State v. Rodriguez-Moreno

• Jurisdiction: Oregon
• Parties: STATE of Oregon, Plaintiff–Respondent, v. Ramon RODRIGUEZ–MORENO, Defendant–Appellant.
• Citation: 359 P.3d 532,273 Or. App. 627
• Docket Number: C062342CR,A154612.
• Court: Oregon Court of Appeals
• Decision Date: 16 September 2015

273 Or.App. 627

359 P.3d 532

STATE of Oregon, Plaintiff–Respondent

v.Ramon RODRIGUEZ–MORENO, Defendant–Appellant.

C062342CR

A154612.

Court of Appeals of Oregon.

Argued and Submitted May 29, 2015.

Decided Sept. 16, 2015.

Mary M. Reese, Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for appellant.With her on the briefs was Peter Gartlan, Chief Defender, Office of Public Defense Services.

Susan Reid, Assistant Attorney General, argued the cause for respondent.With her on the brief were Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, and Anna M. Joyce, Solicitor General.

Before ORTEGA, Presiding Judge, and DeVORE, Judge, and GARRETT, Judge.

Opinion

DeVORE, J.

Defendant was convicted of felony murder for the death of S, his girlfriend's young daughter.He assigns error to the trial court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence of his statements to police in his third and later interviews.He argues that those statements were involuntary under ORS 136.425(1),Article I, section 12, of the Oregon Constitution, and the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.Defendant also assigns error to the trial court's imposition of court-appointed attorney fees without evidence in the record supporting defendant's ability to pay.We conclude that the trial court did not err in denying defendant's motion to suppress, but we reverse the award of attorney fees.

“In reviewing the trial court's decision respecting the voluntariness of confessions and admissions, we accept the court's findings of fact if there is any evidence to support them.”

State v. Ruiz–Piza,262 Or.App. 563, 564, 325 P.3d 802(2014).In this case, the court did make findings.“If findings are not made on all such facts, and there is evidence from which such facts could be decided more than one way, we will presume that the facts were decided in a manner consistent with the ultimate conclusion, e.g., voluntariness or lack thereof, made by the trial court * * *.”Ball v. Gladden,250 Or. 485, 487, 443 P.2d 621(1968).“Whether the facts found by the trial court are sufficient to sustain the trial court's ultimate conclusion regarding voluntariness is a question of law that we review for legal error.”Ruiz–Piza,262 Or.App. at 564, 325 P.3d 802(citingState v. Goree,151 Or.App. 621, 631, 950 P.2d 919(1997), rev. den.,327 Or. 123, 966 P.2d 216(1998) ).

The parties do not dispute the material facts, and defendant does not dispute evidence from the first two police interviews.Defendant, his girlfriend Onofre–Nava, and her daughter S arrived at a hospital at 2:40 p.m., on August 1, 2006.S, then 19 months old, did not have a pulse and was not breathing.A medical team temporarily restored a pulse but concluded that S was “essentially brain dead.”Before transferring S to another hospital, a doctor told defendant and Onofre–Nava that he did not believe there would be a “good outcome.”

At around 4:00 p.m., Detectives Brady and Matrisciano arrived at a subsequent hospital, where S had been transferred, to investigate what its medical staff believed could be “non-accidental trauma” to S's head.Defendant and Onofre–Nava were in a hospital waiting room.The trial court found that, at the time, the police, having very little information, had not formed an opinion about whether a crime had been committed or who might be responsible for S's injuries.

The detectives interviewed Onofre–Nava for about two hours, while defendant waited elsewhere.Defendant consented to speak with Brady and an officer who served as an interpreter.Before beginning his first interview, defendant was advised that he was free to leave and did not “have to say anything.”The interview lasted for one hour and ten minutes, from about 8:20 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., but it did not reveal any inculpatory evidence.Defendant told Brady that he had dropped off Onofre–Nava at work in the morning and was S's caretaker for the day.Defendant was not S's usual caretaker.He said that S had eaten some of his food with chili sauce, which burned her mouth.He said that she had cried a lot and eventually fell asleep on the couch.He said that, later in the afternoon, S had fallen backwards on the bare floor, cried, and vomited.After the first interview, defendant agreed to wait in case the police had more questions.

Around 10:00 p.m., Matrisciano and Brady exchanged information.Matrisciano had learned from medical staff that S had a skull fracture, subdural hematoma, and retinal hemorrhaging—a fatal combination of conditions that doctors “believed was more likely * * * non-accidental trauma, blunt force trauma or shaken baby sort of case.”

Shortly after midnight, defendant gave Brady a second interview.Defendant was advised of his Miranda rights in Spanish.¹The trial court found that

“defendant was advised of the following rights:

“a.The right to remain silent,“b.That anything the defendant said could be used against the defendant in court,

“c.The right to counsel prior to and during questioning,

“d.The right to court appointed counsel if the defendant is indigent, and

“e.The right to decide at any time to not answer any questions or make any statements.”

The second interview lasted about two hours and forty-five minutes, ending at 2:45 a.m.

In the second interview, defendant provided an account like before, but he added that he had twice left S sleeping alone in the apartment for 15 minutes.Brady told defendant that he did not believe that defendant had provided a complete story of what had happened.Eventually, defendant said that he would tell the truth if Onofre–Nava could sit next to him.Onofre–Nava came into the room, and the second interview continued with some variations to the sequence of events and some changes in details.Defendant added that, at about 1:00 p.m., he woke S up to go to Onofre–Nava's workplace and that S was unsteady on her feet and vomited.Defendant recounted that, as he carried S to the car, she squirmed, slipped out of his arms, and fell headfirst onto the cement in the parking lot.

The detectives asked Onofre–Nava to leave the consultation room, and they questioned defendant alone for 30 minutes.They did not believe defendant's account; they believed that “there is something more that happened” than “just a simple fall[.]”During the second interview, the detectives became more confrontational and “began to call into doubt into [defendant's account].”The trial court found that, “[a]t one point during the interview, Detective Brady raised his voice, but Detective Brady was not yelling or threatening the defendant.”

A third interview began about 3:00 a.m., this time conducted by Matrisciano.The trial court found that the detective began by asking if defendant recalled the Miranda warnings.When Matrisciano began repeating them, defendant interrupted to say that he understood the warnings and would speak to the detective.The third interview lasted for one hour and fifteen minutes.

Matrisciano insisted that “there was something else that had happened.”At some point, Matrisciano told defendant“that it was important that [he] know what happened so that the doctors could be able to treat [S].”²The trial court found that Matrisciano's statement was untrue and that the detective knew the child was brain dead and would not recover.

Defendant broke eye contact and sat quietly.He told Matrisciano that he was scared that Onofre–Nava would leave him.Matrisciano asked how many times defendant had shaken S.Defendant admitted that he shook S one time after she had gotten into his food and started crying.At Matrisciano's request, he demonstrated how he shook S forcefully by the arms.Matrisciano noticed that defendant demonstrated that he had shaken the imaginary S three times and that he demonstrated her head moving all the way backward and forward each time.Defendant admitted that he was angry and that, on a scale of one to ten, from low to high, he had been “a seven.”After shaking S, defendant said, he laid S down forcefully on the couch.Defendant agreed to make a tape-recorded statement, and he repeated what he had just told Matrisciano.³At the end of the third interview, defendant was arrested and told that S would likely die from her injuries.

While defendant was in jail, Brady conducted a fourth interview, at about 9:00 p.m. on August 2.Brady repeated the Miranda warnings, and defendant allowed that he had “big trouble with anger.”Defendant agreed to do a “walk-though” to demonstrate what had happened.Matrisciano and Brady took defendant back to the apartment at about 10:15 p.m. to make a video-recorded reenactment.Defendant admitted to shaking S while he was angry and putting her on the couch.He repeated that S had fallen out of his arms onto her head in the parking lot.At the end of the reenactment, Matrisciano told defendant that S had died.⁴Defendant was charged with felony murder.⁵

Defendant moved to suppress all his statements made after Matrisciano “falsely told him that they needed information from him * * * in order to be able to assist the doctors in saving [S's] life.”Defendant argued that the statement contributed to coercive circumstances in violation of defendant's rights under Article I, section 12, and under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.⁶

The trial court denied the motion, determining, among other things, that “defendant was never given any promises or threatened in any way”; “[t]here was no evidence that defendant suffered from any mental impairment at any time”; “defendant was never denied any request he made to use the restroom or for water”; the conversations with officers “were civil and polite”; Matrisciano's misstatement did not render defendant's statements involuntary; and, under the totality of the circumstances, the state had met its burden to prove that defendant's statements “were freely and voluntarily given.”

The case proceeded to trial.Defendant testified that, at the time of the incident, he had been in a relationship with...