State v. Rees

• Decision Date: 31 March 2000
• Citation: 748 A.2d 976,2000 ME 55
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. Frank H. REES.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

748 A.2d 976

2000 ME 55

STATE of Maine v. Frank H. REES.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued November 1, 1999.

Decided March 31, 2000.

Andrew Ketterer, Attorney General, Donald W. Macomber, Asst. Attorney General (orally), Augusta, Michael E. Povich, District Attorney, Ellsworth, for State.

Kevin L. Barron, (orally), Bar Harbor, for defendant.

Before WATHEN, C.J., and CLIFFORD, RUDMAN, DANA, SAUFLEY, ALEXANDER, and CALKINS, JJ.

WATHEN, C.J.

[¶ 1] The State appeals¹ from an order of the Superior Court (Hancock County, Mead, J.) suppressing statements made by defendant. The court declined to find, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the statements were voluntary. The court's ruling was based solely on defendant's mental state and not on any improper police activity. Finding no error, we affirm.

[¶ 2] Defendant Frank Rees was indicted for manslaughter (Class A), 17-A M.R.S.A. § 203(1)(A) (Supp.1999), and aggravated criminal OUI (Class C), 29-A M.R.S.A. § 2411(6) (1996). The indictment was brought against defendant for causing the death of William H. Porter as a result of defendant's reckless or criminally negligent operation of a motor vehicle and as a result of his operating the motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicants. Defendant filed a motion to suppress certain statements made by him in response to police questioning on the basis that they were not voluntarily given pursuant to Article I, § 6 of the Maine Constitution.² A hearing was held and the court entered an order granting the motion to suppress on the following grounds:

As the record clearly indicates that the Defendant suffers from dementia, the court cannot conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that his statements to law enforcement officers were the product of the free exercise of his will and rational intellect. It should be stressed that this ruling makes no finding of improper or incorrect conduct upon the part of the investigating officers.

The State appeals.

[¶ 3] The court based its decision on the following test established in State v. Caouette, 446 A.2d 1120 (Me.1982):

[I]n order to find a statement voluntary, it must first be established that it is the result of defendant's exercise of his own free will and rational intellect. While a claim of compulsion will frequently be predicated upon police elicitation or conduct, that element is not a sine qua non for exclusion under the exclusionary rule inherent in the guarantee against self-incrimination. While proof that a defendant's statement is spontaneous and unsolicited will often result in a finding of voluntariness, such proof does not compel a finding that the defendant was free from "compulsion of whatever nature."

Id. at 1123-24 (footnote omitted).

[¶ 4] The State contends that we should ignore stare decisis and overrule State v. Caouette in light of U.S. Supreme Court case, Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157, 107 S.Ct. 515, 93 L.Ed.2d 473 (1986) and our case, State v. Eastman, 1997 ME 39, 691 A.2d 179. We decline to do so. "Stare decisis embodies the important social policy of continuity in the law by providing for consistency and uniformity of decisions." Bourgeois v. Great N. Nekoosa Corp., 1999 ME 10, ¶ 5, 722 A.2d 369, 371. "We do not disturb a settled point of law unless `the prevailing precedent lacks vitality and the capacity to serve the interests of justice....'" Id.

[¶ 5] First, Connelly was decided on federal constitutional grounds and Caouette was decided on state constitutional grounds. As we stated in Caouette, "federal decisions do not serve to establish the complete statement of controlling law but rather to delineate a constitutional minimum or universal mandate for the federal control of every State." State v. Caouette, 446 A.2d at 1122 (citing State v. Collins, 297 A.2d 620 (Me.1972)). We supported this position with the Supreme Court's statement in Lego v. Twomey that: "`Of course, the States are free, pursuant to their own law, to adopt a higher standard. They may indeed differ as to the appropriate resolution of the values they find at stake.'" Id. (quoting Lego v. Twomey, 404 U.S. 477, 92 S.Ct. 619, 30 L.Ed.2d 618 (1972)). We noted that we had exercised this authority in State v. Collins, 297 A.2d 620 (1972) when we adopted a more stringent standard of proof for establishing the voluntariness of statements in order to better secure the guarantee of freedom from self-incrimination. See id. We further noted that the same philosophy of state-federal relationship that applied to procedural issues would also apply in determining the substantive content of the privilege against self-incrimination. See id. We reiterated that:

It must be remembered that the privilege exists in this case by virtue of the Maine Constitution. The Fifth Amendment is a limitation upon the federal government and has no direct reference to state action except to the extent incorporated as a requirement of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The maximum statement of the substantive conduct of the privilege and the requirements of voluntariness must be decided by this Court—as a matter of Maine law.

Id.

[¶ 6] Applying Maine law, we noted the basis of the more protective holding in Collins as follows:

"The constitutional privilege against self-incrimination ... reflects a high priority commitment to the principle that excluded as available to government is any person's testimonial self-condemnation of crime unless such person has acted `voluntarily' i.e., unless he has `waived' his constitutional privilege against self-incrimination by choosing, freely and knowingly, to provide criminal self-condemnation by utterances from his own lips."

Id. (quoting State v. Collins, 297 A.2d at 626). In reaching our decision, we noted that it appeared to be "consistent with, if not required by, the classic definitions of voluntariness set forth in United States Supreme Court decisions." Id. at 1123.

[¶ 7] The State argues that, in light of the United States Supreme Court decision, Colorado v. Connelly, decided after State v. Caouette, the premise in State v. Caouette that it was consistent with federal law has changed. In this respect, the State is correct. Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157, 107 S.Ct. 515, 93 L.Ed.2d 473 (1986), explicitly holds that "coercive police activity is a necessary predicate to the finding that a confession is not `voluntary' within the meaning of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment." Id. at 167, 107 S.Ct. 515. Our statement in Caouette that our decision appeared to be consistent with United States Supreme Court decisions, however, was not a determinative factor. Rather, we focused primarily on an assessment of the public policy of the State of Maine.

[¶ 8] We cited State v. Collins, 297 A.2d 620 (Me.1972) for the proposition that the state constitution provided greater protection for this particular privilege. See State v. Caouette, 446 A.2d 1120, 1122 (Me.1982)

. In Collins we stated:

In assessing public policy for the State of Maine and "the appropriate resolution of the values [we] find at stake," we go beyond the objective of deterrence of lawless conduct by police and prosecution. We concentrate, additionally, upon the primacy of the value, strongly emphasized by the three dissenters in Lego v. Twomey, of safeguarding "... the right of an individual, entirely apart from his guilt or innocence, not to be compelled to condemn himself by his own utterances." Since this value has been endowed with the highest priority by being embodied in a constitutional guarantee—the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination—we believe that it must be taken heavily into account in the formulation of the public policy of this State, notwithstanding that the majority of the Justices who participated in Lego v. Twomey were unwilling to derive from it a universal mandate for the federal control of every State in the Union by a standard of "proof beyond a reasonable doubt."

State v. Collins, 297 A.2d 620, 626 (Me. 1972) (citations omitted). We further stated as follows:

[T]o confirm and preserve the value reflected in the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination we must minimize the risks of allowing legal effectiveness to "non-voluntary," or "involuntary," testimonial self-condemnation even at the expense of producing a loss of evidence which might have probative value; such was the price that our society had chosen to pay when it conferred constitutional protection upon the privilege against self-incrimination.

Id. at 627. We find this rationale still represents Maine's public policy.

[¶ 9] Finally, contrary to the State's contention, our statements made in State v. Eastman, 1997 ME 39, 691 A.2d 179, are consistent with State v. Caouette and do not suggest a retreat from the more restrictive state standard. In Eastman, we followed federal precedent and declined to extend the privilege against self-incrimination to include non-testimonial evidence. Although we may look to the construction of federal constitutional provisions in U.S. Supreme Court cases and apply the same construction as far as possible, we are not confined to that construction when, as in Caouette, a more protective standard is warranted under Maine law.

The entry is:

Order of suppression affirmed.

SAUFLEY, J., with whom CLIFFORD, J. joins, dissenting.

[¶ 10] I respectfully dissent.

[¶ 11] In its holding today, the Court has concluded that, notwithstanding the absence of incarceration, compulsion, coercion, or police overreaching, no out-of-court statement of a defendant may be used against that defendant unless the State proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the statement was voluntary. In so holding, the court has completed its shift in focus, begun in Caouette, from the actions of the State to the internal motivations of the defendant. With this holding, the privilege against self-incrimination found in the Fifth Amendment, mirrored in article I,...