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North Carolina v. McKoy9/7/1988
the hospital by ambulance around 6:30 p.m. Dr. Perry treated him in the trauma facility for two serious gunshot wounds, one a laceration through the forehead down to the skull, the other a puncture wound to the buttocks. The head wound was about six centimeters long and very deep, the bullet passing through the entire thickness of the forehead down to the skull. The wound to the buttocks was a through-and-through injury, about ten to twelve centimeters in length. Defendant was semiconscious at the time of his arrival and unable to respond coherently to the doctor's attempts to communicate with him. Such wounds are normally very painful, but defendant did not indicate that he was suffering the normal degree of pain, which the doctor attributed to the degree of defendant's alcoholic intoxication, which was a blood alcohol level of .264. Dr. Perry treated defendant's wounds for some forty minutes, closing them with sutures. They were heavily bandaged, completely closing the defendant's good eye, he being blind in the other eye. During the treatment defendant was administered intravenous fluids for the purpose of elevating his blood pressure, according to Dr. Perry.
Dr. Rollins is an expert medical witness, a forensic psychiatrist, and employed by the state. He examined the defendant several times with respect to this incident. He testified that defendant had multiple personality disorders, including paranoid and delusional thinking, with impaired judgment and perception. In 1980 he had scored 89 on an I.Q. examination, but later, at the
time of this event, his I.Q. test score had deteriorated to 74, which placed defendant in the borderline range of intellectual functioning. Dr. Rollins further testified that defendant was substantially intoxicated at the time of the interrogation and that this condition would exacerbate defendant's mental disabilities. He expressly testified that defendant, because of his mental disorders and his physical condition at the time, was incapable of knowingly and voluntarily waiving his constitutional rights at the time that he was interrogated by the officers.
The trial judge failed to make any findings as to the defendant's mental condition and completely overlooked the deteriorating mental and psychotic condition of the defendant which had occurred over the past five years as evidenced by the decline in his I.Q. scores. The court's determination that defendant had an I.Q. at the time of the interrogation between 74 and 89 is unsupported by the evidence. The only relevant evidence indicates that at the time of the interrogation defendant's I.Q. was 74, having deteriorated from the 89 that he had scored some five years previously. Mental handicaps which make a defendant particularly susceptible to the influence of others are an important factor in weighing voluntariness. Jurek v. Estelle, 593 F.2d 672 (5th Cir. 1979). Further, a defendant's physical condition is an important factor in determining whether a confession is voluntary. Cooper v. Griffin, 455 F.2d 1142 (5th Cir. 1972). See also State v. Dailey, 351 S.E.2d 431 (W. Va. 1986).
In Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. , 93 L. Ed. 2d 473 (1986), the United States Supreme Court held that ordinarily a defendant's mental impairment, standing alone, is not a sufficient basis for ruling a confession involuntary. However, in this case, we have not only the defective mental condition of the defendant, but also the coercive environment in which the officers placed the defendant, together with his impaired physical condition. These factors considered together are sufficient to show involuntariness.
The Interrogation
After placing the defendant in the police van and beginni
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