In The Matter Of J.T.S.

IN THE MATTER OF J.T.S.

NO. COA0 9-13 98

No. 08 J 439

North Carolina Court Of Appeals

Filed: August 17, 2010

Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Assistant Attorney General Kimberley A. D'Arruda, for the State.

Hartsell & Williams, P.A., by Christy E. Wilhelm, for juvenile-appellant.

An unpublished opinion of the North Carolina Court of Appeals does not constitute controlling legal authority. Citation is disfavored, but may be permitted in accordance with the provisions of Rule 30(e)(3) of the North Carolina Rules of Appellate Procedure.

Appeal by juvenile from order entered 13 July 2009 by Judge J. Calvin Hill in Buncombe County District Court. Heard in the Court of Appeals 9 March 2010.

ERVIN, Judge.

Juvenile J.T.S. appeals from an order adjudicating him as a delinquent juvenile on the grounds that the trial court erred by concluding that the evidence was sufficient to support a finding of responsibility (1) that he wantonly and willfully burned a schoolhouse in violation of N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-60 and (2) that he created a public disturbance that interfered with the education of others in violation of N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-288.4(a)(6).¹ In addition, Juvenile argues that the trial court erred by denying hismotion to suppress certain inculpatory statements on the grounds that he had not freely and voluntarily waived his rights against self-incrimination at the time that the statements in question were made. After careful consideration of the arguments that Juvenile has advanced on appeal in light of the record and the applicable law, we conclude that the trial court's adjudication order should be affirmed.

I. Factual Background

A. Substantive Facts

At approximately 1:30 p.m. on 20 November 2 0 08, Matt Carpenter, a teacher at Erwin High School in Asheville, North Carolina, smelled smoke. Mr. Carpenter quickly discovered that the smoke was emanating from the men's bathroom that was located immediately outside his classroom on the third floor of the building. After Mr. Carpenter opened a panel on the bathroom wall, he observed white smoke escaping from the resulting hole, prompting him to direct a fellow teacher to pull the nearby fire alarm.

Edward Burchfiel, Erwin's principal, was in his office when the fire alarm sounded. After identifying the source of the alarm on the fire alarm panel in his office, Mr. Burchfiel and Assistant Principal Terry Gossett immediately went to the third floor for the purpose of assessing the situation. Assistant Principal Jim Brown and the school resource officer, Vicki Hutchinson, responded to the alarm as well. After discovering burning paper towels and possibly other burning materials at the bottom of a pipe chase accessed by means of the bathroom wall, Mr. Gossett suppressed the fire with afire extinguisher. Approximately 1300 people were evacuated from the school for safety reasons and remained outside the building for nearly thirty minutes because of this incident.

Buncombe County Arson Task Force Investigator Jeffrey Tracz came to Erwin for the purpose of investigating the incident. Upon his arrival, Officer Tracz went directly to the bathroom. As a result of the examination that he conducted there, Officer Tracz determined that the fire did not have an electrical origin and eliminated other possible causes. Ultimately, Officer Tracz concluded that someone had started the fire, as opposed to it having begun spontaneously. After establishing the cause of the fire, Officer Tracz headed to the first floor administrative offices to confer with the alleged culprits.

In the meantime, Dr. Brown returned to his office on the first floor and began attempting to identify the individuals who had been in the vicinity of the bathroom prior to the start of the fire. A motion-sensitive video camera showed that Juvenile and a second student were near the bathroom near the time the fire began. At the time that he was observed in the vicinity of the bathroom, Juvenile was supposed to be eating lunch on the first floor. According to the images collected by the video camera, there had not been any other students near the bathroom at the approximate time of the incident.

After identifying the two students, Dr. Brown had them taken to separate first floor offices and questioned. Dr. Brown questioned Juvenile while Mr. Burchfiel questioned the otherstudent. At the time that he questioned Juvenile, Dr. Brown was acting as a school official and not as a law enforcement officer. Dr. Brown questioned Juvenile for the purpose of ascertaining whether any school policies were violated. However, Dr. Brown was obligated to report any violations of law to the appropriate authorities. Initially, Juvenile denied having had any involvement in setting the fire. However, after viewing the surveillance video, Juvenile admitted having been in the bathroom and dropping lighted paper towels down the pipe chase in order to illuminate its interior.

After Dr. Brown finished his conversation with Juvenile, Officer Tracz questioned Juvenile as well. Officer Tracz had been in the room during part of Dr. Brown's conversation with Juvenile. At the time that he began questioning Juvenile, he read Juvenile his Miranda rights and the additional rights afforded to juveniles subjected to custodial interrogation under North Carolina law. In addition, he presented Juvenile with a rights waiver form, which Juvenile subsequently initialed. At the conclusion of his questioning by Officer Tracz, Juvenile drafted and signed a statement explaining his involvement in the events leading up to and at the time of the fire. Juvenile's statement was written on a standard "Juvenile Voluntary Statement" form, which began:

I, [J.T.S.], know and understand my rights as they have been read to me. Having decided to answer questions I now make this voluntary statement, of my own free will, knowing that such a statement may be used against me in a court of law, and I declare that this statement is made without any threat, coercion, offer or benefit, favor, leniency oroffer of leniency by any person or person whomsoever.

In his statement, Juvenile informed Officer Tracz that:

I got the lighter from [the other student] and I set the paper towel on fire and it started to burn me, so I dropped it in the pipe chase and I didn't realize that there was so many paper towels in the floor of the pipe chase so when we looked down there we tried to put it out by everything we could pouring water on it. So I got the trash bag and filled it with water and poured it on the fire and thought it was out. So we walked out thinking the fire was put out.

Juvenile's mother arrived at the school shortly after 3:00 p.m. By the time of her arrival, Juvenile had been provided with and initialed the rights waiver form and had drafted his written statement.

B. Procedural History

On 22 December 2008, Officer Tracz filed two juvenile petitions with the Buncombe County District Court, one of which alleged that Juvenile was delinquent for having violated N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-60 (felonious burning of a school building) and the other of which alleged that Juvenile was delinquent for having violated N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-288.4(a)(6) (causing a public disturbance at an educational institution). Both petitions were approved for filing on 30 December 2008. On 1 June 2009, juvenile filed a motion to suppress "any and all evidence emanating from the [juvenile's] seizure and interrogation at school."

On 29 June 2009, the petitions filed against Juvenile came on for adjudication and disposition before the trial court. During the course of the proceedings, the trial court denied Juvenile'ssuppression motion. At the conclusion of the proceedings, the trial court adjudicated Juvenile as delinquent on the basis of findings that he was responsible for committing both of the offenses alleged in the petitions and found that Juvenile was within the trial court's dispositional authority as the result of the fact that he had committed serious offenses as defined in N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7B-2508(a). At the dispositional phase of the proceeding, the trial court found that Juvenile's delinquency history was low. For that reason, the trial court determined that it was required to order a Level 1 disposition and placed Juvenile on probation for a period of twelve months subject to the supervision of a court counselor. Juvenile noted an appeal to this Court from the trial court's orders.

II. Analysis

A. Motion to Suppress

First, Juvenile contends that the trial court erred by denying his motion to suppress certain inculpatory statements that he made at a time when he had not been properly advised of his rights as required by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 16 L. Ed. 2d 694 (1966), and N.C. Gen. Stat. § 2101(a). In essence, Juvenile contends that he was in custody and had not been properly advised of his rights at the time that he admitted his involvement in setting the fire that resulted in the evacuation of Erwin High School to Dr. Brown, so that the trial court should have suppressed all of his statements admitting involvement in that incident. We disagree.

In the event of an appellate challenge to the denial of a motion to suppress, the trial court's findings of fact are binding if supported by competent evidence, even though there may be evidence in the record that would support a contrary finding as well. On the other hand, the trial court's conclusions of law are subject to de novo review and must be both legally correct and supported by the findings of fact. State v. Buchanan, 353 N.C. 332, 336, 543 S.E.2d 823, 826 (2001). We now proceed to evaluate Juvenile's arguments on appeal using this standard of review.

The custodial interrogation of criminal suspects by law enforcement officers is subject to procedural safeguards "effective to secure the privilege against self-incrimination." Miranda, 384 U.S. at 444-45, 16 L. Ed. 2d at 706. The protections afforded by Miranda and codified and enhanced in the...