Related story: Suspect in fatal shooting of officer held without bail
By Melanie Asmar
The Concord Monitor
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Michael Addison clearly agreed to speak with police detectives without a lawyer present, state prosecutors said. Therefore, his admission that he shot a gun over his shoulder while being chased by the police, which officials say killed one of the officers, should be allowable in court, they said.
Addison’s lawyers have argued that the detectives who questioned him ignored his request for a lawyer. They want to bar from his capital murder trial the statements he made to the police.
They also want to move Addison’s trial outside of Manchester, where the shooting happened, because they say community outrage and pretrial publicity will taint the outcome. Prosecutors said the move isn’t warranted, because the case has received less media coverage than others where the same request was denied, such as the 1991 Pamela Smart trial and the ongoing Sheila LaBarre trial.
Addison, 28, is charged with capital murder in connection with the October 2006 shooting death of Manchester Officer Michael Briggs. If he’s convicted this fall, Addison could face the death penalty.
In motions filed late last week, state prosecutors rebutted two pretrial requests made by Addison’s lawyers: that his trial be moved and that statements he made to police detectives be thrown out.
Addison repeatedly said he wanted to speak with two Manchester police detectives sent to question him, prosecutors said. Though Addison told them he “would like to have a lawyer,” prosecutors argued that he then quickly agreed to speak to the detectives without one because “I can stop at any time.”
That “clarified for the detectives (Addison’s) true intent,” prosecutors said, “that he wanted an attorney at some later point but did not want to speak with a lawyer before talking with them.”
Prosecutors said Addison appeared eager to talk to the detectives. According to police reports, he told the detectives, and the officers who arrested him, that he wanted to talk about the shooting. The detectives told Addison to wait until they reviewed his Miranda rights with him, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors also rebutted the claim by Addison’s lawyers that the detectives interrogated him before reading him his rights. Addison’s lawyers said a question about whether Addison owned a cell phone was related to the case because the police found a cell phone near the scene of Briggs’s shooting.
Prosecutors said the question was standard. The detectives were trying to get background information, they said; Addison had told them he didn’t have a home address or phone number.
Copyright 2008 The Concord Monitor