State v. Christopher R. Ward

COURT OF APPEALS
DECISION NOTICE
DATED AND FILED This opinion is subject to further editing. If
published, the official version will appear in
the bound volume of the Official Reports.
February 22, 2022
A party may file with the Supreme Court a
Sheila T. Reiff petition to review an adverse decision by the
Clerk of Court of Appeals Court of Appeals. See WIS. STAT. § 808.10 and
RULE 809.62.

Appeal No. 2021AP193-CR Cir. Ct. No. 2018CF829

STATE OF WISCONSIN IN COURT OF APPEALS
DISTRICT I

STATE OF WISCONSIN,

PLAINTIFF-RESPONDENT,

V.

CHRISTOPHER R. WARD,

DEFENDANT-APPELLANT.

APPEAL from a judgment of the circuit court for Milwaukee County:
MARK A. SANDERS, Judge. Affirmed.

Before Brash, C.J., Dugan and White, JJ.

Per curiam opinions may not be cited in any court of this state as precedent

or authority, except for the limited purposes specified in WIS. STAT. RULE 809.23(3).

¶1 PER CURIAM. Christopher R. Ward appeals his judgment of
conviction entered after he pled guilty to child neglect resulting in death. Ward
No. 2021AP193-CR

argues that his confession to police was coerced and therefore not voluntary, and
asserts that the trial court should have granted his motion to suppress. Upon review,
we affirm.

BACKGROUND

¶2 The charge against Ward stems from the death of fourteen-year-old
Jada Wright in February 2018. Jada had cerebral palsy and multiple other health
issues, was non-verbal, wheelchair bound, and required round-the-clock care.
Ward’s mother had become Jada’s guardian after her parents died, and Ward—who
was eighteen years old at the time of Jada’s death—was hired as one of Jada’s
personal care workers.

¶3 According to the complaint, on the day of Jada’s death, Ward told
police that he had fed Jada through her feeding tube in the afternoon. When Ward
checked on Jada about an hour after her feeding, he saw that she had vomited on
herself, which was highly unusual. Ward stated that he continued to check on Jada
regularly, and at midnight noticed that she was unresponsive and not breathing.
Ward called 911 and the paramedics attempted life-saving measures on Jada, but
she was pronounced dead at the scene.

¶4 An autopsy performed on Jada revealed blunt force trauma to her
abdominal area, which had caused severe damage to her internal organs. The
medical examiner determined that this injury had occurred within twelve hours of
Jada’s death, and ruled her death a homicide.

¶5 Based on these findings and Ward’s previous statements to police,
Ward was arrested. During his first custodial interview, he claimed that his father,
Christopher Frazier, had been taking care of Jada during the afternoon prior to her

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death. Ward said that he and his mother had left their residence to run errands that
afternoon, leaving Jada in Frazier’s care. Ward asserted that it was Frazier who had
fed Jada prior to her vomiting.

¶6 Frazier was arrested and interviewed. However, his statement, along
with a statement obtained from Ward’s mother, was inconsistent with Ward’s new
version of events: Frazier denied feeding Jada, and Ward’s mother denied leaving
the residence after 11:00 a.m. that day. Ward’s younger brother also provided a
statement that it was Ward who fed Jada prior to her vomiting.

¶7 In a subsequent custodial interview, Ward claimed that he had tripped
and accidently fallen on Jada, striking her with his elbow in the abdomen; however,
that version of events did not comport with the severity of Jada’s injuries.
Eventually, Ward confessed to striking Jada with his fist in the abdomen in
frustration after she had dislodged her feeding tube from its connection to her
stomach.

¶8 In total, Ward was interviewed multiple times by police over the
course of four days, in sessions that varied in length from just over an hour to five
hours, for a total of sixteen hours of interrogation.

¶9 Ward filed a motion to suppress his statement, claiming that it was
involuntary. Ward noted his young age, the fact that he had no previous arrest
record and thus no experience in “dealing with” the police, and that he had limited
education due to dropping out of high school. He argued that those factors
combined with the “coercive tactics” used by the detectives “over a very extensive
period of high-pressure interrogation” rendered his statement involuntary.

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¶10 The trial court denied Ward’s motion. It stated that it reviewed the
video from the interviews and took those personal characteristics of Ward into
consideration, but nevertheless found that the tactics utilized by the police in
obtaining his statement did not rise to the level of being coercive. Thus, the court
determined that Ward’s statement to the police was “the product of free will.”

¶11 Ward subsequently entered into a plea agreement with the State in
which the charge against him was amended from second-degree reckless homicide
to child neglect resulting in death. The trial court accepted Ward’s plea in
January 2019. Ward was sentenced to nine years of initial confinement to be
followed by six years of extended supervision. This appeal follows.

DISCUSSION

¶12 On appeal, Ward asserts that his statement to police in which he
confessed to striking Jada should have been suppressed. The review of a trial court’s
decision on a motion to suppress presents a mixed question of fact and law. State v.
Eason, 2001 WI 98, ¶9, 245 Wis. 2d 206, 629 N.W.2d 625. We will not reverse the
trial court’s findings of fact unless they are clearly erroneous; however, we review
de novo the application of constitutional principles to those facts. Id.

¶13 The basis for Ward’s argument is that his confession was not
voluntary. A defendant’s statement is voluntary if it is “the product of a free and
unconstrained will, reflecting deliberateness of choice, as opposed to the result of a
conspicuously unequal confrontation in which the pressures brought to bear on the
defendant by representatives of the State exceeded the defendant’s ability to resist.”
State v. Hoppe, 2003 WI 43, ¶36, 261 Wis. 2d 294, 661 N.W.2d 407. If a statement
made by a defendant to police was not voluntary, it is inadmissible to prove his or

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her guilt, pursuant to the Due Process Clause. State v. Deets, 187 Wis. 2d 630, 635,
523 N.W.2d 180 (Ct. App. 1994).

¶14 “Coercive or improper police conduct is a necessary prerequisite for
a finding of involuntariness.” Hoppe, 261 Wis. 2d 294, ¶37. In evaluating police
conduct, we review “the length of questioning, general conditions or circumstances
in which the statement was taken, whether any excessive physical or psychological
pressure was used, and whether any inducements, threats, methods, or strategies
were utilized in order to elicit a statement from the defendant.” State v. Ward, 2009
WI 60, ¶20, 318 Wis. 2d 301, 767 N.W.2d 236 (citation omitted). The State has the
burden to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that a defendant’s statement
was voluntary. Hoppe, 261 Wis. 2d 294, ¶40.

¶15 Ward asserts that the detectives interviewing him used a variety of
tactics to coerce his confession, such as “persistence, repetition, confrontational
questioning, kindness, minimization, anger, and implicit threats to [Ward]’s
family.” However, in rejecting Ward’s argument at the suppression motion hearing,
the trial court explained it had watched—and rewatched—the videos of the
interviews, and it then made extensive, thorough factual findings relating to those
videos. It first noted that the total length of the interviews was “somewhat
misleading” because they occurred over several days, with breaks in between
sufficient for Ward to sleep. The court also observed that Ward’s other physical
needs—food, water, even cigarettes—were met, and that Ward never appeared to
be “in any level of discomfort[.]” Additionally, the State pointed out that the length
and number of interviews was directly related to Ward providing a version of the
events during his first custodial interview that was different from his initial
statement to police on the day that Jada died. This resulted in the police taking time

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to investigate, and ultimately discredit, Ward’s claim that Frazier was likely
responsible for Jada’s death.

¶16 Furthermore, the trial court found that while the detectives
interviewing Ward used a number of tactics during the various interviews—such as
confronting him with the inconsistencies in his second version of events,
minimizing his conduct, mentioning the penalties associated with different charging
options, and using kindness or anger to play on Ward’s emotions—none of those
tactics “[rose] to the level of threats or coercive conduct.” In fact, the court noted
that these types of police tactics have been “typically, commonly accepted” by the
courts, even when they were found to have had an influence on the defendant. See
State v. Moore, 2015 WI 54, ¶64, 363 Wis. 2d 376, 864 N.W.2d 827.

¶17 Additionally, the trial court observed that while the detectives were
“very persistent” in their questioning of Ward, persistence itself “is not inherently
coercive.” In fact, the court pointed out that Ward had the ability to “control” when
that persistence would stop by exercising his Miranda1 rights. Furthermore, the
court noted that Ward was not arguing that the police failed to advise him of his
Miranda rights or that he had not knowingly and intelligently waived those rights.
“[C]ases in which a defendant can make a colorable argument that a self-
incriminating statement was ‘compelled’ despite the fact that the law enforcement
authorities adhered to the dictates of Miranda are rare.” Ward, 318 Wis. 2d 301,
¶61 (citations omitted).

¶18 Nevertheless, Ward’s argument focuses on his personal
characteristics, such as his age, lack of experience with police, and limited education

1
See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).

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No. 2021AP193-CR

in support of his argument that his confession was involuntary, and he cites several
cases involving the interrogation of juveniles. However, “a suspect’s personal
characteristics alone cannot form the basis for finding that the suspect’s confessions,
admissions, or statements are involuntary.” Moore, 363 Wis. 2d 376, ¶56. Rather,
there must be “‘some affirmative evidence of improper police practices deliberately
used to procure a confession.’” Id. (citation omitted). Although the trial court
considered Ward’s personal characteristics in its analysis at the suppression hearing,
a determination that the tactics utilized by the detectives here were not coercive is
fatal to Ward’s motion. See id.

¶19 In our review of the record, the trial court’s findings of fact are an
accurate reflection of the interviews, and therefore are not clearly erroneous. See
Royster-Clark, Inc. v. Olsen’s Mill, Inc., 2006 WI 46, ¶11, 290 Wis. 2d 264, 714
N.W.2d 530 (an appellate court “defers to the [trial] court’s findings of fact unless
they are unsupported by the record and are, therefore, clearly erroneous”).
Furthermore, we also conclude that the tactics utilized by the detectives during
Ward’s custodial interviews do not rise to the level of coercion. Thus, the relevant
law as applied to the facts here supports the determination that Ward’s confession
was voluntary. See Eason, 245 Wis. 2d 206, ¶9. Therefore, the trial court did not
err in denying Ward’s suppression motion. See id. Accordingly, we affirm.

By the Court.—Judgment affirmed.

This opinion will not be published. See WIS. STAT.
RULE 809.23(1)(b)5. (2019-20).

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