Wand v. Boughton
| Decision Date | 11 August 2020 |
| Docket Number | 18-cv-520-slc |
| Parties | ARMIN WAND, III, Petitioner, v. GARY BOUGHTON, Warden, Wisconsin Secure Prison Facility, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Wisconsin |
Armin Wand III has filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. For the reasons stated in this order, the petition is denied.
In the early morning hours of September 7, 2012, a fire ravaged Wand's home, killing three of his sons and causing severe burns to his pregnant wife, who later lost the fetus. Wand, who was home at the time, escaped virtually unharmed. Based on Wand's activities during and after the fire as described by witnesses, investigators began to suspect that Wand and his brother, Jeremy Wand, had started the fire. After lengthy interviews with investigators on September 7, 8, and 9, 2012, Wand-who has a mild intellectual impairment-ultimately confessed that he had started the fire in the hopes of killing his family and collecting about $150,000 in life insurance proceeds. In response to Wand's pretrial motions to suppress, the circuit court held that Wand's statements on September 8 had been coerced by the investigators' promises of leniency combined with Wand's characteristics, and it ruled that Wand's statements on September 9 were voluntary and untainted by any prior coercion.
Wand subsequently entered guilty pleas to intentional homicide charges pursuant to a plea agreement, and the court sentenced him to consecutive life sentences. Wand later moved to withdraw his plea, arguing that he had new evidencing showing that his post-arrest statements were involuntary and unreliable. After the circuit court denied the motion without a hearing, Wand appealed, challenging the court's original suppression ruling and its denial of his motion for plea withdrawal. The Wisconsin Court of Appeals rejected Wand's arguments and affirmed his conviction. The Wisconsin Supreme Court denied Wand's petition for review.
Having exhausted his state court remedies, Wand now seeks federal habeas relief on the ground that his confession was coerced and is unreliable. As explained below, Wand is not entitled to this relief.
The facts are not in dispute:
At 3:10 a.m. on September 7, 2012, a fire broke out at the Wand family's home in Argyle, Wisconsin, where Wand lived with his pregnant wife, Sharon, and four young children: Allen, age 7; Jeffrey, age 5; Joseph, age 3; and Jessica, age 2. All three of Wand's sons were killed in the fire, as was Sharon's fetus. Sharon suffered severe burns. Wand and his daughter, Jessica, were unharmed.
From their investigation at the scene and eyewitness statements, investigators began to suspect that Wand and his brother Jeremy had set the fire. On September 7 and September 8, 2012, Special Agents from the Wisconsin Department of Justice's Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) interviewed Wand in a conference room near the University of Wisconsin Hospital's burn unit, where Sharon was being treated. A third interview with Wand took place on September 9 at the Lafayette County Jail. During the September 8 and 9 interviews, both of which were recorded, Wand admitted his involvement in setting the fire.
Special Agents James Sielehr and Brad Montgomery conducted the September 8 interview. During the interview, Wand said it was Jeremy's idea to start the fire, they did it in the hopes of getting insurance proceeds to help pay for Jeremy's lawyer in an unrelated case, and that Jeremy was supposed to wake Sharon and the kids up after the fire started. The interview ended when the agents read Wand his Miranda warnings and placed him under arrest, at which point Wand said he didn't want to talk anymore. However, Wand attempted to continue to talk with the agents, who responded by clarifying that if he wanted to talk with them further it would have to be at another time and location. The agents gave Wand their business cards and made arrangements for his transport to the Lafayette County Jail.
While waiting for the transport, the agents made the following two statements to Wand:
The next morning, on September 9, Wand placed calls to both Sielehr's and Montgomery's cell phones from the jail, but neither agent answered. That afternoon, Special Agent Lourdes Fernandez went to the jail to visit Wand at Sielehr's request. Fernandez was accompanied by Special Agent Michael Reimer.
The two agents met with Wand in an interview room at the jail. Wand told them that Sielehr and Montgomery had advised him that if he wished to talk to them further, he could call them, and that was why he had called the agents that morning. Fernandez and Reimer read Wand his Miranda rights; after reading each right they asked Wand if he understood, and heconfirmed that he did. The agents then asked Wand to tell them in his own words what he understood his rights to be. After confirming that Wand understood his rights and was willing to answer questions or make a statement, the agents had Wand sign his name on a waiver of rights form, which occurred at 2:29 p.m.
Reimer asked Wand why he had called Sielehr and Montgomery. Wand responded that he wanted to talk about the comments that Montgomery had made after the interview the day before. Wand said it was not true that he had kissed someone other than his wife, and he explained that he was walking with Jeremy at the hospital because Wand could not see without his glasses. After covering those topics, Reimer asked Wand if the agents could ask him some other questions, and Wand agreed.
Reimer began by asking Wand if he understood the difference between right and wrong, and asked Wand to give an example of something that would be wrong. Wand replied that "the fire was wrong." When asked to clarify what he meant by that, Wand said that it was wrong for him and Jeremy to "take part in" the fire. Fernandez then told Wand that "sometimes good people make bad decisions" and that this was Wand's chance to own up to his decision and tell them what happened. Reimer told Wand that Jeremy was at the jail and had been talking with investigators, that Jeremy had "done the right thing," and that the investigators understood that "mistakes were made." Reimer told Wand that he didn't know if Wand was a bad person who wanted people to die, or if things just "got out of hand." Wand responded that he didn't want the boys to die or his wife to be in the burn unit. Reimer replied that, if it was okay with Wand, they wanted to start over from the beginning and have Wand tell them the truth about what happened.
Wand agreed. He explained that he and Jeremy had set fire to the house because Jeremy needed money for a lawyer and Wand was struggling financially. Wand detailed for the agents his income, his debts, and his monthly bills, explaining that he often had to pay less than the full amount due each month. Wand told the agents his electricity was due to be shut off the following day unless he paid $430, and that he was supposed to pay $327 to his cell phone carrier by the 8th. Wand said that his financial situation had been bad for about six months. The agents asked Wand how the fire had been started and what he had done before and after.
The interview ended around 9:00 p.m. Wand was provided with three breaks during the interview. At one point, when the agents challenged Wand's claim that the fire had been started with nothing more than a cigarette lighter and paper, Wand reported that he had grabbed a gas can from the garage and poured it on the fire. When the agents questioned how Wand could have done this without Wand suffering any burns other than some singed hair, Wand acknowledged that he had lied about the gas can because the agents didn't seem to believe him about how the fire got started.
After the agents admonished Ward that all they wanted was the truth, Wand reverted to his earlier claim that he had been sleeping when the fire broke out and that Jeremy was never there. The agents responded that they knew that wasn't true because they had talked to Jeremy, who had admitted his involvement. They pressed Wand to tell the truth. Wand then implicated himself and his brother in setting the fires. Towards the end of this interview, Wand admitted that he had intentionally set the fire in order to collect on his wife and children's life insurance policies and to put an end to his financial struggles.
The State charged Wand with three counts of first-degree intentional homicide, three counts of attempted first-degree intentional homicide, and one count of arson, later adding a charge of first-degree intentional homicide of an unborn child.
In a pretrial motion, Wand moved to suppress his September 8 and 9 statements as involuntary. (Wand conceded that the statements he had provided on September 7 were voluntary.) The circuit court held an evidentiary hearing at which Sielehr, Montgomery, and Fernandez testified, as did several other law enforcement witnesses.
Wand presented his own testimony, along with testimony from Dr. Kent Berney, a psychologist. Berney testified that he had examined Wand and administered a number of tests to evaluate his mental functioning. From those test scores, Berney found that Wand had an IQ of 67, indicating that he was mildly mentally retarded. Berney also found that Wand had limited deductive reasoning ability. Berney offered his opinion that Wand's low IQ, challenged reasoning skills, and "compliant" personality style, along with the fact that he had poor vision and was without his glasses when questioned, ...
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