State v. Merrifield

Defendant appeals his conviction for murder. He assigns as error (1) the denial of his motion to suppress his confession, (2) the admission of evidence of certain prior "bad acts” by defendant and (3) the imposition of a minimum 25-year sentence. We modify the sentence to eliminate the 25-year minimum provision, but otherwise affirm.

1. Confession

We take our statement of facts from defendant’s brief. Defendant was convicted of killing a man named Forrest Taylor. Taylor had received an inheritance on September 26, 1979 — his eighteenth birthday; he disappeared on October 18, 1979. Several days…