State v. Shuman, 17585
| Decision Date | 08 December 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 17585,17585 |
| Citation | 639 P.2d 155 |
| Parties | The STATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. James Wes SHUMAN, Defendant and Appellant. |
| Court | Utah Supreme Court |
Harry E. Snow, Paul W. Mortensen, Moab, for defendant and appellant.
David L. Wilkinson, Atty. Gen., Craig Barlow, Asst. Atty. Gen., Salt Lake City, for plaintiff and respondent.
A jury convicted defendant of second degree murder, U.C.A., 1953, § 76-5-203(1)(a). This appeal concerns the admissibility of evidence at the trial.
On August 9, 1980, at about 9:30 in the morning, defendant telephoned his probation officer and told him that he thought he might have killed someone but wasn't sure. The probation officer, and later a sheriff's deputy, went to defendant's apartment in Moab to investigate the situation. A car registered to defendant's companion of the previous evening, Sherry Johnson, was parked outside his apartment, but none of the three men could find any evidence to confirm defendant's expressed fear, and defendant said he was unable to recall the events of the preceding evening. When contacted by the officers, Sherry Johnson's family stated that she had not been home since the previous day, which was unusual behavior for her, but they suggested that she might have spent the night with a friend.
At about 10:30 a. m., the two officers departed, leaving defendant at his apartment. Shortly after noon, the deputy returned and asked if defendant would come to the sheriff's office to look into the matter a little further. Replying that this would be "no problem," defendant accompanied the deputy to the sheriff's office. There, in response to a question, defendant told the sheriff that he and Sherry Johnson had left the lounge where they had met, had gone to his apartment, and were "messing around." He also said that they had argued, that Sherry had slapped him, that he had gotten mad, and, though he couldn't remember what subsequently happened, he was afraid of what he had done or might have done to her.
The sheriff then contacted a psychologist and requested that he come to the office and interview defendant and help him regain his memory. The sheriff related what defendant had told him and asked the psychologist to talk to defendant and see if he could make any sense out of his story.
Further investigation of the premises revealed no clues to the puzzling situation. Early in the afternoon, defendant's roommate reported that at about 3:00 a. m. that morning he had been asleep on the couch when defendant and Sherry Johnson arrived at the apartment. The roommate observed defendant and Sherry go into the bedroom. He heard slaps, and later heard Sherry Johnson say she could not breathe. Before he fell asleep, he saw defendant walk naked to a closet area and then return to the bedroom. The roommate also told law officers that defendant had access to his car, that his car doors had been unlocked during the night, and that he couldn't account for approximately ten to twenty miles showing on his car's odometer.
At 4:00 p. m., while defendant was still at the sheriff's office and after his conversation with the psychologist, defendant was advised of his Miranda rights. Within an hour thereafter, in response to the sheriff's request that he help them find Sherry Johnson, defendant confessed to the officers that he had killed Sherry Johnson and told them where to find her body. The body was found in a nearby canyon and positively identified as that of Sherry Johnson. Defendant was advised that he would be charged with second degree murder. Two days later, on August 11, 1980, defendant was interviewed by another deputy. After he was advised of his rights, defendant gave the deputy a much more complete statement of the events of the night of the homicide.
Prior to trial, defendant moved to suppress all statements given by, and all evidence obtained from, the probation officer, the sheriff, and the deputy on the grounds that he had not been advised of his constitutional rights. His first argument on this appeal is that the trial court committed reversible error in denying that motion to suppress since he had not been read his Miranda rights early in the day. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). Under Miranda, a person in custody must be informed of his right to remain silent prior to interrogation. That warning is a prerequisite to the admissibility of any statement made by a defendant during custodial interrogation.
Miranda is not controlling here because the defendant was not "in custody" prior to being read his rights at about 4:00 p. m. That defend...
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