State v. Todd

If I were sitting as the trial judge in this case, I may have concluded that the officers did not induce Todd’s confession with a slight hope of benefit. As an appellate court judge, however, I must defer to the trial court’s findings unless they are clearly erroneous.7 This is because the trial court judge had the opportunity to observe, firsthand, the testimony of officers Bright and Bean, to judge their credibility, to weigh the evidence based on what she observed, and to determine, based on a totality of the circumstances, whether the state met its burden of proving by a preponderance of…