Court suppresses Ruud’s initial interview with officers, trial rescheduled for December

Rebecca Ruud’s murder trial has been rescheduled for Dec. 14 in Greene County before Circuit Judge Calvin Holden. This will be the sixth time the bench trial has been reset.

One piece of evidence that won’t be allowed at trial is an initial interview Ruud gave officers in August 2017, just days before human teeth and bone fragments were found in a burn pile on her Theodosia-area farm. 

Ruud reported her 16-year-old daughter, Savannah Leckie, missing on July 20, 2017. She is now charged with murdering the girl and burning the body on the property. Her husband and co-defendant in the case, Robert Peat Jr., has also been charged. Recent court documents now list him as a “cooperating individual for the state.”

 

Motion to suppress statements

Ruud’s attorney, Yvette Renee Duvall of the Missouri Public Defender’s office, filed a motion to suppress statements in connection with the interview. 

The seven-page document lays out the defense’s argument that Ruud was misled into believing that she did not have the right to counsel during an initial interview with officers on Aug. 1 when she was reportedly brought to the Ozark County Sheriff’s Office for questioning. 

In Holden’s judgment of the motion filed in the case, he articulates the following sequence of events leading to the interview in question:

“On August 1, 2017, Defendant was brought to the Ozark County Sheriff’s Office for questioning. The sheriff’s deputy had arrived at Ms. Ruud’s house that morning unannounced to take Ms. Ruud to the sheriff’s department. The defendant did not want to go to the Sheriff’s Office as the defendant had animals to feed and do other chores. The deputy then asked the defendant, ‘Do you not want to help us find your daughter?’ There had been several texts between the sheriff’s department and Ms. Ruud since the time of her daughter’s disappearance. However on that day, the Sheriff’s Department did not text Ms. Ruud. On the way to the Sheriff’s department, the defendant asked the deputy if she could get an attorney before she was asked any questions by law enforcement. The deputy told the defendant he did not know [and] he would have to ask when they arrived at the office.”

 

The conversation

Once Ruud was at the sheriff’s office, the lead officer, Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. Warren Wiedemann, reportedly began reading off a Miranda waiver form when Ruud interrupted the officer, saying, “I asked on the way here if I can’t afford a lawyer about getting a court-appointed…” according to Holden’s statement.

The document says Wiedemann responded by telling Ruud, “If you are charged with something, there are court-appointed lawyers.” 

Ruud reportedly replied, “Okay…only if I’m charged?”

The report then says Wiedemann responded by saying, “As far as I’m…” He then trailed off and continued, “If you don’t want to talk with me today, you definitely don’t have to. I’m not sure how you would get one appointed at this point. Public defenders are there for people charged with a crime.” 

Wiedemann then asked Ruud to read the Miranda waiver, and Ruud reportedly did. 

However, when she read the portion of the document that explains the appointment of counsel, she stopped and asked again, “…not an option until there are charges?”

The document says that Ruud then waived her Miranda rights and spoke with Wiedemann and Ozark County Sheriff’s Deputy Cpl. Curtis Dobbs. 

The document does not detail what was said during the interview, but Ruud was eventually charged with murder in the first degree, abuse of a child resulting in death, murder in the second degree, tampering with physical evidence and abandonment of a corpse two days later.  She was subsequently indicted by a grand jury on the same charges on Sept. 20, 2017.

 

The defendant’s argument

The defense’s argument centered around the allegation that Ruud made statements to the officers about the alleged crimes in violation of her rights against self-incrimination, right to counsel and due process of law. 

Duvall’s motion cites the Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution. She wrote, “Due to Sgt. Wiedemann’s misstatement of the law, in that he advised Defendant she could not obtain counsel until she was officially or formally charged, Defendant was effectively deprived of the opportunity to knowingly and intelligently waive her right to counsel, as she was never intelligently advised of her right to obtain an attorney prior to charges being filed. It is clear that Defendant inquired about how to obtain a public defender prior to being questioned by law enforcement, and it is clear that Sgt. Wiedemann advised Defendant that he ‘didn’t know how she could get one of those until she was actually charged.’ Defendant, as she read the Miranda waiver out loud in the presence of law enforcement officers, made it clear that she had questions regarding the timing of the appointment of counsel. Law enforcement made no attempt to clarify the confusion, and Sgt. Wiedemann knew or should have known that the advice he was providing Defendant regarding her right to counsel was inaccurate and misleading.”

Duvall then provides the court with case law she believes supports her argument.

“It is clear that properly informing the accused that they have a right to an attorney during questioning is of great importance and is an essential foundation of our modern jurisprudence,” the statement concludes. “For law enforcement to advise an accused person that an attorney can be appointed only when they are ‘actually charged’ not only defeats the purpose of giving the accused the Miranda warning – it also misleads them into believing that the right to counsel, particularly the appointed counsel, does not attach until they are formally charged with a crime.”

 

The state’s argument: not in custody at time of interview

The state then filed its own arguments against Ruud’s motion to suppress. In it, the state argues that Ruud was not being held in custody at the time of her arrest; therefore, Miranda rights are not applicable.

“The Miranda decision established the requirement that the police administer warnings prior to engaging in any custodial interrogation of a suspect. By ‘custodial interrogation,’ we mean questioning initiated by law enforcement after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way.’ Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444 (1966). Miranda warnings are only mandated when the individual is in actual custody or significantly deprived of his or her freedom of action. To determine whether or not a suspect is in “actual custody,” courts look at the following factors: (1) whether the suspect was informed that questioning was voluntary, that he was free to leave or request officers to do so, or that he was not under arrest; (2) whether the suspect possessed unrestrained freedom of movement during the questioning; (3) whether the suspect initiated contact or voluntarily acquiesced in the official request to respond to questions; (4) whether strong-arm tactics or deceptive strategems were employed during questioning; (5) whether the atmosphere of the questioning was police dominated; (6) whether the suspect was placed under arrest at the termination of the questioning; and finally (7) whether the suspect was a juvenile.”

The prosecution then cites a number of cases to support its argument.

“However, ultimately, the Missouri Supreme Court has said that a custodial interrogation for Miranda purposes only occurs when the suspect is formally arrested or is subject to arrest-like restraints….Furthermore, Missouri courts have consistently held that non-custodial questioning need not be preceded by Miranda warnings and that preliminary, investigatory questions before arrest by police are non-custodial, even if the police become suspicious of the person they are questioning or the person becomes the focus of the investigation,” the document continues, with additional case law citations.

“In the instant case, the Defendant was simply not in custody. The Defendant went to the police station on her own volition and voluntarily answered questions. The Defendant was allowed to leave at the conclusion of the interview. As such, Wiedemann and Dobbs were never required to even read the Defendant her Miranda rights, much less advise her of her potential right to counsel. The Defendant was not in custody until almost twenty-two days later, when she was charged by felony complaint and arrested in Springfield, Missouri.”

 

Additional argument: Ruud did not articulate her desire for counsel

The state’s argument continues that even if the court were to believe that Ruud was in a custodial interrogation and subject to Miranda rights, the facts in the case fail to show that she made a “clear, unequivocal, unambiguous and specific invocation of her right to an attorney,” the document says. 

“An accused must articulate his or her desire to have counsel present sufficiently clearly that a reasonable police officer, in the circumstances, would understand the statement to be a request for an attorney,” it says. 

The state’s argument cites case law that shows that statements such as “I ought to talk to an attorney,” “If I had a lawyer…” and “I probably can’t get out to get a lawyer,” have been held as ambiguous, expressing uncertainty, according to the US court system.

“Defendant’s statements are ambiguous at best. She inquires if she can get a court-appointed attorney and the investigators inform her that she cannot get one at this point because she hasn’t been charged with anything. The Defendant never affirmatively states she wants to have an attorney present and still proceeds to speak with the officers,” the document states. “Furthermore, Weidemann actually tells Defendant the truth - Public Defenders are for people charged with a crime, and one could not be appointed at this stage of the investigation.”

The state concludes its argument by saying Ruud was not in custody for the duration of the interview in question; therefore her Miranda rights did not “attach.” Also, Ruud did not unequivocally, unambiguously and specifically invoke her right to counsel.

 

The judge’s ruling

Judge Holden filed a judgment to suppress the statements on July 9. 

“There were two issues raised at the Motion to Suppress hearing and pre-trial conference. The first being issues with Miranda,” he wrote. “The Defendant in this case asked at least three times for an Attorney. Law Enforcement lied or [misled] the Defendant that she could not get an Attorney without cost. The cases cited state that you can lie to a Defendant on facts. There are no cases that say law enforcement can lie to a citizen on their Rights. The defendant’s Motion to Suppress is sustained.”

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