation agents later seized several articles of clothing from defendant, including a pair of white socks containing a hair similar in color, racial origin and microscopic details to the victim's.

The pathologist's report concluded that Fish's death was consistent with a homicidal strangulation and attempted rape, occurring some four to six hours prior to his examination at 9:05 p.m.

Several of defendant's fellow inmates testified that defendant approached them at various times between 2:30 and 4 p.m. and stated that he was in trouble and needed money with which to escape. In addition, three inmates testified that defendant, on various occasions prior to Fish's death, expressed sexual desires for the victim and his intent to approach her sexually.

Richard Crisp, a cellmate of defendant's after Fish's death, testified that defendant said he didn't mean to hurt Fish or to kill her. He approached her sexually and when she ordered him to get out and threatened to "put the man on him," he began "working up on her." When Fish hit defendant in the neck, he strangled and killed her.

Defendant presented no evidence at trial.

II.

Defendant contends the trial court erred by admitting into evidence a pair of white socks worn by defendant at the time he was detained by Correction Superintendent Inscoe on 19 May 1975 and subsequently seized from his person by SBI agents. Examination of the socks disclosed presence of a hair similar in color, racial origin and certain microscopic details to that of the victim, thus tending to place defendant near the victim at some point.

Defendant contends the socks were inadmissible as evidence because they were obtained during an illegal search and seizure. He contends that he encountered Corrections Superintendent Inscoe in the hall around 4:55 p.m. and commented to Inscoe that something was wrong with the lady in the dental clinic. Inscoe told defendant to wait and proceeded en route to the restroom. Inscoe then returned, took defendant to the control center and told him to remain there. Defendant contends that he was under arrest from this point on. Only at this point, after defendant was already in custody, did Inscoe proceed to the dental clinic where he discovered the body of Fish.

Defendant argues that he was arrested by Superintendent Inscoe at a time when Inscoe possessed neither an arrest warrant nor sufficient information to support probable cause to believe that a crime had been committed and that defendant committed it. Thus, his entire detention was illegal and under Henry v. United States, 361 U.S. 98, 80 S.Ct. 168, 4 L.Ed.2d 134 (1959), the search conducted pursuant to it was illegal and any evidence seized during it was inadmissible.

In support of his argument, defendant relies heavily upon Inscoe's testimony that "prior to going to the dental office, I had him [defendant] seated at the control center, in custody of the officer at that location." He also relies upon the trial court's conclusion of law, made following voir dire on the motion to suppress, that "the defendant was in actual custody of Superintendent Inscoe in connection with the death of Mrs. Fish from about 4:55 o'clock p.m. on May 19th, 1975, until after his clothing, ... [was] seized by Agent Davenport; ..."

The state responds that despite Inscoe's testimony and the trial court's conclusion of law, defendant was not under arrest at 4:55 p.m. when Inscoe asked him to remain at the control center. Rather, he was merely the subject of an administrative detention, a device recognized by the United States Supreme Court in Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. 460, 103 S.Ct. 864, 74 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983), as appropriate in circumstances involving possible inmate misconduct. Defendant was not under arrest, the state contends, until much later when Inscoe removed him to a private office under guard. By this time, Inscoe knew: (1) he had encountered defendant perspiring and in an agitated condition in the hall outside the dental clinic; (2) Fish had been killed; (3) defendant had admitted being with the victim and trying to rouse her with water and (4) defendant had visible scratches on his neck. These circumstances taken together were clearly sufficient to justify Inscoe in arresting defendant without a warrant, the state contends.

While both parties apparently assume the resolution of this issue turns upon whether defendant was "under arrest" when first detained by Superintendent Inscoe at 4:55 p.m., or merely under administrative segregation, we take a somewhat different tack.

The more fundamental question is whether the Fourth Amendment requires probable cause before prison officials could detain defendant, an inmate in the state prison system, within the confines of the prison where defendant was already in custody. If, in this context, no such arrest was required, then whether Inscoe "arrested" defendant by asking him to remain at the control center is immaterial.

The issue of constitutional rights and protections vis-a-vis the prison environment is not a new one. The United States Supreme Court in a number of opinions has examined the effect upon an individual's constitutional rights of being incarcerated for the commission of crimes. That Court has held that persons sentenced to prison are not stripped of all constitutional rights at the prison gate. Rather, basic constitutional rights adhere inside as well as outside the prison walls. See, Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974); Lee v. Washington, 390 U.S. 333, 88 S.Ct. 994, 19 L.Ed.2d 1212 (1968) (per curiam) (invidious discrimination is as intolerable within a prison as without); Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S. 483, 89 S.Ct. 747, 21 L.Ed.2d 718 (1969) (prisoners retain constitutional rights to petition government for redress of grievances, including a reasonable right of access to the courts); Pell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. 817, 94 S.Ct. 2800, 41 L.Ed.2d 495 (1974) (prisoners retain First Amendment rights not inconsistent with status as prisoners or objectives of system); Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 92 S.Ct. 594, 30 L.Ed.2d 652 (1972) (prisoners retain the protections of due process); Cruz v. Beto, 405 U.S. 319, 92 S.Ct. 1079, 31 L.Ed.2d 263 (1972) (per curiam ) (prisoners retain the right to a reasonable opportunity to exercise religious freedom).

However, the Supreme Court has also stressed that incarceration "carries with it the circumscription or loss of many significant rights." Hudson v. Palmer, --- U.S. ----, ----, 104 S.Ct. 3194, 3199, 82 L.Ed.2d 393, 401 (1984). The Court's insistence that prisoners be accorded basic constitutional rights extends only to "those rights not fundamentally inconsistent with imprisonment itself or incompatible with the objectives of incarceration." Id.

[S]imply because prison inmates retain certain constitutional rights does not mean that these rights are not subject to restrictions and limitations. 'Lawful incarceration brings about the necessary withdrawal or limitation of many privileges and rights, a retraction justified by the...