Judge says detective didn’t overreach in coaxing comments from murder defendant

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

A Warren police detective did not overreach in the tactics he used while persuading Arthur Harper to talk about a wrestling move Harper used on the 3-year- old son of his common-law wife, a judge has ruled.

Judge Peter Kontos refused to suppress from evidence comments Harper, 45, made to a detective Dec. 2, 2015, during an interview about the death of Russell Cottrill at the home on High Street Northeast where he, Harper and his mother lived.

Harper is charged with murder, felonious assault and child endangering and is scheduled to go on trial Monday before Judge Kontos.

The detective testified during a suppression hearing in April that Harper said he used a wrestling move called a “pile driver” on the boy and that afterward, the boy was not breathing.

Harper demonstrated the move using a baby doll, showing the detective how he held Russell upside-down with Russell’s head between Harper’s legs.

Harper “would then fall back, slamming onto the floor,” the detective said of Harper’s statement.

But Atty. John Juhasz, who represents Harper, says the comments Harper made were coerced by the detective and were not the “expression of free choice.”

The detective told Harper that “the only way to get a pass into the pearly gates of heaven would be to clear his conscience and tell the truth,” Juhasz said in a March filing.

The detective also told Harper he was giving him the opportunity to “give some peace to Russell, who’s looking down saying, ‘Daddy, tell the truth,’” the filing said.

The judge said none of the things the detective said “constitutes coercive conduct sufficient to show that [Harper’s] will was overborne and his capacity for self determination was critically impaired,” the judge said. “There is absolutely no evidence of police overreaching, which is a prerequisite to a finding of involuntariness.”