State v. Smith
| Decision Date | 18 May 1992 |
| Citation | 834 S.W.2d 915 |
| Parties | STATE of Tennessee, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Hosie Van SMITH, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
David B. Hill, Newport, for defendant-appellant.
Charles W. Burson, Atty. Gen. & Reporter and C. Anthony Daughtrey, Asst. Atty. Gen., Nashville, for plaintiff-appellee.
The primary issue raised on this appeal is whether the defendant's confession, obtained after proper administration of Miranda warnings, is inadmissible at trial because a prior incriminating statement was obtained in violation of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article I, Sec. 9 of the Tennessee Constitution. The initial incriminating statement made by the defendant, Hosie Smith, before any Miranda warning was given to him was suppressed. A later confession was obtained after a search had revealed cocaine in Smith's possession and after the police had read Smith his Miranda rights. The admissibility of the confession was challenged on the grounds it was involuntary and tainted as the fruit of the first unwarned incriminating statement given in violation of the Federal and State Constitutions. After the trial court overruled the defendant's motion to suppress his confession, Smith was convicted of possessing more than 30 grams of cocaine with the intent to deliver, sentenced to 30 years incarceration, and fined $10,000.00. The conviction was affirmed by the Court of Criminal Appeals, after that court determined that the confession was given knowingly and voluntarily, and was thus admissible at trial. We likewise conclude that the confession was knowing and voluntary on the grounds set out herein and, therefore, affirm.
On October 28, 1988, Officers Mike Hannan and Terry Thomas of the Tennessee Highway Patrol were traveling west on I-40 in Cocke County when they clocked a Ford Taurus station wagon traveling east at 84 miles per hour in a 65 miles-per-hour zone. As a result, the officers turned around in the median and, at approximately 5:20 p.m., stopped the vehicle that was being driven by Kellie Alisha Jones and in which the defendant was riding.
After stopping the car, Officer Hannan approached the driver's side of the vehicle and asked Jones for her license and registration. Jones was able to produce her license, but was unable to find the vehicle's registration. When Officer Hannan asked Jones to whom the car belonged, she responded that her mother, Renee Preston, owned the car.
Because it was raining, Officer Hannan then asked Jones to exit her vehicle and accompany him to his squad car while he wrote out a traffic citation. Jones agreed and exited her vehicle, after asking Smith to keep looking in the glove compartment for the vehicle's registration.
While Smith was looking for the registration, Officer Thomas, who had approached the passenger's side of the car during Officer Hannan's conversation with Jones, asked Smith questions regarding ownership of the car and the couple's destination. Smith told Officer Thomas that the car belonged to a friend of his, and that he and Jones were headed to Fayetteville, North Carolina. When Officer Thomas asked if he was going to Fayetteville on vacation, Smith responded in the negative and stated that he was going there to stay.
After this brief conversation with Smith, Officer Thomas returned to the squad car and sat in the back seat. While waiting for radio verification of Jones's license and the vehicle's registration, both officers continued to question Jones. Although she stated that the car belonged to her mother, Renee Preston, Jones could not explain the difference in the last names after answering "no" to Officer Hannan's question of whether her mother had remarried. In response to questions about the couple's destination, Jones said they were headed to Fayetteville for a one-week vacation. When asked who her passenger was, Jones stated that it was her boyfriend, but she could only give the name "Pumpkin" in response to questions about his name.
Because Smith and Jones appeared to be extremely nervous and because of the inconsistencies in their responses to questioning, the officers became suspicious and asked Jones if she was carrying any illegal items, weapons, or contraband. When Jones denied knowledge of such cargo, both officers asked her if they could have permission to look in the vehicle and its contents. At the time she was asked this question, the officers told her that she could refuse, but Jones agreed to let the officers look through the car.
While Officer Hannan was completing the traffic citation, Officer Thomas re-approached the station wagon on the passenger side and conversed again with Smith. At this time, Officer Thomas asked Smith if there were any illegal items in the car. Smith denied knowledge of any such contraband. Thomas then advised Smith that Jones had given the officers permission to look through the vehicle and that if anything illegal were found in the car, ownership of the illegal items would be attributed to both of them.
Although Smith denied having knowledge of anything illegal being in the car, Thomas asked him again. After hesitating, Smith said, "Yes, it was probably a hot load." Thomas then asked, "By a hot load, do you mean cash, marijuana, or cocaine, one of the three?" Smith responded, "Probably."
Following this conversation, Officer Thomas began searching the station wagon. He searched the front and back seat areas before attempting to open and search the back storage compartment area. When he was unable to open the back of the station wagon with the key from the ignition, Officer Thomas crawled over the back seat into the rear storage area and discovered a locked indentured compartment.
Because he was unable to open the indentured compartment with the ignition key and because it was raining heavily, Officer Thomas asked Jones if they could take the car to a service station to break open the compartment. Jones agreed and at approximately 6:00 p.m., Officer Thomas drove the station wagon to the service station after placing Smith in the back seat of the patrol car to ride with Officer Hannan and Jones. At the service station, with Smith still in the back seat of the patrol car, the officers broke open the compartment and found a cardboard box containing 10,000 grams (22 pounds) of 94 percent pure cocaine wrapped in 10 individual packets. Upon discovering the cocaine, at approximately 6:25 p.m., the officers placed both Smith and Jones under arrest, read them their Miranda rights, and transported them to Highway Patrol Headquarters.
At 9:45 p.m., Smith was questioned by Officer Lonnie Hood. Before he was questioned, Smith was read his Miranda rights again and signed a written waiver of those rights. During the course of the interrogation, Smith gave Officer Hood an incriminating account of his employment to drive the station wagon with Jones from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to Fayetteville, North Carolina. This statement was reduced to writing by Officer Hood and signed by Smith.
Following a suppression hearing, the trial court held that Smith's statements about the vehicle containing a "hot load" prior to his being Mirandized were inadmissible. The trial court held, however, that the cocaine was admissible at trial as the fruit of a valid consensual search, and that the later written confession signed by Smith was admissible because it had been given freely, knowingly, and voluntarily.
The case proceeded to trial before a jury and Smith was convicted of possessing cocaine in excess of 30 grams with the intent to deliver, in violation of Tenn.Code Ann. Sec. 39-6-417 (1982 & Supp.1988). The jury fined Smith $10,000.00, and the court sentenced him to serve 30 years in the Department of Corrections as a Range I offender.
The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence.
The dispositive issue in this case involves the admissibility of the confession given to Officer Hood and signed by Smith at the Highway Patrol Headquarters. The defendant contends that the confession was inadmissible because it was obtained in violation of his rights under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Sec. 9 of the Tennessee Constitution. Smith argues that his waiver of rights and his statement to Officer Hood were not voluntary, because they were tainted by Officer Thomas' conduct in first questioning Smith on the side of the interstate without administering Miranda warnings.
The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which is applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 6, 84 S.Ct. 1489, 1492, 12 L.Ed.2d 653, 658 (1964), provides that "[n]o person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." The corresponding provision of the Tennessee Constitution provides "[t]hat in all criminal prosecutions, the accused ... shall not be compelled to give evidence against himself." Tenn.Const. art. I., Sec. 9. Although these provisions are not identical, this Court has previously declined to hold that protection under the state constitution is broader than that of the federal constitution merely because the language of the two provisions is not the same. Delk v. State, 590 S.W.2d 435, 440 (Tenn.1979). This observation, however, does not foreclose the possibility that the state constitutional provision might be applied more broadly than its federal counterpart, based upon considerations other than, and in addition to, the difference in terminology.
Prior to the decision in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), the admissibility of an accused's in-custody statements depended on whether the statements were "voluntary" within the meaning of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See, e.g., Haynes v. Washington, 373 U.S. 503, 83 S.Ct. 1336, 10...
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TABLE OF CASES
...(1982), 444 Smith v. Robbins, 528 U.S. 259 (2000), 544, 545 Smith, Commonwealth v., 593 N.E.2d 1288 (Mass. 1992), 472 Smith, State v., 834 S.W.2d 915 (Tenn. 1992), 472 Smith, State v., 90 P.3d 221 (Ariz. App. 2004), 152 Sokolow, United States v., 490 U.S. 1 (1989), 270, 271, 276, 277, 285 S......
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Table of Cases
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