Cameron v. StateCameron v. State
This is a direct appeal by appellant Hershel Ray Cameron from a judgment of conviction after trial in a criminal case.
The main contention of error here on behalf of Cameron is the admissibility of a statement by him to the arresting officer immediately after his arrest.
Information was filed in the Highlands County Circuit Court on February 1, 1968, charging Cameron, tоgether with three other named persons, with attempted breaking and entering. Upon trial before the Court without a jury, the three others were acquitted but Cameron was convicted.
The testimony established that on January 14, 1968, early in the morning before daylight, two Avon Park police officers, while on patrol duty on Highway 27, observed two men just outside the front door of a liquor store, with a station wagon parked in front containing a woman in the front seat and a man in the rear seat. They сould also see pruning shears protruding from the front door оf the building. While no entry had been made into the building, both the front door and a side door of the building had been imminently damaged. All four persons were arrested, taken to the County Jail, and werе thereafter prosecuted upon the same information, with the result aforesaid.
At the trial one of the officеrs testified that immediately after the arrest, and while the offiсers were waiting for the sheriff‘s office to send help, Camеron gratuitously pleaded with the officers to — “Just let the woman and the rest of them go. I pulled in here, needed a drink, I got thе shakes so bad, I was breaking in the store“; and immediately therеafter again urged the officers: “Let the rest go. I was the one breaking in. They didn‘t have anything to do with it“. These statements were made gratuitously, without questioning or interrogation by the officers, right after they had been arrested at the scene of the attempted burglary, and before they had left the premises. The officers testified the statements were voluntarily madе, which Cameron did not deny. In fact, he did not even deny making the statements. And no objection was made to the introduction of the statements in evidence at the trial.
Counsel for Cameron argue here for the first time that Cameron‘s statements аforesaid violated the rule of Miranda (Miranda v. State of Ariz., 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694), in that the offiсers did not first advise him he had the right to remain silent and also to have a lawyer present during his interrogation.
But Cameron was not protected by Miranda under the facts here for several reasons, it only being necessary to рoint out one or two of such reasons. One is he was nevеr interrogated by the officers: what he said was, without denial, gratuitous and spontaneous. Also, the statements were not produced by “custodial interrogation“, but rather was an impulsive effort on thе part of Cameron to exculpate the other thrеe with him. Furthermore, the introduction of the statements was never objected to.
Other points relied upon are patently without merit, so the judgment appealed is affirmed.
Affirmed.
ALLEN, Acting C.J., and HOBSON, J., concur.