State v. Williams

• Decision Date: 03 May 2005
• Docket Number: No. ED 85402.,ED 85402.
• Citation: 163 S.W.3d 522
• Parties: STATE of Missouri, Appellant, v. Laura WILLIAMS, Respondent.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

163 S.W.3d 522

STATE of Missouri, Appellant, v. Laura WILLIAMS, Respondent.

No. ED 85402.

Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, Division Two.

May 3, 2005.

Anne C. McCartney, St. Louis, MO, for appellant.

Richard D. McNelley, St. Louis, MO, for respondent.

PATRICIA L. COHEN, Presiding Judge.

Introduction

The State of Missouri appeals from an Order of the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis granting Defendant Laura Williams's ("Defendant") motion to suppress two out-of-court statements, one oral and one written, that the State introduced in the criminal case against Defendant. We affirm in part and reverse in part. Because this is an interlocutory appeal that the State has brought pursuant to Section 547.200.1(3), R.S.Mo.2000, we remand for further proceedings.

Statement of Facts

Viewed in the light most favorable to the trial court's ruling, the evidence adduced at trial establishes that on June 6, 2003, City of St. Louis police officers Korey Kline and Martinous Walls drove to Defendant's residence at 3760 Gravois to execute a search warrant. While the officers were outside the residence conducting surveillance, Defendant exited the residence with her three-year-old daughter and left in her car. The officers followed Defendant for a couple of blocks before pulling her over. Thereafter, they informed Defendant of the search warrant, handcuffed Defendant pursuant to procedure, placed her and her daughter in the patrol car, and returned to the residence. Three other officers met them there.

Upon entering the residence, the officers placed Defendant on the floor of an interior hallway, still handcuffed. Two adults and two juveniles, including Defendant's son, were in the residence. Police informed them of the search warrant and placed the adults in handcuffs.

In the course of searching Defendant's bedroom, Officer Kline found four prescription bottles made out to other persons containing hydrocodone. Moreover, while searching a hall closet, Officer Walls uncovered a box containing four empty prescription bottles and a fifth bottle containing a red viscous liquid with crushed pills.

At trial, Officer Walls testified that he advised Defendant of what he found in the closet and,

[a]t that point [Defendant] spontaneously stated that she knows what I'm saying about the bottle and she said that she's not a drug dealer. That she buys the pills basically for a dollar a pill and she mixes them up to get high with them. She says that's what she does. She gets high. She doesn't deal drugs.

Following Defendant's statement, Officer Walls arrested her and advised her of her Miranda¹ rights for the first time.

After searching the house for approximately two hours, officers escorted Defendant to a patrol car and transported her to a police station. At the station, Defendant agreed to complete a "warning and waiver form." The form included, among other things, a listing of the Miranda warnings. Officer Walls testified at trial that he read Defendant her rights from the form and Defendant acknowledged her understanding of her rights, initialing them line by line. Defendant then proceeded to make and sign the following written statement:

I, Laura Williams, want to make the following statement. The pills that were found in my house is for my own personal use [sic]. I did not sell any type of drug. I buy peoples [sic] prescription [sic] for a dollar a pill.

Defendant was charged, under Section 195.202, R.S.Mo 2000, with two counts of the class C felony of possession of a controlled substance, hydrocodone and codeine.² Prior to trial, Defendant moved to suppress her oral and written statements, denying having made the oral statement and contending that her written confession was made in response to a promise by Officer Walls that she could go home and get help in a drug treatment program if she admitted to using the pills.

The trial court heard Defendant's motion to suppress prior to trial and initially denied it. However, during the State's case, the trial court reconsidered its earlier ruling on the motion. At a recess, the trial court raised its concerns to counsel that Defendant was not properly Mirandized before making her oral statement to police and requested authority on that issue. Upon further consideration, the trial court entered an order reversing its original denial of Defendant's motion to suppress and granting a mistrial:

The court finds that under the circumstances, the first oral statement was obtained by the police as the fruit of the functional equivalent of an `interrogation' which was not preceded by Miranda warnings. The confronting by police of a handcuffed defendant with illegal substances found in the search amounted, in this court's view, to the functional equivalent of an interrogation wherein a reasonable defendant might reasonably feel that they are being interrogated by police regarding the allegation of illegal use of a controlled substance. Since her oral statement was not preceded by Miranda warnings, it should be suppressed. Likewise, the written statement is the fruit of the tainted oral statement and should be suppressed.

The Court hereby grants a mistrial, on its own motion, absent any fault of either party, as there is no other adequate remedy to guarantee either party a fair trial.

This interlocutory appeal followed.

Standard of Review

We sustain a trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress unless there is insufficient evidence to support the ruling. State v. Clemons, 946 S.W.2d 206, 218 (Mo. banc 1997). In reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence, "we consider all evidence and reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to the trial court's ruling." Id. at 218. We will not reverse the trial court's judgment if it is "plausible in light of the record viewed in its entirety;" even where we believe we would have weighed the evidence differently had we been sitting as the trial court. State v. Thomas, 989 S.W.2d 605, 606 (Mo.App. E.D.1999) (internal citation omitted). When, however, the issue to be decided involves the constitutional protection against forced self-incrimination, we defer to the trial court's determinations of witness credibility and findings of fact, but consider the court's conclusions of law de novo. State v. Werner, 9 S.W.3d 590, 595 (Mo. banc 2000).

Discussion

In its sole point on appeal, the State argues that the trial court erred in suppressing Defendant's oral and written statements to police because: (1) Defendant made her oral statement spontaneously, not as a result of an interrogation, and, thus, Miranda warnings were unnecessary; and (2) Defendant made her written statement after she had been warned of and waived her Miranda rights. Moreover, the State posits that even if we were to find that the trial court properly suppressed Defendant's pre-warning, oral statement, her post-warning, written statement should not have been suppressed because any taint from the oral statement was too attenuated to affect her later written statement. We find that the trial court properly suppressed Defendant's oral statement, but agree with the State that the trial court improperly suppressed Defendant's written statement.

A. Oral Statement

The United States Supreme Court has explained that the Miranda safeguards apply whenever an individual is: (1) in custody; and (2) subjected to express questioning or its functional equivalent. Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 100 S.Ct. 1682, 64 L.Ed.2d 297 (1980). The Supreme Court defined "the functional equivalent" of questioning as "any words or actions on the part of the police ... that the police should know are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from the suspect." Id., 446 U.S. at 301, 100 S.Ct. at 1689-90 (emphasis added) (internal footnote omitted). In determining whether police action is the functional equivalent of questioning, the focus is on the perceptions of the suspect, not the intent of the officer. Id. The definition of interrogation extends "only to words or actions on the part of police officers that they should have known were reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response." Id. (emphasis in original).³

In this case, it is undisputed that Defendant was in custody at the time she made the oral statement to police. The issue is whether Defendant was "subjected to questioning or its functional equivalent" in violation of Miranda at the time she made the oral statement. See Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. at 298-301, 100 S.Ct. at 1688-90. The record before us contains sufficient evidence from which the trial court could have reasonably concluded that Defendant made her oral statement in response to the "functional equivalent" of questioning by Officer Walls.

Here, the evidence before the trial court was that Officer Walls confronted Defendant about the controlled substances he found in her closet as she sat handcuffed on a hallway floor, in the vicinity of, among others, her two children and five police officers. While the trial court found no evidence of coercion, it can be fairly concluded, under the circumstances, that Officer Walls should have known that confronting Defendant about the controlled substances was reasonably likely to elicit an inculpatory or exculpatory response from Defendant and, thus, that Defendant was subjected to the "functional equivalent" of questioning. Moreover, it can be fairly inferred from Defendant's oral statement, as recounted by Officer Walls at trial, that Defendant perceived that Officer Walls was interrogating her about her use of the controlled substances. Indeed, according to Officer Walls's testimony, Defendant, upon being confronted by Officer Walls, stated, inter alia, that she knew what he was "saying about the bottle" and that she was not a drug dealer. Accordingly, we find that the trial court did not err in suppressing Defendant's oral statement.

B. Written Statement

Having determined that the trial court...