THE STATE COURT OF YAP
IN THE
TRIAL DIVISION
Cite as State of Yap v. Tuluk, (Yap St.
1995)
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THE STATE OF YAP
Plaintiff,
VS.
ISAAC TULUK
Defendant
Criminal Ease No. 1994-237
RULING ON MOTION TO
DISMISS INFORMATION
Defendant, during the course of police questioning, made statements implicating other persons. The police then questioned those persons, who made statements which in turn further implicated the Defendant. The court previously ruled that the Defendant's own statements are not admissible in evidence against the Defendant because they were obtained in violation of the exclusionary rule. Defendant also urges that any statements made by those he implicated should be suppressed. Defendant's argument is that the statements made by those he named in his excluded statement acre tainted because the identity of the statement nxalCers was learned via the excluded statement of the Defendant. On the facts of this case, Defendant's point is well taken.
Among the cases on which the State relies is Michigan v. Tucker, 41 L Ed 2d 182 (1974). In that case, where the operative facts occurred preMiranda, although Defedant was told of certain of his rights prior, to questioning, he was not told that he had a right to a lawyer free of charge if he could not one. Defendant then during guestioning made certain statements in which he disposed the name of an alleged alibi vvitness, one Henderson, whose testimony discredited, rather than bolstered, the Defendant's position. The Defendant's trial took place post Miranda, and Defendant urged that because he had not been given all of .the Miranda warnings. Henderson's testimony should have been excluded at trial. In holding fhtat the testimony way properly included at the trial, the court noted that
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the police conduct at issue here did not abridge respondent's constitutional privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, but departed only from the prophylactic standards later laid down by this Court in. Miranda to safeguard that privilege.
41 L Ed 2d at 194.
The court does not believe that the same can be said of the police conduct at issue here, which worked both a substantial. and a substantive abridgment of the Defendant's right against self incrimination. The taint thus created with respect to the Defendant's own statement was sufficiently pervasive, given the specific facts of this case, that in the view of the court it also worked to taint the statements later made by the persons named by the Defendant. Since, based oh the record before the court and given this court's previous ruling, the State's case at this juncture would necessarily be made by reliance on those statements of others, the court dismisses the Information.
Based on the foregoing,
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED dismissing the Information.
DONE THIS 24TH JULY, 1995
Judge Constantine Yinug
Filed July 24, 1995
/s/
Clerk of Court