State v. Reynolds

• Decision Date: 14 July 1981
• Docket Number: No. 61927,No. 1,61927,1
• Citation: 619 S.W.2d 741
• Parties: STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. Melvin Lee REYNOLDS, Appellant
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Page 741

619 S.W.2d 741

STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. Melvin Lee REYNOLDS, Appellant.

No. 61927.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 1.

July 14, 1981.

Rehearing Denied Sept. 8, 1981.

Lee M. Nation, Kansas City, for appellant.

Thomas G. Auffenberg, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jefferson City, for respondent.

STOCKARD, Commissioner.

Melvin Lee Reynolds was found guilty by a jury of murder in the second degree of Eric Scott Christgen, a four-year-old child, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He has appealed from the ensuing judgment.

Appellant does not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence. Therefore, we shall not set forth the sordid details of the crime. A jury reasonably could find that on May 26, 1978 appellant enticed Eric Christgen from a shopping mall in St. Joseph, Missouri, took him to a wooded area, and while sexually molesting him caused his death from asphyxiation or suffocation.

By his first point appellant asserts that the trial court erred in failing to sustain his motion to suppress statements made by him "insofar as the evidence showed that said statements were the fruit of an unlawful arrest, were involuntary, and thus unconstitutionally obtained."

The statements, which constitute a confession, were made during an interrogation of appellant by police officers and are contained on cassette tapes which have been filed with this Court.

Following the homicide the police started an extensive investigation, and in following up 231 "leads," many of which were received by telephone, 450 persons were interviewed. The police were aware that appellant had previously been involved in a sexual attack on a nephew of his, and on June 2 an unidentified person called the police and reported that he had seen appellant on the shopping mall the day that Eric Christgen had disappeared. Two officers were assigned to "interview (him) as a witness," which lasted about fifteen minutes. In that interview appellant denied that he was on the mall on May 26. On the morning of June 3, the police reviewed the information received the previous day from all sources, and because appellant had denied he was at the mall on May 26, he was again interviewed. What was learned at that interview, if anything, is not shown by the record except he then admitted he previously had lied and that he was on the mall on May 26. On June 3 he was given a polygraph test, the results of which are not shown in the record. There is nothing to indicate that appellant did not voluntarily submit to the test or that he did not cooperate fully. In any event it is not the subject of any challenge on this appeal. In the early part of August, Officer Robert E. Anderson, a sergeant with the Missouri Highway Patrol, interviewed appellant after reading to him the "Miranda" rights. Appellant stated that on May 26 he had borrowed an automobile from Frances Pierce and had done some washing for her. He stated that he parked the car and walked to the corner of 5th and Felix Streets where he remained for about thirty minutes. He then paid a telephone bill for her and walked to the Methodist Hospital to visit Mrs. Pierce who was a patient there. Mrs. Pierce was later interviewed by the police as well as other persons named by appellant, and what they said "did not coincide" with what appellant had related.

On December 23, 1978, appellant was again interviewed by Sergeant Anderson, and was then given sodium amytal at St. Joseph Hospital. There is no contention that this was not with appellant's approval, or that he did not fully understand what was being done. He denied having anything to do with the death of Eric Christgen, but while he was under the influence of sodium amytal he again related to the police officers his activities on May 26, 1978, and at one point stated: "Before I killed Before I went to the unemployment office."

On February 14, 1979, Officer Muehlenbacher called appellant by telephone at his home and stated that the police would like to talk to him again. He readily agreed and Officers Anderson and Muehlenbacher picked him up and took him to the State Highway Patrol headquarters. When they approached the building appellant said, "I am glad you brought me out to the Highway Patrol Headquarters." I "don't like the police station." After the "Miranda" rights were again read to him and he signed a copy, appellant indicated a willingness to talk to the officers. Sergeant Anderson then went over with him "in great detail" his previous statements, and told him the results of the investigation by the police which were inconsistent with what appellant had previously told them. Appellant then said, "(t)hose past statements that I have given to you were not the truth." When asked why he had lied, he answered, "I was afraid you was going to pin this on me and I was scared." The officers and appellant then took a break, appellant used the restroom, and he was given some coffee. They then talked in "generalities" and he told the officers about a girlfriend that he really liked. Detective Jones joined Officers Anderson and Muehlenbacher and they again went over with appellant what he had told them, and appellant asked, "Do you think I'll go to the penitentiary?" Officer Anderson said he did not know, but asked him if he thought he should, and appellant replied, "No, I think I need help at the State Hospital, I don't think I need to go the penitentiary." The officer then asked appellant if he was willing to talk and "get this off your chest, tell us what really happened." Appellant said it was "awfully hard to talk about it," and asked if he had to talk to all three of the officers. Officer Muehlenbacher and Detective Jones then left the room. Officer Anderson talked to appellant for a few minutes and appellant agreed the other officers should return. Officer Jones then suggested to appellant that he be given six questions in writing and that he should write the answers. Appellant agreed and all of the officers left the room. Appellant wrote out the answers and in about ten minutes knocked on the door, and when the officers entered he gave them the answers he had written out. The substance of the answers made by appellant in his handwriting was that the boy died because of an "accident; " appellant did not remember at "just what time the boy died; " appellant met the boy at the mall and they walked to the area where the body was found; and that appellant did sexually molest the boy. Officer Anderson then wrote out a statement, and after making several corrections and initialling them appellant signed that statement. Officer Anderson then asked appellant if he would write in his own handwriting what had occurred on May 26, and appellant did so, and he then dated and signed it.

The officers then took another break while appellant walked around inside the building. The prosecuting attorney was called, and after a conference, the officers took a statement from appellant on cassette tape in which he related in detail what occurred on May 26, 1978, and which constituted a confession. There is no indication in the record, and certainly not in the tapes, that appellant did not make the statements with a complete understanding and with complete cooperation on his part. In fact, on one tape appellant can be heard laughing with the officers during the interrogation.

After appellant made the recorded confession the police officers did not place him under any restraint. Instead they took appellant to his home because, as they said, they knew "he wasn't going to run away." Appellant agreed that on the following morning he would take the officers to the site of the crime, and the next morning when the officers arrived at his house he was waiting for them on the front porch. He then took the officers to the exact place where the body of the boy had been found about nine months earlier.

Although in his point appellant asserts, in the form of a conclusion, that his confession was "involuntary," it appears from the point and particularly from the argument that the contention of involuntariness is based on an alleged illegal arrest and not on the basis that he was not properly and fully informed of his Fifth Amendment rights by use of the "Miranda" warnings. However, it is clear from the record that prior to every interview of appellant by the police pertaining to this case, except possibly the first two, he was fully informed of those rights, and there is nothing to indicate that he did not understand his rights, or that he did not, with full understanding, waive those rights. Appellant does not contend otherwise.

In support of his contention that his confession was not admissible in evidence because he was illegally arrested, appellant relies primarily on Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975), and Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979). In both of these cases the police did not have enough information to obtain a warrant for the arrest of the defendant, but in each case the defendant was apprehended, placed under arrest and involuntarily taken to the police station and subjected to questioning at which he gave incriminating statements. In the Dunaway case it was stated that "(d)etention for custodial interrogation regardless of its label intrudes so severely on interests protected by the Fourth Amendment as necessarily to trigger the traditional safeguards against illegal arrest." The court then held that the police "violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments when, without probable cause to arrest, they took petitioner into custody, transported him to the police station, and detained him there for interrogation."

The United States Supreme Court in the Dunaway case then determined whether, under the facts of that case, "the connection between (the) unconstitutional police conduct and the incriminating statements * * * obtained during petitioner's illegal detention was nevertheless...