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Gordon v. State9/9/2004
should have been suppressed: 1) he was in custody and not free to leave; 2) he was intoxicated on methamphetamine and incapable of understanding the consequences of waiving his Miranda rights; 3) he was not given the opportunity to confer with counsel; 4) he made the statements during an interrogation; 5) he made the statements in response to an overt or implied threat or promise by law enforcement officials; 6) the circumstances of the interview caused him to make involuntary statements; and 7) his mental condition rendered his statements involuntary. The State responds to Mr. Gordon's first assertion that he was in custody during the interview by "assuming for the sake of argument that he was in custody at some point during the interview." We, therefore, assume Mr. Gordon was in custody and do not address that assertion. Because Mr. Gordon's argument in support of his fourth assertion is simply a restatement of the argument he makes in his first assertion, we also address those issues as one. We address Mr. Gordon's second and seventh assertions as one because they are essentially the same argument - Mr. Gordon's statements were involuntary because he was intoxicated and incapable of understanding what was happening at the time he made them. We address the other assertions separately.
Intoxication
In Stone v. State, 745 P.2d 1344, 1348 (Wyo. 1987) we said:
[I]ntoxication from drugs or alcohol does not per se establish involuntariness. Instead, for intoxication to render a confession involuntary, the impairment must be so great as to deprive an individual of a capacity to understand the meaning of his statements. Even though a defendant appears intoxicated, the fact that he understood what he was doing, carried on a conversation and responded to questions will render the statements admissible. The proper inquiry regarding intoxication is whether a confession cannot be said to be the product of rational intellect and free will because of extreme intoxication.
We applied these principles in Stone to uphold the trial court's denial of a motion to suppress statements the defendant made to law enforcement when he was intoxicated. We observed that the denial came after a lengthy suppression hearing where the trial court heard the testimony of a number of witnesses. We found it noteworthy that despite the defendant's undisputed intoxicated state, law enforcement officials testified he answered questions intelligently, was coherent, and did not have the appearance of being intoxicated.
Like the trial court in Stone, the district court in Mr. Gordon's case denied the motion after a full hearing during which six witnesses testified. Also as in Stone, the two detectives who conducted the interview testified that despite some odd behavior, Mr. Gordon gave appropriate answers to and appeared to understand their questions and they had no trouble understanding him. The difficulty in this case is that, unlike the testimony in Stone, the testimony of the two detectives that they saw no indication in Mr. Gordon of drug-induced intoxication contrasted sharply with the testimony of witnesses who had contact with him before and after the interview that they were immediately aware of behavior indicative of methamphetamine-induced intoxication. We find this contrast in testimony troubling, particularly in light of the detectives' testimony that they had experience interviewing people under the influence of methamphetamine and were familiar with the signs of methamphetamine-induced intoxication. It is surprising that they saw no indication of such intoxication in Mr. Gordon, while others who saw him before and after the interview noticed it immediately. However, the totality of the evidenc
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