## Facts

- Garrett Thomas Dye, age 17, lived with his family in Todd County, Kentucky.
- On February 4, 2011, Dye’s nine-year-old sister disappeared; her body was found after midnight on February 5 near the family home with blunt-force trauma.
- Police obtained a February 5 search warrant for the home and property and seized items including shovels, clothing, shoes, and a DNA buccal swab from Dye.
- Dye and his parents were taken to a police station on February 5; Dye was not questioned because his father requested that questioning wait until counsel could be obtained.
- On February 6, police arrested Dye for murder, provided Miranda warnings, and interrogated him for about two hours in a courthouse office using pairs of officers.
- During roughly the first 80 minutes, Dye made no incriminating statements while officers repeatedly used threats and misstatements, including falsely asserting he faced the death penalty and repeatedly warning he would be raped in prison.
- Dye became emotional, cried, said he was scared, and stated: “I just don’t want to say anything until my lawyers get here.”
- An officer responded that Dye would “miss his chance” to talk if he waited for counsel; Dye then began confessing.
- Police obtained a second search warrant on February 6 based on information from the confession and seized additional incriminating evidence.
- The trial court denied Dye’s motion to suppress the confession and derivative evidence; Dye pleaded guilty to murder, resisting arrest, and tampering with physical evidence and received an aggregate 50-year sentence.

## Issues

1. Whether Dye’s confession was involuntary under the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause because coercive police conduct overbore his will under the totality of the circumstances.
2. Whether Dye’s Miranda waiver was knowing, intelligent, and voluntary given his age and the interrogation tactics.
3. Whether Dye’s statement about not speaking “until my lawyers get here” was an unequivocal invocation of the right to counsel requiring questioning to cease.
4. Whether evidence obtained under the second search warrant, derived from the confession, had to be suppressed as fruit of the poisonous tree.

## Decision

- The Kentucky Supreme Court reversed the judgment and sentence and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held Dye’s confession was involuntary under due process because it resulted from coercive interrogation tactics, particularly as applied to a juvenile.
- The court ordered suppression of evidence obtained through the February 6 warrant to the extent it was derived from the involuntary confession.
- Because the confession was involuntary, the court resolved the appeal on due process grounds without needing to definitively decide all Miranda-waiver and counsel-invocation arguments.

## Legal Principles

- A confession is admissible only if, under the totality of the circumstances, it is the product of a rational intellect and free will, not coercive police conduct.
- Coercion may be shown by threats, severe psychological pressure, and deliberate misrepresentations of legal consequences; these factors carry added weight when directed at a juvenile suspect.
- Voluntariness analysis considers age, experience, emotional condition, interrogation setting and duration, and whether officers used threats, promises, or deception that overcame the suspect’s ability to choose freely.
- When a confession is involuntary, physical evidence obtained as a result of information from that confession must be suppressed as fruit of the poisonous tree.

## Conclusion

The court concluded that officers’ deliberate false death-penalty statements, prison-rape threats, and efforts to dissuade Dye from waiting for counsel created coercion that overbore a 17-year-old suspect’s will, rendering the confession involuntary and requiring suppression of both the statement and evidence derived from it, with reversal and remand.


Dye v. Commonwealth, 411 S.W.3d 227 (Ky. 2013)