is a statement clear enough that a reasonable officer in the circumstances would understand the suspect to be invoking his right to silence the government's position in this appeal which is that no matter how clear an invocation looks on its face it can be rendered ambiguous by an after the fact squinting at the transcript and convincing yourself that maybe the suspect meant something else would make it very hard for suspects in the right to silence and would encourage exactly the sort of badgering and overreaching that this supreme this court and the supreme court of both warned against it goes against this court's holding in garcia that we don't run with strained interpretations of the record in order to justify an interrogation after an invocation and the court similarly emphasized an andersen word said we don't encourage conjecture and hairsplitting we have a bright line rule where we look at how a reasonable officer would have understood the statement and here both invocations were very plain well let me just say i think i have more difficulty with your second argument just speaking for myself so to me and all rises and falls on whether when he says i have nothing to say that actually means i have nothing to say and if it does seems that everything else that comes silence the government's argument on that point is that he might have been saying he had nothing to say about the form which is fails on a number of levels it's not how ordinary english speakers would say i have nothing to say about the form they would say some i've got nothing to say about that or i don't want to talk about the form anymore but no one would say i have nothing to change the subject it means i have nothing to say it's a categorical statement that's unqualified  it also ignores the context of the statement was made in which is that mr prado was under arrest he was handcuffed in the overwhelming question facing everybody was whether he was going to talk to the officers and finally it ignores how the actual officers took his statement they didn't say oh you have nothing to say about the flarm you don't want to talk about the form anymore and it would have been absurd if that's how they had responded officer inspector least said oh you don't want to talk to us he understood precisely what mr in case after case this court has held that those kinds of subjective responses from the police officer are strong evidence of how an objective reasonable officer would have understood it just to give one example that's garcia at page seven hundred one the state courts view of s but you know on i respectfully i believe that the second argument is as strong similarly features sweeping categorical language that's where we have to stop and the government's position that it was referring back to eleven manner if you're right about the first one i agree on or none of it would but i do think the argument is equally strong on the second one because there's nothing in the statement that suggests he's referring back to some earlier comment earlier in the interrogation  these cases all of the cases that are said in the briefs or this court has found miranda violation in very few of them is the invocation the first thing out of the suspects mouth there's often a back and forth before the invocation is a good example of that where there had been extensive discussion before the invocation and when the state argued that the invocation could have been interpreted as a reference to this or that when this court rejected it it did the same in end or something the difficulty for you on the second statement it seems to me is that there has been a back and forth about well let me hear your questions what are they about and so they can textually sort of morphed it seems to me right but the language he used didn't wasn't qualified in that way the language he uses that's where we have to stop meaning what meaning on a certain topic or meaning all together that to me it's not clear what with respect you know we have to stop i think means we have to stop so would be different if you'd said i don't want to talk about that or let's talk about something else but we have to so manners i'm sex mad context absolutely matters but i don't think the government sets any example of a case or a statement as clear as that's where we have to stop was found ambiguous regardless of the context  so so i respect you know i agree with you that the first the first statement which occurred right off the bat when they were asking if you wanted to talk doesn't even know there's no context there that even remotely suggests ambiguity i definitely agree with that but i do look at jones and garcia those officers said very little after the suspect invoked anger see i believe that i asked the suspect do you want to talk to us he said no and all the officers said back was no question mark and the court found that that was one question too many and in jones it was even less than that the officers invoked his right area of the suspect invoked his right to silence in the officer said i understand that but and before he could even finish the sentence the suspect good afternoon your honour's may plays the court for i am all done for the united states the law in this area is designed to accommodate two competing concerns one is the suspect's program to rights and the other the other side of the miranda equation is  need for effective law enforcement in order to accommodate you do you disagree with the principle though that once someone unequivocally invokes their right to remain silent all questioning h with that principle but if it has to be both unequivocal and unambiguous so the only question it seems to me is when he said i have nothing to say  in arnold we said wes the classic statement you don't have to say anything more than i have nothing to say why it doesn't have end everything it's unambiguous it's unequivocal it's an invocation of the rights  what's the context that the and with the yard of the context is that the only discussion that has happened at that point in the conversation but it doesn't matter what i have nothing to say so every case in which those words have sufficed to invoke a defense miranda rights clearly has involved a situation where the defendant the officers are discussing the crime that the defendant is accused of for example and anderson this court said we're all really with all of that and that that's typical of the way it is but but the statements clear i mean because of all the otherwise we have a situation where only officers can say they can ask a couple of questions ok well now i mean the number of the miranda right goes right out the window i mean that's got to the police have to understand when these things go on that the police are like i call it a game you know trying to i'm going to go get a coke can i get  some says i'm telling you that i'm not going to force you to talk to me and he says i have nothing to say so he's responding directly to the miranda warnings and isn't that exactly what they're there for so that he can invo at that point in the conversation what had happened was the defendant signed the acknowledgement of rights for make knowledge in that he understood his rights and then expressed reluctance to sign the waiver of rights portion of the same form and when he  then the officer said do you want to talk to us but the defendant said it where the where is the your option and that was a legitimately confusing question because the form does not have a lawyer option on it well an unusual comment to make but the only possible have he really is that what he means instead of i have nothing to say as i have nothing to say until my lawyer gets here and that has the same effect to stop questioning the same office i want to lawyer but that is why the officer the question is whether it was reasonable for the officer to understand that the defendant might begin invoking or was clearly invoking when he  i don't understand what you mean about the assuming he was being truthful when he said i don't know what you're talking about what the response came back i have nothing to say there are stand and the only potential you know is that maybe he meant i have nothing to say until you get me a lawyer but regardless whichever of those options doesn't help your argument it seems to me i think the position of the government is that in this officer daz the right thing here immediately asks oh no that's the question before us the right thing maybe to say we're done or done goodbye well the question is does the officer have any reason not to see this as an unambiguous and unequivocal invocation and i submit that there are reasons the reasons are that the only conversation has been about the film itself not about the defendants or the public the rights to the conversation but about the rights you understand the rights right about his right his rights to a lawyer if you want to be silent you know i have nothing to say but that is all in the context of the back of the firm conversation that is the is the should not have occurred that preceded the i have nothing to say comment right it did and that's why i say that it only seems to hurt your side of the argument in my view because the only other thing that's been brought up is that he is not only a right to remain silent but the right to or does the defendant's turn in demeanor does the fact that the they are talking over each other does the fact that al has been discussed as the for arm indicate that it would have been reasonable for the officer not to be sure at that point that the defendant was in fact invoking his rights when there's been a confusing conversation about the back of the form and the officer of course can take into account the fact that the defendant's tone and his demeanor may have suggested remain silent but it was quite clear i thought i didn't see any so i would say your honor that when the he was asked to sign the portion of the form acknowledging his understanding of the rights he was not wavering whatsoever and h to do it in writing he said saying so i believe that at that point he actually didn't know whether he wanted to invoke his rights or not and as the entirety of the interview shows and i just completely understand that the entire interview may not be used to cast retrospective doubt but it does confirm that what the officer understood in that moment was reasonable the defendant ultimately had a motive an incentive to talk and  think that the reason why you should look to the entirety of the interview is because i want the cases that the defendant has cited from smith by the supreme court to jones and garcia by this court said that nothing nothing or ambiguity here or something the defendant's willingness to sign a portion of the form but i don't willingness or reluctance to sign another events that he might not be sure that he was going to invoke talk so while i do believe that if there is an equivalent unequivocal and unambiguous request at the outset that the conversation must and that is designed to encourage an officer to discern the defendant's genuine intent this is not the kind of gamesmanship or aggressive police tactics that this court and the supreme court has been concerned with such as in anderson i plead the fifth plead the fifth what's that that's playing games with the defendants language but when the officer says oh you don't want to talk to us he's actually trying in the most direct way he can to ask the defendant the gentlemanly and genuinely are revoking an f a defendant had to do at that point we said yes i don't talk so the defense says that it would have been a very hard for him to invoke in fact it would have been very easy on the officer made it that way and then confirmed and confirmed and confirmed again  i'd just like to make three brief points in response to counsel's argument the first is i think counsel's argument gets things completely backwards this argument that because he refused to sign the miranda waiver that somehow undermines the strength a case in our reply brief called the end of the which says that refusal to sign this kind of labor is actually an indication that you're invoking so what the government's argument comes down to is a sort of one plus one equals zero analysis where you have a refusal to sign a waiver form which indicates that you're invoking you add to that an invocation that's the exact words this court have said is sufficient and somehow those two big things together means you're not invoking and respectfully i think that gets things backwards  second thing i'd like to point out is counsel repeatedly suggest that the officer here acted in good faith when he asked this follow up question that may be the case but we don't know that and the point of this line of case was that we don't need to know and we don't need to find it's a bright line rule that's designed to guard against manipulation whether and the supreme court's explanation of it is that it applies whether to all police badgering an overreaching explicit or subtle deliberate or unintentional there's no bad faith limitation of this good faith exception we have a bright line rule that keeps us from having to get into this sort of inquiry finally just response to the note that counsel closed on where he says this is actually quite easy all that council all that the suspect had to do is just repeat that he had nothing to say this argument's been raised again and again in these cases and it's been rejected time after time and i'll just quote from jones in closing in john's this court held it does not matter as the california court and federal district court seem to suggest that jones did not repeat his request to remain silent later in the interrogation quote under miranda the onus is not  just johns is just one of many cases that says it's not my client's burden to invoke a second time it's the officer's burden to respect his invocation because they didn't do that we ask that you reverse the judgment