State Of Louisiana v. Harold Alvin Campbell

Supreme Court of Louisiana
November 10, 2020
Clerk of Court
For the Court
The Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana
STATE OF LOUISIANA
VS.
HAROLD ALVIN CAMPBELL
No.2020-KK-00934
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I
N RE: State of Louisiana - Applicant Plaintiff; Applying For Supervisory Writ,
Parish of Calcasieu, 14th Judicial District Court Number(s) 14144-19, Court of
Appeal, Third Circuit, Number(s) KW 20-00240;
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November 10, 2020
Writ application granted. See per curiam.
Hughes, J., dissents.
Genovese, J., dissents.
BJJ
JLW
SJC
WJC
JHB
11/10/2020 "See News Release 043 for any Concurrences and/or Dissents."

11/10/20
SUPRE
ME COURT OF LOUISIANA
No. 2020-KK-00934
STATE OF LOUISIANA
VERSUS
HAROLD ALVIN CAMPBELL
ON SUPERVISORY WRIT TO THE FOURTEENTH
JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT, PARISH OF CALCASIEU
PER CURI
AM
Writ granted. On May 1, 2019, Lake Charles police officers responded to a
911 call in which a child reported that her father had just shot her mother . Officers
found defendant outside the residence. He was unarmed. They secured him and an
officer asked, “What happened?” Defendant replied, “I couldn’t take it anymore.”
Officers placed defendant in a police vehicle and transported him to the Lake Charles
Police Department. During the transport, defendant spontaneously began talking to
himself, so an officer advised him of his rights pursuant to Miranda v. Arizona, 384
U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).
Defendant filed a motion to suppress his statements, which the district court
denied. The court of appeal granted defendant’s writ application in part to reverse
the district court’s ruling only with regard to the statement defendant made outside
of the residence.
1 State v. Campbell , 20-0240 (La. App. 3 Cir. 7/8/20) ( unpub’d).
The court of appeal found that the volatile, emergency situation was abated when
the officers secured defendant, and therefore the officers should have Mirandized
him first. The court of appeal erred.
The public safety exception to Miranda allows the admission as evidence of
1 The court of appeal found that the district court did not err in refusing to suppress defendant’s
spontaneous statements made while he was being transported to the police station.

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statements given by a defendant before being given Miranda warnings when a
situation posing a threat to the public safety exists. New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S.
649, 655 –60, 104 S.C t. 2626, 2631 –33, 81 L.Ed.2d 550 (1984) . Relying on and
quoting from United States v. Lim, 897 F.3d 673 (5th Cir. 2018), the court of appeal
found here that the emergency had abated and therefore the public safety exception
in Quarles did not apply. See Campbell, 20 -0240, p. 1 (“the environment
encountered by the officers no longer posed ‘the type of emergency, volatile
situation that the public safety exception is designed to serve’”).
While it is true that both defendant here and Chhay L im while handcuffed
were asked a question by officers without being Mirandized, any similarity between
the cases ends there. Lim, a lawful permanent resident of the United States, faced
removal after serving three years in prison for rape. When Immigrations and
Customs Enforcement officers executed the removal warrant, they arrested Lim as
he answered his front door but allowed him to reenter his residence to dress. At that
time, they asked him whether there were any weapons in the home, to which he
responded affirmatively. Lim’s wife and chil dren were sequestered in one room
while Lim showed the officers where the weapons were located. The Fifth Circuit
found, “There was no concern for the general safety of the public, given that the
public did not have access to Lim’s residence, and no violent crime had immediately
preceded the arrest.” Lim, 897 F.3d at 691.
In contrast, officers here were responding to a child’s report of a shooting
during a domestic disturbance. They did not know where the weapon was, where the
child was, who else might be in the residence, or whether the child or anyone else
had access to the weapon. Officers asked the first person they encountered at the
scene what happened, and immediately ceased questioning him when he made an
inculpatory statement. Thi s is precisely the sort of ongoing volatile emergency in
which the United States Supreme Court found that “the need for answers to questions

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in a situation posing a threat to the public safety outweighs the need for the
prophylactic rule protecting the Fif th Amendment's privilege against self -
incrimination.” Quarles, 467 U.S. at 657, 104 S.Ct. at 2632. As the United States
Supreme Court declined to do in Quarles, we “decline to place officers in the
untenable position of having to consider, often in a matter of seconds, whether it best
serves society for them to ask the necessary questions without the Miranda warnings
and render whatever probative evidence they uncover inadmissible, or for them to
give the warnings in order to preserve the admissibility of evidence they might
uncover but possibly damage or destroy their ability to obtain that evidence and
neutralize the volatile situation confronting them. ” Id., 467 U.S. at 657 –658, 104
S.Ct. at 2632.
Therefore, we grant the State’s application. We reverse the court of appeal to
the extent that court found the district court erred in denying defendant’s motion to
suppress his statement made outside of the residence. We reinstate the district court’s
ruling, which denied defendant’s motion to suppress. We remand to the district court
for further proceedings consistent with the views expressed here.
REVERSED AND REMANDED