Wiley v. State, AF-168
| Decision Date | 22 February 1983 |
| Docket Number | No. AF-168,AF-168 |
| Parties | Queen Elizabeth WILEY, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Clifford L. Davis, Tallahassee, for appellant.
Jim Smith, Atty. Gen., Gregory C. Smith, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.
Queen Elizabeth Wiley was indicted for first degree murder by the Leon County Grand Jury on 28 May 1980. After the trial jury returned a guilty verdict on the lesser included offense of aggravated battery, Wiley instituted this appeal, contending that the trial court erred in several respects. We affirm.
Patricia Hill was killed in Tallahassee on 30 July 1977. Her battered corpse was found the following morning in an abandoned lot behind the Ebony Club, a local night spot. The Tallahassee Police Department immediately initiated an intense investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death, and as a result of subsequently developed leads, Queen Elizabeth Wiley became a suspect in the crime.
Authorities learned that Wiley was in Crestview visiting her sister, and on 25 August 1977, Officer Crawley, an investigator with the Tallahassee Police Department, went there to meet with her. Crawley recorded their conversation on tape, and the record shows that while she denied any involvement in the crime, she did admit being at the Ebony Club on the night in question. When Crawley spoke with Wiley again on 9 September 1977, she repudiated her statement of 25 August, but still denied any involvement. Following this last conversation, police were stymied in their efforts to solve the crime. No further developments surfaced for a period of almost two and one-half years.
The next break in the case occurred on 22 February 1980. On that date, Wiley, incarcerated in Broward County on another charge, contacted law enforcement officials and advised them that she wanted to make a statement about the Patricia Hill case. She told authorities that thinking of the case in Tallahassee was causing her to lose sleep at night and that she wanted to remember but that she was having difficulty recalling the details of the events of that evening. At the suggestion of one of the matrons at the Broward County Correctional Institute, Wiley asked authorities to place her under hypnosis in the hope that this technique would help revive her faltering memory.
Pursuant to her request, Wiley was placed under hypnosis on 7 March 1980 by a police officer trained in the art of hypnosis. She gave three statements that day--one prior to the hypnosis session, one while under hypnosis, and one following the hypnosis session. In none of those statements did Wiley say anything tending to incriminate herself other than admitting that she was at the Ebony Club on the night of Patricia Hill's death. This fact was already known to police because of her statement of 25 August 1977.
Thereafter, the Tallahassee police began to receive a series of unsolicited letters from Wiley. The first of these letters was dated 7 May 1980, and in that letter she declared that she would no longer cooperate in the investigation of the case. However, in two other letters dated 8 May and 9 May respectively, she admitted striking the victim repeatedly about the head and upper body with a nail-studded board and with her fists on the night in question. On 10 May 1980, Wiley was brought to the Tallahassee Police Department where she again admitted beating the victim. Other information obtained from Wiley's confession was consistent with evidence found at the scene the morning after the victim's death. Wiley was subsequently charged with first degree murder.
Prior to trial, Wiley filed a motion to suppress all of her letters and statements made subsequent to the hypnosis session of 7 March, contending that they were the product of psychological coercion. Specifically, she maintained that the procedures used in the hypnosis session were so suggestive that her will was overcome, that all statements made while under hypnosis were therefore inadmissible, and that the subsequent confessions were inadmissible because they constituted "fruit of the poisonous tree."
At the suppression hearing, the trial court heard testimony from Wiley's expert, Dr. Charles Madsen, a noted psychologist. Dr. Madsen challenged the procedures used by the police hypnotist in various respects and concluded that they were overly suggestive. While he suggested that the subsequent confessions could have been the result of the hypnotist's procedures, he admitted on cross-examination that this suggestion was only a possibility and that the hypnosis may have had nothing whatsoever to do with the subsequent confessions. After hearing all of the evidence, the trial court denied Wiley's motion to suppress, finding that the statements were freely and voluntarily made.
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