State v. Serrato

• Decision Date: 29 November 1982
• Docket Number: No. 81-KA-2610,81-KA-2610
• Parties: STATE of Louisiana v. Juan SERRATO.
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court

Page 214

424 So.2d 214

STATE of Louisiana v. Juan SERRATO.

No. 81-KA-2610.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

Nov. 29, 1982.

Rehearing Denied Jan. 7, 1983.

William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Barbara Rutledge, Asst. Atty. Gen., J. Nathan Stansbury, Dist. Atty., Charles M. Brandt, Asst. Dist. Atty., for plaintiff-appellee.

Arthur A. Lemann, III, James J. Adams, Fournet & Adams, for defendant-appellant.

DIXON, Chief Justice.

Defendant Juan Serrato was convicted of second degree murder in violation of R.S. 14:30.1 on April 3, 1981 and was sentenced to life imprisonment without benefit of parole, probation or suspension of sentence. Defendant's motion for a new trial was denied. He now appeals his conviction and sentence arguing two assignments of error and one error patent.

On the morning of October 10, 1980, shortly after 11:00 a.m., Serrato, a helicopter pilot, decided to drive to New Iberia from his home in Lafayette to pick up his paycheck. His wife asked him to take their three year old daughter with him so she could get some sewing done. As Serrato was leaving, his wife hollered at him not to "stay down there all damn day long." After putting his daughter into the car, Serrato returned to the house to get a snack for her. Resolving to persuade his wife to accompany them, he found her seated at her sewing machine in their bedroom. Serrato playfully hugged her and asked her to join them. She angrily replied, "why don't you just get the hell out of here. Those people down there mean more to you than I do."

The next thing Serrato remembered was sitting on his bed trembling with his wife's body sprawled next to him. He left the house without checking on his wife's condition and drove to New Iberia. A neighbor later discovered Kathy Serrato lying on her bed strangled with a piece of cloth.

Assignment of Error No. 1

By this assignment defendant contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress his confession based on three grounds: (1) illegal detention; (2) right to counsel; and (3) free and voluntary standard.

In his pretrial motion, defendant recited, as his only ground to suppress, that the confession and other inculpatory statements were inadmissible since they were not made freely and voluntarily, but were made under the influence of fear, duress, intimidation and improper psychological coercion. The trial judge denied the motion to suppress on this ground without assigning any reasons.

Defendant now asserts as additional grounds to suppress that the confession was the product of an illegal arrest and was procured in violation of his right to counsel. These grounds were first raised by defendant on motion for a new trial. Defendant's failure to address these two grounds in his pretrial motion does not preclude him from raising them now. In State v. Roach, 322 So.2d 222, 226 (La.1975), this court stated that, based on the former language of C.Cr.P. 703(C), ¹ "our scope of review should be limited to those grounds on which the motion to suppress was based." However, since that decision, C.Cr.P. 703 has been rewritten to shift the burden of proof on a motion to suppress an oral confession or other inculpatory statement. Prior to the 1978 and 1980 amendments to C.Cr.P. 703, the burden of proof rested with the defendant on a motion to suppress oral confessions or other statements and with the state to prove the admissibility of written inculpatory statements. Now the state has the burden of proving the admissibility of both written and oral inculpatory statements by the defendant. C.Cr.P. 703(D). ²

This court in State v. Roach, supra, concluded that new grounds could not be raised after the hearing on the pretrial motion since the burden of proof to suppress an oral confession rested with the defendant. However, since C.Cr.P. 703(D) has placed the burden of admitting both oral and written confessions on the state, this court can now properly review additional grounds to suppress fully argued later at trial on the merits or at a hearing on a motion for a new trial. In view of the fact that defendant in the instant case submitted two additional grounds to suppress in his motion for a new trial, they are properly before this court.

Illegal Detention

Defendant first came in contact with police officers when he returned from New Iberia by helicopter at approximately 1:30 p.m. He had rushed home to Lafayette after an investigating officer at the scene had answered his phone call, informing him that his wife was ill and that he should return home as soon as possible. ³ Upon arrival he was met by several police officers, who refused to let him enter his house and who escorted him to his neighbor's house.

At 3:30 p.m. Serrato voluntarily accompanied Detectives Broussard and Rickard to the police station where he was advised of his Miranda rights. After waiving his rights at 4:10 p.m., Serrato was interrogated by Broussard, Rickard and two officers, Sergeant Cormier and Lieutenant Boutte, until 8:30 that night. ⁴ After the questioning, at approximately 9:00 p.m., he was formally arrested without a warrant and placed in a holding cell. The incriminating statements were obtained from the defendant almost twenty-four hours later.

A lawful arrest, whether warrantless or pursuant to an arrest warrant, must be based upon probable cause. State v. Leatherwood, 411 So.2d 29 (La.1982); State v. Herbert, 351 So.2d 434 (La.1977); State v. Ranker, 343 So.2d 189 (La.1977). While the state's burden of proving the lawfulness of an arrest is far less than its burden of proving a defendant's guilt at trial, mere suspicion on the part of the arresting officer is not enough. State v. Haynie, 395 So.2d 669 (La.1981); State v. Thomas, 349 So.2d 270 (La.1977); State v. Randolph, 337 So.2d 498 (La.1976). The officer must have probable cause to arrest.

In State v. Leatherwood, supra at 32, this court defined probable cause as existing "when the facts and circumstances within the arresting officer's knowledge and of which he has reasonable and trustworthy information are sufficient to justify a man of average caution in the belief that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing an offense." If probable cause for defendant's arrest existed, the confession would be admissible if it was otherwise voluntary and was made after appropriate Miranda warnings. If no probable cause existed, the confession would be admissible only if the state could show that the connection between the arrest and the subsequent confession was so attenuated that the confession could not logically be considered as a fruit of the illegal arrest. State v. Leatherwood, supra; Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963). Factors to be considered in making this determination are whether the defendant was advised of his Miranda rights prior to the confession, the temporal proximity of the arrest and the confession, the presence of intervening circumstances, and the purpose and flagrancy of any official misconduct. State v. Giovanni, 375 So.2d 1360 (La.1979).

In the instant case, the record is not conclusive as to whether probable cause existed to arrest Serrato. Sergeant Cormier, the assigned supervisor of the homicide scene, testified that at least until 6:00 p.m. on October 10, the time all of the evidence had been seized from the scene of the crime, he had not determined that Serrato had killed his wife. What, if anything, occurred between 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. must be left to speculation. ⁵

Since the prosecution bears the affirmative burden of proving that probable cause to arrest existed, any doubts as to the sufficiency of proof must be resolved in favor of the defendant. In this case we are unable to ascertain from the record whether the state carried its burden of proving that probable cause existed at the time of the formal arrest. Accordingly, we must conclude that the arrest was illegal and determine whether the confession was sufficiently attenuated from the arrest in order to be admissible.

At the hearing on the motion for a new trial, the trial court stated that it did not feel as though the issue of illegal detention was properly before it. Nevertheless, in passing, the trial judge noted that "a sufficient time and a sufficient occurring of events between the detention period and the statement [had elapsed] so as to sufficiently attenuate any illegality of detention, and, thereby, any statement would not have been tainted." We agree with this finding.

Whether the confession is sufficiently attenuated from the arrest is a question to be resolved in light of the facts of the particular case. In the instant case, Miranda warnings were administered a second time to defendant on October 11 between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m. Even though not decisive, the giving of this warning and a waiver of these rights are important factors to be considered in determining whether the illegal arrest tainted any subsequent confession. Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975).

Further, the "temporal proximity of the arrest and the confession" was fairly distant. Serrato began confessing to Sergeant Cormier at approximately 6:30 p.m. on October 11. Serrato had been formally arrested the previous day, October 10, at 9:00 p.m. Thus, over twenty-one hours had elapsed between the time of the formal arrest and the confession.

Serrato was transferred from the Lafayette City Police Department to the Office of the State Police on October 11. At 2:08 p.m. Serrato signed an interrogation agreement authorizing the Louisiana State Police to either interview him or to take his polygraph examination. He again signed his name to the agreement at 4:53 p.m. at the conclusion of the interrogation, certifying that he was well treated, submitted freely to the examination, and knowingly and intelligently waived his rights. This episode at the Office of the State Police was a sufficient intervening...