State v. Triplett

• Decision Date: 13 November 1956
• Docket Number: No. 48864,48864
• Citation: 79 N.W.2d 391,248 Iowa 339
• Parties: STATE of Iowa, Appellee, v. Ernest TRIPLETT, Appellant.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

Page 391

79 N.W.2d 391

248 Iowa 339

STATE of Iowa, Appellee, v. Ernest TRIPLETT, Appellant.

No. 48864.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Nov. 13, 1956.

Rehearing Denied Jan. 18, 1957.

Thomas O. Tacy, Council Bluffs, for appellant.

Dayton Countryman, Atty. Gen., Raphael R. R. Dvorak and Dudley C. Lowry, Asst. Attys. Gen., William S. Sturges, County Atty., Le Mars, and Robert E. Beebe, Special Prosecutor, Sioux City, for appellee.

THOMPSON, Chief Justice.

Jimmy Bremmers, an eight-year old boy, disappeared from his home in Sioux City about 8 p. m. on August 31, 1954. His badly decomposed body was found in a field in Plymouth County on September 29th following. Medical testimony at the trial showed that the cause of death was two severe wounds in the head, each of which indented the skull. These wounds, according to the expert testimony, could not have been made by a blow from a hand or fist, but must have been caused by striking with a wooden or metal instrument.

The defendant had been in Sioux City for only a few weeks at the time Jimmy Bremmers disappeared. He was on August 31 employed as a door-to-door salesman or solicitor of business by a music store. His duty was in large part at least to interest parents in music lessons for their children. He had been working in the neighborhood where Jimmy Bremmers resided with his parents on August 31. He drove an automobile owned by his employer, and had the use of this in the evenings after his working day had ended. On September 2nd, when the disappearance of the Bremmers boy had become generally known and a considerable search instituted, the police department of Sioux City received word that a salesman for the defendant's employer had been soliciting business in the Bremmers neighborhood on August 31. Officers thereupon called upon the employer, learned that the defendant was the employe who had been in that part of Sioux City, and took him to the police station for questioning.

The defendant was held in the station without charge filed for about sixteen days, during which time he was questioned daily, but apparently not at great length on any one day, about his knowledge of the disappearance of the boy. During this time also, one Joseph Matousec, or Matosek, a private detective in Sioux City, called at the jail and was permitted to question the defendant. Matousec was not employed at that time by anyone, nor was he acting for the police or other authorities or at their request. At the time of the trial he was in the employ of defendant's attorney. When he talked with the defendant at the jail, he told him he thought if he did commit the crime, 'very possibly the only thing they could do to him would be to commit him to Cherokee (a state mental hospital) because of his mental condition'. The witness was at this time no more than a volunteer investigator, having no connection with any law enforcement authority.

The defendant remained in the custody of the police without charge filed until about September 18, when he was transferred to the mental hospital at Cherokee upon his own application. Testimony of police officers is that he said he thought they might there be able to aid him by treating him for syphilis. There is also testimony that on three or four occasions he said he did not want a lawyer; that he wanted to help solve the Bremmers disappearance. There is also testimony that on September 4th, when all that was known of the matter was that the boy was missing, the defendant said he was interested in cooperating in every way in clearing up 'this murder'; and when asked why he referred to it as a 'murder' he made no reply.

While the defendant was at the Cherokee hospital the body of Jimmy Bremmers was found. Thereupon he was taken from the hospital by police officers and to the place where the body was found. The roadway here is considerably below the level of the field in which the body lay, a short distance from the fence. It was not visible from the road. When the car stopped, there is evidence he at once went in a diagonal direction up the bank to a point outside the fence nearest to the body, without direction from anyone. When he saw the body he turned pale and said 'What is that?'

After viewing the body the defendant was taken to the Sioux City police station and kept there for a few days. On October 1 he was visited at the jail by Stanley Corbett, president of the Sioux City Bar Association. Mr. Corbett advised him that if he was being held against his will he was entitled to seek a writ of habeas corpus and the bar association would furnish him counsel. Mr. Corbett testifies: 'He said he was not held against his will and he wanted to help the police solve the murder. I told him the bar association would furnish him counsel but he said he did not want to leave the jail or the hospital, whichever place he might be.' On cross-examination the witness said that the defendant gave two reasons for staying there: he had no other place to go and he wanted to stay there and work for the police chief in attempting to solve 'this murder'.

The defendant was then returned to the Cherokee institution, where on October 6th he confessed to the commission of the crime. The confession was obtained by Dr. Azordegan, one of the hospital physicians. Most of the material questioning was done by Dr. Azordegan, in the presence of police officers and of one Bill Sanguin, a hospital attendant who operated a tape recording device. This recording was upon the trial played to the jury, and later a juror was instructed in its operation and it was taken to the jury room upon its retirement for deliberation upon its verdict.

While the defendant was in the custody of the police and at the hospital he at all times denied guilt until the date of the alleged confession. There is evidence, however, that he admitted to the police officers that he had on August 31st while in the general neighborhood of the Bremmers home seen a boy answering Jimmy's description, and that in the evening he had picked up the boy, who rode on the running board of defendant's car a short distance to the Bremmers home; and that the boy said he was going to run away. No blood stains or finger prints were found on the car, and there were no blood stains on defendant's clothing which he had worn on the day in question.

I. We turn to a consideration of the errors assigned for reversal. The first is that the confession was clearly involuntary as a matter of law, and should not have been admitted in evidence. The defendant urges strenuously that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was violated because he was held so long without a charge filed, and he was denied due process thereby. Of course the length of time he was held in custody without being taken before a magistrate to answer to a charge duly filed was much too long. Such a practice cannot be approved. But we have held that this, in itself, does not render a confession involuntary. It is an indicia of violation of constitutional rights but not conclusive proof. We pointed out in State v. Archer, 244 Iowa 1045, 1058, 58 N.W.2d 44, 51, that holding a suspect illegally makes a confession obtained during this period of illegality inadmissible in the federal courts. McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 340, 63 S.Ct. 608, 612, 87 L.Ed. 819. But this is a matter of practice rather than of constitutional right. State v. Archer, supra; Gallegos v. Nebraska, 342 U.S. 55, 72 S.Ct. 141, 145, 96 L.Ed. 86. Under the circumstances here, where there is substantial evidence that the defendant preferred to stay in the jail or the mental hospital, and refused an offer of legal aid when it was tendered to him several days before the confession was made, we cannot say the detention without charge did more than make a question of lack of due process through involuntariness of the confession, for the jury.

The defendant does not testify or claim that any threats or promises were made by the police. We have said that the witness Matousec had no official connection; in fact at the time of the trial he was employed by the defendant. What he said to the defendant about escaping with no more than some time spent in the mental hospital did not profess to come from anyone in authority. It was no more than speculation, a volunteered opinion not binding upon anyone.

There is testimony from the defendant that Dr. Azordegan told him, prior to the making of the purported confession, that 'You are in here for being crazy, you are going to be in here for the rest of your life'. Also that the doctor said if he admitted the crime 'it would help me out and he would get me finally on a job over there, and that I wouldn't be in there any more than about two years'. The defendant also suspected the doctor may have administered some 'medicine' which made him sleepy and 'I didn't feel natural'. However, there is no other evidence of the administering of drugs and we think other testimony sufficient to make at least a jury question of defendant's normal mental condition so that he understood fully the nature of the confession. Turning to the alleged promises made by the doctor, no one other than the defendant claims to have heard them, and since the record shows Dr. Azordegan was at the time of the trial out of the United States there could be no denial. But the jury was not bound to take the defendant's testimony as true, even in the absence of contradiction. We have repeatedly so held. In Schulte v. Ideal Food Products Company, 203 Iowa 676, 677, 678, 213 N.W. 431, 432, we said:

'We have consistently held that a mere failure to produce direct contradiction to the testimony of a witness does not necessarily entitle such testimony to be deemed as true. It must still stand the test of credibility, in the light of all the circumstances surrounding the transaction. This is particularly true in those cases where, from its very nature, no evidence is available...