Williams v. State

• Decision Date: 17 June 1976
• Docket Number: No. 974S186,974S186
• Citation: 348 N.E.2d 623,264 Ind. 664
• Parties: Roosevelt WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee.
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

Page 623

348 N.E.2d 623

264 Ind. 664

Roosevelt WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee.

No. 974S186.

Supreme Court of Indiana.

June 17, 1976.

James R. Bielefeld, Crown Point, for appellant.

Theodore L. Sandak, Atty. Gen., Robert E. Dwyer, Deputy Atty. Gen., Indianapolis, for appellee.

DeBRULER, Justice.

Appellant, Roosevelt Williams, was indicted for Murder in perpetration of a robbery, Ind.Code § 35--13--4--1, Burns § 10--3401 (1956). In a trial by jury, appellant was found guilty as charged and sentenced to life imprisonment. He appeals on three grounds: (1) that the court erred in overruling his motion to suppress his confession, thereby permitting it to be admitted into evidence; (2) that he was denied a fair trial due to the presence of armed, uniformed deputy sheriffs acting as guards in the courtroom during the trial; (3) that the deputy prosecutor was guilty of prejudicial misconduct when he offered into evidence the entire deposition of a witness on redirect examination.

I.

We begin by setting out the circumstances of appellant's sixty-eight hour detention preceding his confession: At 7:00 a.m., May 20, 1973, the police were notified that the body of David Pickett had been found near the Welcome Inn, which he owned. That afternoon, about 6:00, a police officer phoned Dennis Moore and asked him to come down to the police station to sign a complaint with regard to a burglary which he and Charles Anderson had seen a Bennie Parker Commit. Moore testified that he wanted to report that Darryl James had acted with Parker. At the station, he told the police he had been high and did not want to sign the complaint. The police dismissed the complaint and released Parker.

Then Moore asked the officer about the Pickett murder, and the officer asked him if he knew anything about it. Moore and Anderson said that they did. Separately they made oral and then, written statements. Anderson, who had heard only some of the conversations, corroborated Moore's statements. They explained that about 2:40 a.m., May 20th, they had gone to the Welcome Inn to buy some wine. Appellant had called Moore over and asked him if he wanted to rob the Welcome Inn. Appellant had said that they would have to kill Pickett, because he would recognize them. Appellant said that he would get a gun from Darryl James, who was across the street at the poolroom. When the inn closed, at 3:00 a.m., Moore and Anderson waited while appellant went across the street and, five minutes later, come out of the poolroom with Darryl James. At that point, Moore and Anderson left. At about 3:30 a.m., they heard a shot from their home, five houses from the Welcome Inn.

After making these statements, the men left the police station and went home. The statements were not sworn statements. At 9:00 a.m., May 21st, Detective Arnold read these statements, and, on the basis of the statements alone, arrested appellant at 3:30 p.m. Arnold testified that he did not try to get an arrest warrant, because he did not have 'probable cause to file a case.'

Appellant was held sixty-eight hours before he made his first confession. At the time of his arrest, officers read him a version of the Miranda warnings. He did not make a statement. The following morning, May 22nd, appellant, two co-conspirators, and the two men who had made the statements to the police were questioned together. In the presence of appellant, the two men agreed to make second statements. Then, the police read appellant a version of the Miranda warnings from a waiver form. They questioned him for twenty minutes, but he refused to make a statement.

On May 23rd, the police asked appellant if he would take a polygraph test, and he agreed. He took the test on the morning of May 24th. Afterwards, the police read his rights from the waiver form again. They questioned him, but again he refused to make a statement. Later that day, the police again asked him to make a statement. They told him that the lie detector test showed that he had lied on the test and, also, that one of the co-conspirators had made a statement. He agreed to make a statement and gave a confession, which set out details of a plan to hit Pickett over the head with a pistol and rob him, Larry Bullock's shooting Pickett and taking the money box, and appellant's acting as a lookout and searching Pickett's pants pockets for the keys to his car. Darryl James also acted as a lookout.

After another twenty-three and a half hours of detention, on May 25th, appellant made a second statement substantially the same as the first. This statement was in appellant's own handwriting and followed an unidentified conversation with one of the detectives. Immediately after appellant wrote and signed this statement, the detectives took another statement from him, in which he noted that he had written out the second statement to clarify the location of the shooting. May 26--28th were Saturday, Sunday and a Monday holiday. On May 29th, the police took appellant before a magistrate.

At trial, the judge held a hearing on appellant's motion to suppress his confession. The judge heard Detective Arnold's testimony concerning probable cause, the interrogations, the advisement of rights, the location of the nearest magistrate, etc. He heard appellant on cell conditions, personal health, failure to advise of right to appointed attorney at questioning, etc. The trial judge determined that the arrest was illegal, but that appellant's confession was voluntary. The judge requested cases concerning confessions as the fruit of unlawful arrests. Finally, he admitted the confessions into evidence, based on a determination of voluntariness: what effect the sixty-eight hours of detention had had on appellant's state of mind?

On the basis of this evidence, we find that appellant's confessions should not have been admitted at trial. Appellant was arrested without a warrant and was held for eight days without any judicial determination of probable cause. After sixty-eight hours of this detention, appellant made a confession. After ninety-one hours, he made a second confession. If we assume that the arrest was made with probable cause, contrary to the finding of the trial judge, and if we assume that the confession was made voluntarily, the confession must be suppressed, nevertheless, if it was the product of an illegal detention. The recent United States Supreme Court case, Brown v. Illinois, (1975) 422 U.S. 590, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416, based on Wong Sun v. United States, (1963) 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441, mandates that result.

A sixty-eight hour detention is unquestionably unlawful. Our statute permitting warrantless arrests reads in relevant part:

'All . . . police officers . . . may arrest and detain any person found violating any law of this state, until a legal warrant can be obtained.' Ind.Code § 35--1--21--1 (Burns 1975).

Appellant was arrested at 3:30 p.m., Monday, May 21, 1973. A municipal court is next door to the Gary police station and was open on that date. The police had the opportunity to bring appellant before a judge for judicial determination of probable cause, advisement of rights, and appointment of an attorney within the hour. Instead, the police had already held appellant for sixty-eight hours at the time of his first confession.

In Brown, the petitioner was arrested without probable cause, taken to the police station, and advised of his Miranda rights. Within less than two hours of his arrest, he made a confession. The police drove him around Chicago in search of his co-defendant, confronted him with the co-defendant, and, after being advised of his Miranda rights again, he once again confessed. Fourteen hours after the arrest, he was taken before a magistrate.

The Supreme Court noted that the exclusionary rule was applied in Wong Sun, supra, primarily to protect Fourth Amendment rights.

'Protection of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination was not the Court's paramount concern there. To the extent that the question whether Toy's statement was voluntary was considered, it was only to judge whether it 'was sufficiently an act of free will to purge the primary taint of the unlawful invasion.' 371 U.S., at 486, 83 S.Ct. at 416 (emphasis added.)' 95 S.Ct. at 2259.

And, the Court emphasized that the exclusionary rule protected Fourth Amendment guarantees in two respects: by deterring lawless searches and arrests and by excluding from courts evidence obtained unconstitutionally.

In Brown, as in Wong Sun, the issue was, whether the petitioner's statements were obtained by exploitation of the illegal Fourth Amendment violations. The heart of the Court's analysis is in two paragraphs:

'Although, almost 90 years ago, the Court observed that the Fifth Amendment is in 'intimate relation' with the Fourth, Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 633, 6 S.Ct. 524, 533, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886), the Miranda warnings thus far have not been regarded as a means either of remedying or deterring violations of Fourth Amendment rights. Frequently, as here, rights under the two Amendments may appear to coalesce since 'the 'unreasonable searches and seizures' condemned in the Fourth Amendment are almost alway made for the purpose of compelling a man to give evidence against himself, which in criminal cases is condemned in the Fifth Amendment.' Ibid.; see Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. (643), at 646 n. 5, 81 S.Ct. (1684) at 1687 (6 L.Ed.2d 1081). The exclusionary rule, however, when utilized to effectuate the Fourth Amendment, serves interests and policies that are distinct from those it serves under the Fifth. It is directed at all unlawful searches and seizures, and not merely those that happened to produce incriminating material or testimony as fruits. In short, exclusion of a confession made without Miranda warnings might be regarded as necessary to effectuate the Fifth Amendment, but it would not be sufficient fully to protect...