Prosecutors say detective did not improperly coerce murder defendant to talk about boy’s injury
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
The attorney for Arthur Harper says comments he made to a detective not long after his common-law wife’s son died of severe head trauma should be suppressed from evidence.
An assistant prosecutor, meanwhile, says Harper’s admission that he used a wrestling move called a “pile driver” on the 3-year-old should be admissible at trial.
Attorneys for Harper and the prosecution filed arguments with Judge Peter Kontos of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court recently as to why the evidence heard at an April 21 suppression hearing supports their positions.
Harper, 44, of High Street Northeast, is charged with murder, felonious assault and child endangering in the Nov. 28, 2015, death of Russell Cottrill. He is secheduled to go on trial Aug. 28.
But John Juhasz, who represents Harper, says the comments Harper made about wrestling with the boy were coerced by Detective Nick Carney of the Warren Police Department and were not the “expression of free choice.”
Based on what Carney said at the suppression hearing, Harper never waived his rights, only indicated he understood them, Juhasz said.
Furthermore, the statements also were involuntary because of the tactics Carney used to get Harper to change his story from saying the boy hurt himself in his bedroom to talking about the wrestling move, Juhasz said.
In assistant Prosecutor Diane Barber’s filing, she says before Carney interviewed Harper at the hospital where Russell was being treated, Carney discovered that Harper had been convicted of three prior domestic-violence charges, one of which resulted in a prison sentence.
In an interview at the police station, Harper said the “pile driver” move that injured Russell involved holding Russell upside down with Russell’s head between Harper’s legs. Harper “would then fall back, slamming onto the floor. Russell’s head hit the floor and he stopped breathing,” the filing says.
Harper also demonstrated in a one-minute video the “pile driver” move to Carney using a baby doll, Barber said.
As for coercion by Carney, Barber said there is no evidence that Carney “subjected [Harper] to threats or physical abuse or deprived him of food, sleep or medical treatment.”
Judge Kontos has not ruled on the request to suppress Harper’s statements.