State v. Walton

• Decision Date: 15 December 1976
• Docket Number: No. 59042,59042
• Citation: 247 N.W.2d 736
• Parties: STATE of Iowa, Appellee, v. Estell (NMN) WALTON, Appellant.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

Page 736

247 N.W.2d 736

STATE of Iowa, Appellee, v. Estell (NMN) WALTON, Appellant.

No. 59042.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Dec. 15, 1976.

Kjas T. Long, of Charles F. Hinton, Jr., Law Firm, Waterloo, for appellant.

Richard C. Turner, Atty. Gen., Mark S. Beckman, Asst. Atty. Gen., and David H. Correll, County Atty., for appellee.

Heard by MOORE, C.J., and MASON, UHLENHOPP, REYNOLDSON and McCORMICK, JJ.

McCORMICK, Justice.

Defendant Estell Walton appeals his conviction and sentence for second-degree murder in violation of § 690.3, The Code. We reverse because we find merit in two of his six assignments of error. We hold the trial court erred in failing to conduct a hearing to determine the admissibility of statements of defendant and in overruling his hearsay objection to a hospital record.

This appeal is the latest chapter in the State's effort to prosecute defendant for the alleged murder of Henry Collins. He was brought to trial once before, but the trial was interrupted by a competency proceeding because of doubts about defendant's sanity raised during the trial. A jury found him competent to stand trial, and thereafter he tendered a guilty plea, resulting in a conviction and sentence for second-degree murder. He appealed and we reversed because the record showed an unresolved reasonable doubt as to his competency to plead guilty. See State v. Walton, 228 N.W.2d 21 (Iowa 1975).

After remand, defendant elected to plead not guilty and go to trial again. As a result of this trial, he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. This appeal followed.

Because we reverse on evidentiary rulings, we need not detail all of the facts. However, a brief outline will help fix the context in which the challenged evidentiary rulings were made.

In August 1972, defendant and Henry Collins argued over ownership of a five dollar bill discovered by them at about the same time on a sidewalk in front of a Waterloo bar. Henry Collins took the money over defendant's protest.

About one week later defendant had an altercation with Collins in the Keg tavern in Waterloo arising from defendant's claim to the five dollars. A girl friend of Collins and a third person may have been involved. Defendant subsequently contacted law enforcement officials on several occasions in an effort to get them to intervene in some way in his dispute with Collins. The officials did not involve themselves in the matter.

Shortly before 1:00 a.m. on Sunday October 1, 1972, defendant was in the Keg tavern drinking beer when Henry Collins and his girl friend entered. Defendant left the tavern, went to his automobile parked nearby, removed a rifle from the vehicle, loaded it, and returned with it to the tavern. He walked through the door, raised the weapon, and shot Collins in the side from a distance of several feet. Then he walked to where Collins had fallen, stood over him, and fired a second shot into his head. Collins was dead at the scene.

Defendant left the tavern and went home where he was arrested at about 3:00 a.m. After being taken to the police station he was interrogated by Captain Frank Bemisdarfer in the presence of an FBI agent. After being orally advised of his Miranda rights, defendant made certain alleged oral admissions in response to questioning by Captain Bemisdarfer. Then he executed a written waiver of his Miranda rights and, upon further interrogation, made an alleged oral confession which was recorded by a court reporter. The court reporter's transcript shows the interrogation started with this exchange:

Q. You know we are not violating your rights in any way, you understand that? A. Thank you.

At the conclusion of the interrogation, the following colloquy occurred:

Q. I want you to tell us we haven't mistreated you in any way. A. Not yet you haven't.

Q. We are not going to, and we have no reason to and I think you have known me long enough to know I haven't and I am not going to. A. Thank you.

Q. We don't want you or your brother to say we did mistreat you because you are going to get help and you are going to get what help the courts feel you have coming. A. Thank you.

The interrogation then ended.

The county attorney called Lloyd Spencer, a Waterloo psychiatrist, to the police station at about 9:00 a.m. to examine defendant. Dr. Spencer testified at trial as a defense witness. He said he believed from his examination of defendant that when he shot Collins defendant was acting under a schizophrenic delusion that Collins was going to kill him.

The defense was predicated on a claim of insanity. The State sought to show defendant was calm when he shot Collins and lucid when interrogated later. The defense offered evidence that defendant was agitated at the time of the shooting and acted in a manner consistent with his psychosis when interrogated later. Considerable evidence was introduced by both parties regarding defendant's mental condition. It was the main issue at trial.

I. Failure of the trial court to hold a Jackson v. Denno hearing. Defendant objected during trial to the admissibility of the statements he made during interrogation. However, he did not request a hearing out of the presence of the jury in which the admissibility of those statements could be determined. The trial court simply overruled defendant's objections without conducting such a hearing. Defendant, represented now by different counsel, contends the court erred in failing to hold a hearing on the issue of admissibility of the statements. In resistance the State asserts defendant's objections were inadequate to raise issues of admissibility requiring a hearing.

After the jury was impaneled but before commencement of the State's evidence, the trial court met with counsel to discuss waiver of defense foundation objections to certain State exhibits, many of which had been used in the first trial. When exhibit X, the court reporter's transcript of defendant's alleged confession, was discussed, defense counsel said:

We would object to exhibit X, Mr. Walton's statement, on the grounds that at the time he gave the statement he was not able to understand the nature and quality of giving the statement, that while the statement refers (to the fact) * * * that he was read orally his rights, his answer of 'Thank you' when (the officer) said that we are not violating your rights indicates that Mr. Walton did not understand the nature of his rights, and as such it violates his right to remain silent under the fifth amendment (of) the Constitution and under the statutes of the State of Iowa.

The court made no ruling at that time.

At trial, when Captain Bemisdarfer was asked to relate defendant's oral statements, the following colloquy occurred:

Defense counsel: Your honor, I am going to object to this as being a violation of defendant's rights. There is no showing that he understood the nature and quality of the warning, and it's a violation of (the) fifth amendment and fourteenth amendment and I think it's * * * Article I, section 6, of the (Iowa Constitution).

The Court: Do you want that objection to stand to this line of questioning?

Defense Counsel: Yes. * * *

The Court: All right. The objection may precede each question in this line of interrogation, and I will overrule it and permit the answers.

When exhibit X was offered, defendant repeated his objection, and the trial court overruled it. Defendant also made substantially the same objection when the written Miranda waiver was offered as an exhibit.

Contrary to the position taken by the State, we find that defendant's objections were sufficient to challenge admissibility of his statements by raising issues regarding the validity of his purported waiver of Miranda rights and their voluntariness. State v. Cooper, 217 N.W.2d 589, 594--595 (Iowa 1974). Therefore we must decide whether the trial court erred in failing to hold a hearing to resolve the issues raised by the objections.

We have consistently held that when issues are raised regarding the validity of a Miranda waiver and voluntariness of alleged inculpatory statements resulting from custodial interrogation, the defendant is entitled to a fair hearing out of the presence of the jury at which both the underlying factual issues and the legal issues 'are actually and reliably determined.' State v. Cooper, supra, at 593; see State v. Holland, 258 Iowa 206, 214--216, 138 N.W.2d 86, 90--91 (1965).

This right stems from the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908 (1964). There the Court held:

'* * * (A) defendant in a criminal case is deprived of due process of law if his conviction is founded, in whole or in part, upon an involuntary confession * * *. Equally clear is the defendant's constitutional right at some stage in the proceedings to object to the use of the confession and to have a fair hearing and a reliable determination on the issue of voluntariness, a determination uninfluenced by the truth or falsity of the confession.' 378 U.S. at 376--377, 84 S.Ct. at 1780--1781, 12 L.Ed.2d at 915--916.

In a Jackson hearing the State must prove by a preponderance of evidence that the alleged confession was made by the defendant after an effective waiver of his Miranda rights and that it was voluntary. These are separate issues although the concept of voluntariness is involved in both. State v. Swanson, 228 N.W.2d 101, 104--105 (Iowa 1975).

An understanding of the dimensions of the right is a necessary prelude to resolution of the present dispute. Those dimensions are defined in Gladden v. Unsworth, 396 F.2d 373, 376--377 (9 Cir. 1968), as follows:

'The precise constitutional right in question here is not * * * the right to exclude from evidence a confession or admission not voluntarily given. Rather it is the right to exclude from evidence a confession or admission which, upon being challenged as involuntary, has not first been determined by the trial...