Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-08-17790/USCOURTS-ca9-08-17790-4/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 530
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Habeas Corpus
Cause of Action: 

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FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

TIO DINERO SESSOMS,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

RANDY GROUNDS, Warden,

Respondent-Appellee.

No. 08-17790

D.C. No.

2:05-cv-01221-JAM-GGH

ORDER AND 

AMENDED OPINION

On Remand from the United States Supreme Court

Argued and Submitted En Banc

March 18, 2014—San Francisco, California

Filed September 22, 2014

Amended January 23, 2015

Before: Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge, and Mary M.

Schroeder, Barry G. Silverman, M. Margaret McKeown,*

Kim McLane Wardlaw, Raymond C. Fisher, Richard A.

Paez, Consuelo M. Callahan, Milan D. Smith, Jr., Sandra S.

Ikuta and Mary H. Murguia, Circuit Judges.

Order;

Opinion by Judge McKeown;

Dissent by Chief Judge Kozinski;

*

Judge McKeown was drawn to replace Judge B. Fletcher following her

death shortly after the initial en banc decision.

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2 SESSOMS V. GROUNDS

Dissent by Judge Callahan;

Dissent by Judge Murguia

SUMMARY**

Habeas Corpus

The en banc court amended a September 22, 2014,

opinion filed on remand from the United States Supreme

Court, and denied a petition for rehearing, in a 28 U.S.C.

§ 2254 habeas corpus case in which Tio Dinero Sessoms

challenged his conviction of murder, robbery, and burglary.

The en banc court reversed the district court’s judgment

denying the habeas petition and remanded with instructions

to grant a conditional writ directing the State of California to

retry Sessoms within a reasonable time or release him.

The en banc court held that the California Court of

Appeal’s conclusion that Sessoms did not make an

unequivocal or unambiguous request for an attorney as

required under Davis v. United States, 512 U.S. 452 (1994),

was an unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent

as it existed at the time of the Court of Appeal’s

determination. 

The en banc court reconsidered the case in light of Salinas

v. Texas, 133 S. Ct. 2174 (2013), which involved a

noncustodial interrogation, and which suggests that Davis’s

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 3

requirement of an unambiguous invocation of a right to

counsel applies to pre-Miranda statements. The en banc

court observed that this case, in contrast, involves a custodial

interrogation in which the defendant should have been

informed of his rights before he could knowingly waive

them, but nevertheless assumed that the clear invocation

requirement of Davis applies to Sessoms. With this

requirement clearly in mind, the en banc court held that,

under the circumstances, a reasonable law enforcement

officer would have understood Sessoms’s statements as an

unambiguous request for counsel, which should have cut off

anyfurther questioning under clear Supreme Court precedent.

The en banc court concluded that because Sessoms’s

confession likely substantially swayed the jury toward

conviction, the constitutional error was not harmless.

Reluctantly dissenting, Chief Judge Kozinski wrote that

what the court must decide is not what Sessoms meant or the

officers understood, but whether it was unreasonable for the

state courts to conclude that a reasonable officer would have

been perplexed as to whether Sessoms was asking for an

attorney. 

Dissenting, Judge Callahan wrote separately to stress

that she reads the Supreme Court’s remand as precluding

the majority’s conclusion that Sessoms’s comments were so

unambiguous as to render the California Court of Appeal’s

opinion unreasonable. 

Judge Murguia, joined by Chief Judge Kozinski and

Judges Silverman, Callahan, and Ikuta, dissented. Judge

Murguia could not say, under the deference mandated by

the AEDPA, that it was objectively unreasonable for the

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4 SESSOMS V. GROUNDS

California Court of Appeal to hold that a police officer could

have interpreted Sessoms’s statement as merely a possible

request for a lawyer, which would not require the officer to

stop the interrogation.

COUNSEL

Eric Weaver (argued), Albany, California, for PetitionerAppellant.

JeffreyFirestone (argued), DeputyAttorneyGeneral; Kamala

D. Harris, Attorney General of California; Michael P. Farrell,

Senior Assistant Attorney General; and Charles A. French,

Supervising Deputy Attorney General, Sacramento,

California, for Respondent-Appellee.

Peter C. Pfaffenroth, HL Rogers and Brian A. Fox, Sidley

Austin LLP, Washington, D.C.; Mark E. Haddad and Douglas

A. Axel, Sidley Austin LLP, Los Angeles, California; and

David M. Porter, Office of the Federal Defender, Sacramento,

California, for Amicus Curiae National Association of

Criminal Defense Lawyers.

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 5

ORDER

The opinion filed on September 22, 2014, is amended. 

The amended opinion is filed concurrently with this order. 

With these amendments, the panel has voted to deny the

petition for rehearing.

The petition for rehearing is DENIED. No further

petitions for rehearing or rehearing en banc will be

entertained.

OPINION

Opinion by McKEOWN, Circuit Judge, joined by

SCHROEDER, WARDLAW, FISHER, PAEZ and M.

SMITH, Circuit Judges:

An American poet wrote more than 100 years ago: “When

I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and

quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”1 When a suspect

says “give me a lawyer,” that request walks, swims, and

quacks like a duck. It is an unambiguous request for a

lawyer, no matter how you slice it. The statement is

1 This quotation is often attributed to James Witcomb Riley, an

American poet. Max Cryer, Who Said That First? The Curious Origins

of Common Words and Phrases 139 (2001); see In re Fletcher, 489 B.R.

224, 235 & n.36 (Bankr. N.D. Okla. 2013). It has also been attributed to

Walter Reuther. Hugh Rawson and Margaret Miner, The Oxford

Dictionary of American Quotations 237 (2006).

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6 SESSOMS V. GROUNDS

unequivocal—it is not a maybe or a perhaps—it is an

invocation of the Fifth Amendment right to counsel.

In late 1999, a naive and relatively uneducated nineteenyear-old Tio Sessoms sat alone in an eight-by-ten foot

interrogation room. Four days earlier, on the advice of his

father, Sessoms had turned himself in to the police. Before

doing so, Sessoms’s father told his son: you must ask for a

lawyer before talking to the police.

Sessoms followed his father’s advice. When the two

police detectives entered the interrogation room, Sessoms sat

slouched in his chair. He looked up, and they exchanged

brief pleasantries. Sessoms was unfailingly polite, even

saying he was glad the detectives “had a safe flight.” Forty

seconds after the detectives entered the room, the following

exchange occurred:

Sessoms: There wouldn’t be any

possible way that I could have

a—a lawyer present while we

do this?

Det. Woods: Well, uh, what I’ll do is, um—

Sessoms: Yeah, that’s what my dad

asked me to ask you guys . . .

uh, give me a lawyer.2

2 The transcript of the colloquy says “give me a lawyer,” but, after

comparing the transcript to the videotape, Detective Woods testified that

Sessoms said “[g]et me a lawyer.” This minor distinction is not material

to our analysis.

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 7

Instead of immediately ceasing the interrogation, the

detectives carried on, convinced Sessoms that his

accomplices had already told them what had happened, and

impressed upon Sessoms that the only way to tell his side of

the story was to speak to the officers then and there, without

an attorney. Only after talking with him, softening him up,

and warning him about the various “risks” of speaking with

counsel did the detectives read Sessoms his rights under

Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966). Unsurprisingly,

Sessoms agreed to talk and made incriminating statements.

Sessoms was convicted of murder, robbery, and burglary,

and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. We

consider his habeas appeal under the “demanding but not

insatiable” standard of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death

Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”). See Miller-El v. Dretke,

545 U.S. 231, 240 (2005). The California Court of Appeal

concluded that Sessoms’s request was not an unequivocal or

unambiguous request for an attorney as required under Davis

v. United States, 512 U.S. 452 (1994). Because this

conclusion was an unreasonable application of Supreme

Court precedent as it existed at the time of the Court of

Appeal’s determination, we reverse the district court’s denial

of the petition for a writ of habeas corpus and remand with

instructions to grant a conditional writ of habeas corpus with

directions that the State retry Sessoms within a reasonable

period or release him. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1).

BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

I. THE INTERROGATION

On October 20, 1999, Sessoms and two others burglarized

Edward Sheriff’s home in Sacramento, California. During

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8 SESSOMS V. GROUNDS

the burglary, one of Sessoms’s accomplices repeatedly

stabbed Sheriff, resulting in Sheriff’s death.

Sessoms then fled from California to Oklahoma. When he

became aware that there was a warrant out for his arrest, and

after having discussed the situation with his father, Sessoms

surrendered to Oklahoma police on November 15, 1999. His

father advised him to ask for a lawyer before talking to the

police.

Two detectives, Woods and Keller, flew from California

to Oklahoma to question Sessoms on November 20, 1999, at

the county jail where he was being held. Sessoms was in

custody for at least four days before he was interrogated.

Before the officers entered the interrogation room,

Sessoms sat alone, and quietly said to himself, “I’m not a

criminal . . . . They didn’t tell me if I have a lawyer. I know

I want to talk to my lawyer now.”3 When the detectives

entered the room, the following exchange took place:

Det. Woods: . . . Tio, I’m Dick.

Sessoms: How you doing, all right. You

already know me.

Det. Woods: You say—

3 Sessoms’s statements to himself were made prior to the detectives

entering the room, and there is no evidence that the detectives heard these

statements. We, therefore, do not rely on these statements as part of the

context relevant to whether a reasonable law enforcement officer would

have understood Sessoms’s statements as unambiguous requests for

counsel.

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 9

Det. Keller: Tio, Pat Keller.

Det. Woods: You say Tio or Theo?

Sessoms: It—my name is pronounced

Tio because it’s [S]panish.

Det. Woods: Tio. Okay.

Det. Keller: Why don’t we swap corners

here for a minute, you guys?

Go ahead and sit here.

Sessoms: So glad you fellows had a safe

flight.

Det. Woods: Huh?

Sessoms: I’m glad you fellows had a

safe flight out here.

Det. Keller: So are we. Huh.

Det. Woods: Well, we want a safe one back

too.

Sessoms: Oh, you know ([i]naudible).

Det. Woods: Yeah. Uh, we both, uh—both

from, uh, Sacramento PD and,

uh—

Sessoms: There wouldn’t be any

possible way that I could have

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10 SESSOMS V. GROUNDS

a—a lawyer present while we

do this?

Det. Woods: Well, uh, what I’ll do is, um—

Sessoms: Yeah, that’s what my dad

asked me to ask you guys . . .

uh, give me a lawyer.

Woods proceeded as though Sessoms had said nothing.

Instead of ending the interrogation, Woods persuaded

Sessoms that having a lawyer was a bad idea. Sessoms

explained that he was concerned that some police officers

“end up switching your words afterwards,” to which Woods

responded that he had no intention of playing any “switch

games.” Woods even produced a tape recorder to allay

Sessoms’s fears. As it turns out, the session was videotaped

from the outset.

Woods then explained the situation: Sessoms and two

accomplices were all being “charged with the same thing.” 

Woods said he already knew “what happened” because the

accomplices had waived their rights “and laid it out from A

to Z.” Woods reassured Sessoms that he believed that

Sessoms “did not participate in the stabbing,” but warned that

if Sessoms didn’t make a statement right then and there,

Woods wasn’t going to be able to “get his version of it”

because “most all attorneys—in fact, all attorneys will—will

sometimes or usually advise you not to make a statement.” 

Woods said he didn’t really “need [Sessoms’s] statement to

make [the] case” anyway because he “already [had] two and

a half other complete statements,” reiterating that he already

“[knew] what happened” and had the hard evidence to back

it up.

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 11

Only then—after telling Sessoms that having a lawyer

would only hurt him and that invoking his right to counsel

would be futile because the police already knew what had

happened—did Woods read Sessoms his rights under

Miranda. Sessoms hesitated, shrugged his shoulders, and

said, “[l]et’s talk,” proceeding to implicate himself in the

crime.

II. PROCEEDINGS IN THE CALIFORNIA COURTS

Before trial, Sessoms moved to suppressthe incriminating

statements arguing that they were obtained in violation of

Miranda because he had “clearlyand unequivocally” invoked

his right to counsel. The trial court denied the motion. 

Sessoms went to trial and was convicted of first-degree

murder, robbery, and burglary, with the special circumstance

that he was engaged in the commission or attempted

commission of the crimes of robbery and burglary when the

murder occurred. At the conclusion of the trial, Sessoms

moved for a new trial “based upon prejudicial Miranda

error,” renewing the objections he had made in his pretrial

motion. The trial court denied the motion. Sessoms was

sentenced principally to life in prison without the possibility

of parole.

Sessoms appealed to the California Court of Appeal,

which determined that Sessoms’s statements did not qualify

as an invocation of the right to counsel under Davis, 512 U.S.

452.4It found that “although [Sessoms] twice explicitly

referred to an attorney, neither statement was an unequivocal

4 The California Court of Appeal’s opinion is “the last reasoned opinion”

in this matter for purposes of AEDPA. Ylst v. Nunnemaker, 501 U.S. 797,

803 (1991); see Barker v. Fleming, 423 F.3d 1085, 1091 (9th Cir. 2005).

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or unambiguous request for counsel.” People v. Sessoms, No.

C041139, 2004 WL 49720, at *3 (Cal. Ct. App. Jan. 12,

2004). According to the Court of Appeal, Sessoms’s first

statement was “legallyindistinguishable” from the statements

made in Davis, 512 U.S. at 455 (“Maybe I should talk to a

lawyer”) and People v. Crittenden, 9 Cal. App. 4th 83,

123–24 (1994) (“Did you say I could have a lawyer?”), which

were not unequivocal requests for an attorney. Id. Sessoms’s

second statement, the court continued, was also not an

unequivocal request for an attorney, but “[a]t best . . . a

statement of his father’s advice to him.” Id. Ultimately, the

Court of Appeal concluded that Sessoms’s statements were

not “sufficiently clear[] that a reasonable police officer in the

circumstances would understand the statement to be a request

for an attorney.” Id. (quoting Davis, 512 U.S. at 459)

(alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted).

III. PROCEEDINGS IN THE FEDERAL COURTS

After exhausting his state court remedies, Sessoms filed

a federal habeas petition, arguing primarily that he had

invoked his right to counsel. A magistrate judge

recommended denying the petition. The district court

adopted the magistrate judge’sfindings and recommendations

and denied the petition, but granted a certificate of

appealability on the Miranda and ineffective assistance of

counsel claims.5

5 The ineffective assistance of counsel claim arose from counsel’s

“fail[ure] to investigate and present evidence that [Sessoms’s]

constitutional rights were violated by Sacramento Detectives Woods and

Keller during his interrogation.”

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 13

A divided three-judge panel of this court upheld the

district court’s denial of Sessoms’s habeas petition. Sessoms

v. Runnels, 650 F.3d 1276, 1283 (9th Cir. 2011). The

majority held that “[b]ecause Sessoms’s statements were

made prior to his Miranda waiver, Davis cannot apply as

‘clearly established Federal law’ in this case.” Id. at 1283. 

But the majority held that it was not unreasonable for the

state court to require an unambiguous request for counsel and

concluded that Sessoms’s request was ambiguous. Id. at

1284–89.

We granted rehearing en banc. In an opinion authored by

Judge B. Fletcher, the majority concluded that the state

court’s decision was an unreasonable application of clearly

established federal law and reversed the district court’s denial

of habeas relief. Sessoms v. Runnels, 691 F.3d 1054, 1064

(9th Cir. 2012) (en banc), cert. granted, judgment vacated sub

nom. Grounds v. Sessoms, 133 S. Ct. 2886 (2013). The

majority reasoned that Davis’s requirement that a request for

counsel be unambiguous applies only after a suspect has been

informed of his Miranda rights, and thus granted a

conditional writ of habeas corpus. Id. at 1060–63. The

majority also noted that Sessoms “clearly expresse[d] his

desire for an attorney.” Id. at 1063.

The Supreme Court granted the state’s petition for a writ

of certiorari, vacated the decision, and remanded the case in

light of Salinas v. Texas, 133 S. Ct. 2174 (2013). Sessoms,

133 S. Ct. 2886. Following supplemental briefing, the en

banc panel heard oral argument. We now reconsider this case

in light of Salinas, which suggests, contrary to the reasoning

of the first en banc court, that Davis’s requirement of an

unambiguous invocation of a right to counsel applies to

pre-Miranda statements. Although Salinas points in that

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direction, it involved a noncustodial interrogation. Salinas,

133 S.Ct. at 2183. Indeed, Justice Alito’s plurality opinion

stressed that the noncustodial nature of the interview placed

the “petitioner’s situation outside the scope of Miranda.” Id.

at 2180. This case, in contrast, involves a custodial

interrogation in which the defendant should have been

informed of his rights before he could knowinglywaive them.

See Miranda, 384 U.S. at 467–68. We nevertheless assume

that the clear invocation requirement of Davis applies to

Sessoms. With this requirement clearly in mind, we hold

that, under the circumstances, a reasonable law enforcement

officer would have understood Sessoms’s statements as an

unambiguous request for counsel, which should have cut off

any further questioning under clear Supreme Court

precedent.6

ANALYSIS

I. MIRANDA AND ITS PROGENY

Our analysis begins with the landmark case of Miranda

v. Arizona, which established certain safeguards that must be

afforded to suspects, including the right to have counsel

present during a custodial interrogation. The Supreme Court

refined its analysis of the Miranda right to counsel in a series

of cases including, as relevant here, Edwards v. Arizona,

451 U.S. 477 (1981); Smith v. Illinois, 469 U.S. 91 (1984)

(per curiam); Davis, 512 U.S. 452; Berghuis v. Thompkins,

560 U.S. 370 (2010); and, most recently, Salinas, 133 S. Ct.

2174.

6 Because we conclude that Sessoms is entitled to relief on his Miranda

claim, we do not address his ineffective assistance of counsel claim.

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 15

In Miranda, the Supreme Court established rules that law

enforcement must follow to ensure certain “basic” and

“precious” rights “enshrined in our Constitution.” 384 U.S.

at 442. These rights include the Fifth Amendment’s

guarantee that “[n]o person . . . shall be compelled in any

criminal case to be a witness against himself.” U.S. Const.

amend. V. One of the Court’s primary concerns in Miranda

was the temptation for law enforcement officers, operating

with little or no supervision over their investigative actions,

to overbear the will of a defendant in an isolated custodial

interrogation setting. 384 U.S. at 461, 466. The Fifth

Amendment privilege “protect[s] persons in all settings in

which their freedom of action is curtailed in any significant

way from being compelled to incriminate themselves.” Id. at

467.

The Court wrote that “[a]n understanding of the nature

and setting of [an] in-custody interrogation is essential” to its

decisions in Miranda. Id. at 445. Stressing that “the modern

practice of in-custody interrogation is psychologically rather

than physically oriented,” id. at 448, the Court explained that

“the very fact of custodial interrogation exacts a heavy toll on

individual liberty and trades on the weakness of individuals.” 

Id. at 455. “The Court in Miranda presumed that

interrogation in certain custodial circumstances is inherently

coercive and . . . that statements made under those

circumstances are inadmissible unless the suspect is

specifically warned of his Miranda rights and freely decides

to forgo those rights.” Duckworth v. Eagan, 492 U.S. 195,

202 (1989) (internal quotation marks omitted).

To ensure that the use of such psychological tactics to

exploit a suspect’s vulnerabilities do not run afoul of the Fifth

Amendment, Miranda set a clear bright-line rule: “Prior to

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any questioning, the person must be warned that he has a

right to remain silent, that any statement he does make may

be used as evidence against him, and that he has a right to the

presence of an attorney. . . .” Id. at 444. If a suspect

“indicates in any manner and at any stage of the process that

he wishes to consult with an attorney,” all questioning must

cease. Id. at 444–45. The Court presciently captured the

importance of timing: “a warning at the time of the

interrogation is indispensable to overcome its pressures and

to ensure that the individual knows he is free to exercise the

privilege at that point at time.” Id. at 469. The Court

underscored the importance of giving the Miranda warnings

at the outset of an interrogation “to insure that what was

proclaimed in the Constitution had not become but a form of

words in the hands of government officials.” Id. at 444

(internal citation and quotation marks omitted); see Alvarez

v. Gomez, 185 F.3d 995, 997 (9th Cir. 1999) (“Under

Miranda, a person in custody must be informed before

interrogation that he has a right to remain silent and to have

a lawyer present.” (emphasis added)).

Fifteen years later, in Edwards v. Arizona, the Supreme

Court reiterated the principle that the “assertion of the right

to counsel [is] a significant event and that once exercised by

the accused, ‘the interrogation must cease until an attorney is

present.’” 451 U.S. at 485 (quoting Miranda, 384 U.S. at

474). Edwards makes clear that Miranda’s protections

endure from the moment of invocation until the time the

suspect is provided with counsel. The Court simply

“reconfirm[ed]” that a suspect, “having expressed his desire

to deal with the police only through counsel,” must not be

“subject to further interrogation by the authorities until

counsel has been made available to him.” Id. at 484–85. Of

particular relevance here, the Edwards rule is “designed to

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 17

prevent police from badgering a defendant into waiving his

previously asserted Miranda rights,” Michigan v. Harvey,

494 U.S. 344, 350 (1990), and to ensure that officers “will not

take advantage of the mounting coercive pressures of

prolonged police custody,” Maryland v. Shatzer, 559 U.S. 98,

105 (2010) (internal quotation marks omitted); see New York

v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649, 654 (1984). Taken together, “[t]he

purpose of the Miranda–Edwards guarantee” is to protect

“the suspect’s desire to deal with the police only through

counsel.” McNeil v. Wisconsin, 501 U.S. 171, 178 (1991)

(internal quotation marks omitted).

The Court applied the principles of Miranda and Edwards

just three years later in Smith. Eighteen-year-old Smith was

taken into custody for interrogation, and the officers

immediately gave him the Miranda warnings. Smith,

469 U.S. at 92–93. In the course of advising Smith of his

rights, the officers stated: “You have a right to consult with

a lawyer and to have a lawyer present with you when you’re

being questioned. Do you understand that?” Id. at 93. Smith

responded: “Uh, yeah. I’d like to do that.” Id. (emphasis

omitted). Rather than ceasing questioning, the officers

pressed on:

Q. Do you wish to talk to me at this time

without a lawyer being present?

A. Yeah and no, uh, I don’t know what’s

what, really.

Q. Well. You either have [to agree] to talk to

me this time without a lawyer being

present and if you do agree to talk with

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18 SESSOMS V. GROUNDS

me without a lawyer being present you

can stop at any time you want to.

Q. All right. I’ll talk to you then.

Id. Smith proceeded to make incriminating statements. Id.

The Court reasoned that the Illinois Supreme Court erred

“by looking to Smith’s subsequent responses to continued

police questioning”—namely, his statements that he didn’t

“know what’s what, really”—to inform its holding that

Smith’s initial requests for counsel were ambiguous. Id. at

97. Questioning should have ceased after the first request for

counsel, which the officers ignored, because the

statement—“Uh, yeah, I’d like to do that”—“was neither

indecisive nor ambiguous.” Id. The Court emphasized that

the Edwards “bright-line rule that all questioning must cease

after an accused requests counsel” intends to prevent “the

authorities through badger[ing] or overreaching—explicit or

subtle, deliberate or unintentional—[from] otherwise

wear[ing] down the accused and persuad[ing] him to

incriminate himself notwithstanding his earlier request for

counsel’s assistance.” Id. at 98.

The Supreme Court revisited the scope of Miranda and

Edwards in Davis. During a custodial interview with the

Naval Investigative Service, Davis executed a written waiver

of his rights and expressly agreed to speak to law

enforcement. Davis, 512 U.S. at 454–55. Only after being

questioned for ninety minutes did Davis utter the words

“[m]aybe Ishould talk to a lawyer.” Id. at 455. Mirroring its

teachings in Miranda and Edwards, the Court reaffirmed the

fundamental principle that “if a suspect requests counsel at

any time during [a custodial] interview, he is not [to be]

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 19

subject to further questioning until a lawyer has been made

available or the suspect himself reinitiates conversation.” Id.

at 458 (citing Edwards, 451 U.S. at 484–85).

The Court went on to clarify, however, that “if a suspect

makes a reference to an attorney that is ambiguous or

equivocal in that a reasonable officer in light of the

circumstances would have understood only that the suspect

might be invoking the right to counsel, our precedents do not

require the cessation of questioning.” Id. at 459. “[T]he

suspect must unambiguously request counsel.” Id. The Court

explained the reasoning behind this requirement as follows:

A suspect who knowingly and voluntarily

waives his right to counsel after having that

right explained to him has indicated his

willingness to deal with the police unassisted. 

Although Edwards provides an additional

protection—if a suspect subsequentlyrequests

an attorney, questioning must cease—it is one

that must be affirmatively invoked by the

suspect.

Id. at 460–61 (emphasis added). The statement, “[m]aybe I

should talk to a lawyer,” was not an unambiguous or

unequivocal request for counsel in light of Davis’s prior

waiver of that same right. Id. at 462.

More recently, in Berghuis and Salinas, the Court

considered the significance of silence in the Miranda context. 

In Berghuis, after being informed of his Miranda rights, the

suspect refused to sign a waiver form and simply remained

silent through almost three hours of interrogation before

making an incriminating statement. See 560 U.S. at 374–76. 

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20 SESSOMS V. GROUNDS

In concluding that the suspect never invoked his right to

silence, the Court echoed its holding in Davis that an

invocation of the right to remain silent, like the right to

counsel, must be unambiguous. Id. at 381–82. The Court

wrote, not without significance, that it need not “add

marginally” to Miranda’s prophylactic protections by

“[t]reating an ambiguous . . . statement as an invocation of

Miranda rights,” because “full comprehension of the rights to

remain silent and request an attorney are sufficient to dispel

whatever coercion is inherent in the interrogation process.” 

Id. at 382. (citations omitted). This conclusion mirrored the

determination in Davis that the “primary protection afforded

suspects subject to custodial interrogation is the Miranda

warnings themselves” and that, “after having [those] right[s]

explained to him,” a suspect must invoke his rights

“affirmatively.” 512 U.S. at 460–61 (emphasis added).

Just last year, in Salinas, the Court reiterated that

although “no ritualistic formula is necessary in order to

invoke the privilege,” to “simply stand[] mute,” as Salinas

did, was insufficient. 133 S. Ct. at 2178 (quoting Quinn v.

United States, 349 U.S. 155, 164 (1955)). In a noncustodial,

voluntary interview, Salinas answered most of the officer’s

questions, but when lobbed a linchpin question—“whether his

shotgun ‘would match the shells recovered at the scene’”—he

went silent. Id. Instead of answering, he “[l]ooked down at

the floor, shuffled his feet, bit his bottom lip, cl[e]nched his

hands in his lap, [and] began to tighten up.” Id. at 2178

(alterations in original) (internal quotation marks omitted). 

After a few moments of silence, he started answering

questions again. Id. Salinas had not unambiguously invoked

his right to remain silent because “[i]f the extended custodial

silence in [Berghuis] did not invoke the privilege, then surely

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 21

the momentary silence in [Salinas] did not do so either.” Id.

at 2182.

In Salinas, the Court first noted that a witness “must

claim [the privilege against self-incrimination] at the time he

relies on it.” Id. at 2179 (internal quotation marks omitted). 

This ruling came against the backdrop of Edwards, Smith,

Davis and Berghuis, which establish that, under the

circumstances of the interrogation, the invocation must be

clear and unambiguous.

The results in Berghuis and Salinas are no surprise—mere

silence does not qualify as an invocation of the right to

remain silent. The discussion of the Fifth Amendment in

Salinas is instructive, however, to the resolution of the right

to counsel issue in this case. See Berghuis, 560 U.S. at 381

(“[T]here is no principled reason to adopt different standards

for determining when an accused has invoked the Miranda

right to remain silent and the Miranda right to counsel . . . .”). 

In Salinas, the Court reaffirmed the importance of the

Miranda warnings and discussed the two well-recognized

exceptions to this rule. 133 S. Ct. at 2179. The first is that a

witness “need not take the stand and assert the privilege at his

own trial.” Id. (citing Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609,

613–615 (1965)). That exception was not at issue in Salinas

and is not at issue here. See id. at 2179–80. Nor did the

second exception—the presence of “governmental coercion

[rendering] his forfeiture of the privilege involuntary”—apply

to Salinas. Id. at 2180. Sessoms did not claim this exception

in the state court proceedings. Accordingly, we do not rest

our analysis on either exception to the Fifth Amendment

privilege.

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22 SESSOMS V. GROUNDS

We now consider Sessoms’s claim in light of the

teachings of Miranda and its progeny. Viewing the totality

of the circumstances of the interrogation, we conclude that

not only did Sessoms claim the privilege twice before being

suitably warned, he did so unequivocally.

II. THESTATECOURT’SUNREASONABLEAPPLICATIONOF

SUPREME COURT PRECEDENT

This case involves an “unreasonable application” of

clearly established federal law, which we review under

AEDPA’s deferential standard of review. See 28 U.S.C.

§ 2254(d); Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 407 (2000)

(holding that under AEDPA, “a state-court decision involves

an unreasonable application of this Court’s precedent if the

state court identifies the correct governing legal rule from this

Court’s cases but unreasonably applies it to the facts of the

particular state prisoner’s case.”). We take no issue with the

California Court of Appeal’s fact-finding or with its

identification of the governing Supreme Court precedents,

Miranda, Edwards, and Davis.

The court fell short, however, in its application of those

precedents to the undisputed facts. It unreasonably applied

those precedents by analyzing Sessoms’s statements in

isolation rather than collectively and in context to conclude

that “although [Sessoms] twice explicitly referred to an

attorney, neither statement was an unequivocal or

unambiguous request for counsel.” Sessoms, 2004 WL

49720, at *3; see also Anderson v. Terhune, 516 F.3d 781,

791 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc) (setting out the framework

under AEDPA, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), and holding that

“[t]he state court’s decision to ignore an unambiguous

declaration of the right to remain silent is an unreasonable

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 23

application of Miranda”).7 The court reasoned that the first

statement—“There wouldn’t be any possible way that I could

have a . . . lawyer present while we do this?”—was a question

that was “legally indistinguishable from the equivocal

remarks in Davis.” It characterized the second

statement—“give me a lawyer”—as a statement of his

father’s advice. It never considered the two statements

together and in context. Our decision rests on clearly

established Supreme Court precedent and requires no

extension of the rationale of the invocation of counsel cases. 

See White v. Woodall, 134 S. Ct. 1697, 1706 (2014).

We begin with the circumstances leading up to Sessoms’s

statements regarding counsel. See Smith, 469 U.S. at 98

(“Where nothing about the request for counsel or the

circumstances leading up to the request would render it

ambiguous, all questioning must cease.”). The interrogators

in this case employed many of the tactics against which

Miranda warned. No warning came up front. The detectives

plunged right into their questioning, which counsel for the

state acknowledged at oral argument was a custodial

interrogation. What was missing, nearly forty years after

Miranda, was the now well-known Miranda warnings.

Miranda recognized that overzealous police practices

during custodial interrogation create the potential for

compulsion in violation of the Fifth Amendment. Id. at

455–58. Indeed, “[a]n individual [like Sessoms] swept from

7 We cite circuit precedent to outline the standard at issue, but recognize

that a circuit court “may not consul[t] its own precedents, rather than those

of th[e] [Supreme] Court, in assessing a habeas claim governed by

28 U.S.C. § 2254.” White v. Woodall, 134 S. Ct. 1697, 1702 n.2 (2014)

(first alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted).

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24 SESSOMS V. GROUNDS

familiar surroundings into police custody, surrounded by

antagonistic forces, and subjected to the techniques of

persuasion . . . cannot be otherwise than under compulsion to

speak.” Id. at 461. Davis reminded that “the primary

protection afforded suspects subject to custodial interrogation

is the Miranda warnings themselves.” 512 U.S. at 460. And

Salinas warned against the “inherently compelling pressures

of an unwarned custodial interrogation.” 133 S. Ct. at 2180

(internal quotation marks omitted). Even without receiving

anyMiranda warning, Sessoms overcame these pressures and

requested counsel unequivocally.

The interrogation started out politely, with Sessoms

saying that he was glad the detectives had a safe flight from

California. In keeping with the pleasant small talk Sessoms

made with the detectives when they entered the interrogation

room, and before receiving any advice regarding counsel,

Sessoms politely asked: “There wouldn’t be any possible way

that I could have a—a lawyer present while we do this?” 

Unlike Davis, where the defendant asked, “[m]aybe I should

talk to a lawyer?,” Sessoms was not asking whether he should

speak to a lawyer. Like the defendant in United States v. Lee,

413 F.3d 622, 625 (7th Cir. 2005), who asked, “[c]an I have

a lawyer?”—which the Seventh Circuit recognized as an

unequivocal request for counsel—Sessoms was deferentially

asking whether he could have a lawyer. See United States v.

Hunter, 708 F.3d 938, 948 (7th Cir. 2013) (holding that

“[c]an you call my attorney?” was an unequivocal request for

counsel).

The detectives understood that Sessoms was requesting

counsel, as Woods’s response to a subsequent question

illustrates. After requesting counsel and before receiving the

Miranda warnings, Sessoms paralleled the phrasing of his

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 25

first request for counsel asking, in response to Woods’s

question about whether Sessoms wanted to talk, “[w]ould it

be a possible chance that I can call my dad . . . ask him?” 

The officers understood that statement as an expression of

Sessoms’s desire to speak to his father and responded

accordingly: “Well no, because . . . [y]ou’re an adult.” There

was no ambiguity in the first request for counsel—Sessoms

was expressing his desire to speak to an attorney—any more

than there was ambiguity in Sessoms’s request to speak to his

father.

The answer to “[t]here wouldn’t be any possible way that

I could have a . . . lawyer present while we do this?” was

easy—“yes, you have the right to remain silent and you have

the right to a lawyer even if you can’t afford one.” But the

detectives did not respond that they could not decide for him

whether he should speak to a lawyer, they did not follow up

about whether he was asking for a lawyer as the officers in

Davis did, nor did they answer his question. The detectives

instead pretended that Sessoms had never raised the issue of

a lawyer in the first place.

Ignoring the defendant’s request flies in the face of clear

Supreme Court precedent: “No authority, and no logic,

permits the interrogator to proceed . . . on his own terms and

as if the defendant had requested nothing, in the hope that the

defendant might be induced to say something casting

retrospective doubt on his initial statement that he wished to

speak through an attorney or not at all.” Smith, 469 U.S. at

99 (omission in original) (quotation marks and citation

omitted). Under clearly established federal law, the answer

to Sessoms’s question about whether there could be a lawyer

present during the interrogation should have been “yes,”

followed by a reading of the Miranda rights, and an end to

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26 SESSOMS V. GROUNDS

any questioning absent an affirmative waiver. See Edwards,

451 U.S. at 485; see also Duckworth, 492 U.S. at 204 (“If the

police cannot provide appointed counsel, Miranda requires

only that the police not question a suspect unless he waives

his right to counsel.”).

Persisting in his attempts to speak with counsel before

speaking to the officers, Sessoms repeated what he gleaned

from his father: “give me a lawyer.” This was a very clear

statement that Sessoms wanted counsel, yet the California

Court of Appeal viewed this statement as a “statement of his

father’s advice to him.” Sessoms was not simply conveying

his father’s advice. Why would he? He was stating the fact

that his father had told him to request counsel and that he was

following through. That his father instructed him to ask for

counsel does not dilute the clarity of Sessoms’s request; it

simply means that Sessoms’s father gave him good advice,

and he took it.

The only reasonable interpretation of “give me a lawyer”

is that Sessoms was asking for a lawyer. What more was

Sessoms required to say? Was he obligated to repeat the

obvious—“give me a lawyer”—another time? It is no more

reasonable to demand grammatical precision from a suspect

in custody than it is to strip the officers of all common sense

and understanding. To the extent the first statement spawned

any uncertainty—and we believe that it did not reasonably do

so—taken together the two requests leave no doubt about

what Sessoms wanted: a lawyer.

In light of clear Supreme Court precedent, we have

recognized the importance of evaluating a suspect’s incustody statements as a whole. See Hunter, 708 F.3d at

945–46 (explaining that Smith “confirms that courts should

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 27

only consider prior context when determining whether a

defendant unambiguously invoked his right to counsel” and

collecting cases in which the court “looked to prior context

when determining whether a defendant unambiguously

invoked his right to counsel”). The importance of Smith and

context was illustrated in Anderson v. Terhune, where the

suspect said “I don’t even wanna talk about this no more”;

“Uh! I'm through with this. I’m through. I wanna be taken

into custody . . . .”; and, finally, “I plead the [F]ifth.” 

516 F.3d at 785–88. Citing to Supreme Court precedent in

Smith, we held that “the state court was unreasonable in

concluding that the invocation was ambiguous in context

because the context, in fact, ma[de] it clear that Anderson

wanted to end the interrogation in all respects.” Id. at 788.

Viewed in the context of Sessoms’s prior request that the

detectives make counsel available to him during the

interrogation, it was unreasonable to hold that Sessoms’s

second statement, “give me a lawyer,” was an ambiguous

request for counsel. What else could this mean? I don’t want

an attorney? I’m not sure I want an attorney? My dad wants

an attorney? No, it means what it says in plain English: dad

told me to ask you and I am—“give me an attorney.”

As the Supreme Court has recognized, requests for

counsel are to be “understood as ordinary people would

understand them.” Connecticut v. Barrett, 479 U.S. 523, 529

(1987) (emphasis added). The state court stretched the

boundaries of how reasonable law enforcement officers

would have understood Sessoms’s statements in reaching its

conclusion. Judge Murguia’s dissent does the same. It

recognizes that the Court of Appeal erred in its Davis analysis

by considering Sessoms’s statements in isolation. It then

goes on to acknowledge that “the majoritymay offer the most

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28 SESSOMS V. GROUNDS

logical interpretation of what Sessoms was attempting to

communicate by his statements.” But then it jettisons the

only “logical interpretation” of Sessoms’s statements and

embraces interpretations that blink reality—“Sessoms was

merely expressing his father’s opinion,” “agreeing with his

father,” or stating that “he might” want an attorney—offering

only that his statements contain “just enough ambiguity” to

deny relief. Conjuring up ambiguity where there is none

violates Davis. Construing the demand, “give me a lawyer,”

as ambiguous strains credulity. Invoking the mantra of “a

fairminded jurist,” a standard we embrace, does not mean that

in evaluating the statements we toss overboard logic,

common sense, and context. In contravention of Davis, by

allowing the detectives to play games with Sessoms’s clear

language, the California Court of Appeal imposed the

unreasonable grammatical precision of an “Oxford don” on

a suspect subject to custodial interrogation. See 512 U.S. at

459 (quoting id. at 476 (Souter, J., concurring)).

What happened after Sessoms made these two statements

illustrates precisely why, once a lawyer is requested,

questioning must stop. It is also a testament to why Miranda

warnings are required at the outset of custodial interrogation. 

Interrogation does not begin once the officers get to the hard

questions. Miranda warnings are required before any

interrogation begins.

Instead of giving Miranda warnings at the outset, or

saying “yes” when Sessoms asked whether he could have a

lawyer, Woods persisted with his questioning. He told

Sessoms that they already knew what happened and that

Sessoms’s accomplices had confessed “la[ying] it out from A

to Z,” thereby “display[ing] an air of confidence in

[Sessoms’s] guilt” and appearing only to be “interest[ed] in

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 29

confirming certain details.” See Miranda, 384 U.S. at 450. 

Woods offered Sessoms a “legal excuse[],” see id. at 451–52,

and assured him that he believed that Sessoms did not

participate in the stabbing. But then Woods immediately

reversed course, telling Sessoms that he didn’t really need his

statement to make the case against him anyway, because

Sessoms’s accomplices had talked and hard evidence backed

up their statements, thereby placing Sessoms “in a

psychological state where his story [was] but an elaboration

of what the police purport[ed]to know already—that he [was]

guilty.” Id. at 450. Eventually, the detectives, much as

Miranda warns, overwhelmed Sessoms and persuaded him

“out of exercising his constitutional rights.” Id. at 455. 

Giving Sessoms the Miranda warnings, “in the midst of

coordinated and continuing interrogation,” was “likely to

mislead and depriv[e] [him] of knowledge essential to his

ability to understand the nature of his rights and the

consequences of abandoning them.” See Missouri v. Seibert,

542 U.S. 600, 613–14 (2004) (first alteration in original)

(internal quotation marks omitted).

The detectives’ behavior confirms that—like any

reasonable law enforcement officers—they understood that

Sessoms was requesting counsel. Woods’s response to

Sessoms’s requests for counsel was to explain that he and

Keller would be “up front” and “honest” with Sessoms and

would not play any “switch games” with him. Woods backed

up this promise with a tape recorder he had with him, which

he said provided “proof that we ain’t playing no switch

games.” It was not until after the detectives explained just

how forthright they were being and reiterated that the

existence of a recording would ensure that they “can’t play no

switch games” that they acknowledged Sessoms’s requests

for counsel, stating “Uh, I want to back up to your question

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30 SESSOMS V. GROUNDS

about an attorney” and explaining that first, they would

advise Sessoms why they were interviewing him; then, they

would advise Sessoms of his rights; and after all that, they

would leave it to Sessoms “to decide if you want the attorney

or not.” After a bit more small talk, Woods drove the point

home:

[I]f you said you didn’t want to make any

statement without an attorney, we’re not

really going to be able to talk to you and get

your version of it. Uh, most all attorneys—in

fact, all attorneys will—will sometimes or

usually advise you not to make a statement. 

But—and—and we don’t need to have your

statement to make this case because we’ve

already got two and a half other complete

statements. And we know what

happened . . . .

Why would Woods need to talk Sessoms out of an attorney if

he hadn’t understood that Sessoms wanted an attorney?

In determining that Sessoms’s statements are unlike the

wavering statement in Davis, we hew to the teachings of

Salinas that invocation of Miranda rights must be “express.” 

See 133 S. Ct. at 2179. There was no ambiguity regarding

what Sessoms wanted: a lawyer. It was not until Woods

convinced Sessoms that a lawyer would simply get in the way

that Sessoms relented and gave Woods what he wanted:

incriminating statements made without the benefit of counsel.

Context and circumstances matter. Under Davis and

Smith, the Court of Appeal was bound to analyze whether a

reasonable officer viewing the situation in light of all of the

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 31

circumstances leading up to the statements would have

understood Sessoms’s statements to be a request for counsel. 

Rather than following that procedure, the California Court of

Appeal analyzed each statement separately, did not explore

the context in which the statements were made, and,

unsurprisingly, landed on an unreasonable application of

clearly established federal law. See Sessoms, 2004 WL

49720, at *3. The Court of Appeal unreasonably applied

clearly established precedent under Miranda, Edwards,

Smith, and Davis when it held that Sessoms’s request for

counsel was ambiguous.

III. THE CONSTITUTIONAL ERROR WAS NOT HARMLESS

Harmless error review applies to the introduction of

Sessoms’s illegally obtained confession. Arizona v.

Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 295 (1991). Reversal is required

if the constitutional error “had substantial and injurious effect

or influence in determining the jury’s verdict.” Brecht v.

Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 637 (1993) (internal quotation

marks and citation omitted). We conduct this inquiry de

novo. “If, reviewing the facts as a whole, we are able to

determine with fair assurance that the judgment was not

substantially swayed by the error, we may conclude that the

error was harmless. Otherwise, we must conclude that the

petitioner’s rights were substantially and injuriously

affected.” Hurd v. Terhune, 619 F.3d 1080, 1090 (9th Cir.

2010); see also Deck v. Jenkins, 768 F.3d 1015, 1022 (9th

Cir. 2014) (“If the record is so evenly balanced that a

‘conscientious judge is in grave doubt as to the harmlessness

of an error,’ the petitioner must prevail.”) (quoting O’Neal v.

McAninch, 513 U.S. 432, 437 (1995)).

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32 SESSOMS V. GROUNDS

 Accordingly, the question is whether we can fairly

determine that Sessoms’s confession did not substantially

sway the jury to convict him for felony murder, burglary, and

robbery.

8 Applying this standard, we have little difficulty

concluding that the admission of Sessoms’s illegally obtained

confession was not harmless. 

To begin, as the Supreme Court has emphasized, a

“defendant’s own confession is probably the most probative

and damaging evidence that can be admitted against him.” 

Fulminante, 499 U.S. at 296 (citation omitted); Alvarez v.

Gomez, 185 F.3d 995, 999 (9th Cir. 1995) (holding

introduction of illegallyobtained confession was not harmless

error under Brecht standard).

This case underscores that point. In his statements to

police, Sessoms readily implicated himself in the crime,

admitting that he knew about the planned robbery beforehand

and was an active participant in carrying it out. Critically,

Sessoms confessed that he entered the house along with his

two co-conspirators, expecting to rob the victim while he

wasn’t home. He described the crime in vivid detail, down to

the pajamas the victim was wearing when Sessoms and his

cohorts stumbled upon him. 

In closing arguments, prosecutors drove home the point,

returning to Sessoms’s confession again and again and telling

jurors it was “very important evidence.” The prosecutor

added, “You should consider it carefully. He admits in his

statements to the detectives his full and knowing involvement

8 The state acknowledges that, with respect to the jury’s special

circumstances verdict, the introduction of Sessoms’s confession was not

harmless. 

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 33

in the underlying crimes of burglary and robbery. . . .” He

went on to argue: “You should not question that what Mr.

Sessoms said about his involvement and what happened that

night is true.”

The other evidence against Sessoms pales in comparison. 

Two teenage witnesses placed Sessoms near the scene on the

night of the murder, but neither saw him enter the house. 

Eight days after the crime, police recovered Sessoms’s

fingerprints on documents inside the glove box of the

victim’s car. This circumstantial evidence may have

supported an accessory charge, but it provided, at best,

limited proof that Sessoms actually participated in the

botched robbery, much less that he had the specific intent

necessary for the felony murder, robbery, and burglary

convictions. 

Sessoms’s confession was the linchpin of the

prosecution’s case. Because the confession likely

substantially swayed the jury toward conviction, the

constitutional error was not harmless.

CONCLUSION

Sessoms’s statements, taken together, are a far cry from

the ambiguous statement offered in Davis and the unclear

conduct in Berghuis and Salinas. Davis recognized that “a

suspect need not speak with the discrimination of an Oxford

don,” however, “he must articulate his desire to have counsel

present sufficiently clearly that a reasonable police officer in

the circumstances would understand the statement to be a

request for an attorney.” 512 U.S. at 459 (quoting id. at 476

(Souter, J., concurring)) (internal quotation marks omitted). 

This is precisely what Sessoms did. Admission of Sessoms’s

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34 SESSOMS V. GROUNDS

statements was not harmless error. We reverse the district

court’s judgment and remand for further proceedings

consistent with this opinion.

REVERSED AND REMANDED.

Chief Judge KOZINSKI, reluctantly dissenting:

This is a sad and troubling case. There can be no doubt

that Tio Sessoms meant to ask for a lawyer. Nor is there any

doubt that detectives Woods and Keller understood exactly

what he was asking for—and used their hefty leverage to

divert him from that purpose. It was hardly a fair contest: a

boy in his teens, held in custody and cut off from friends and

family, pitted against two police detectives with decades of

experience in overcoming the will of recalcitrant suspects and

witnesses.

But what we must decide is not what Sessoms meant or

the officers understood, but whether it was unreasonable for

the state courts to conclude that a reasonable officer would

have been perplexed as to whether Sessoms was asking for an

attorney. This is the kind of question only lawyers could

love—or even understand—and perhaps not even most of

them. I am dismayed that Sessoms’s fate—whether he will

spend his remaining days in prison, half a century or more

caged like an animal—turns on such esoterica. But that’s the

standard we are bound to apply, even if we are convinced that

the habeas petitioner’s constitutional rights were violated. 

See Cavazos v. Smith, 132 S. Ct. 2, 4 (2011) (per curiam)

(“[T]he inevitable consequence of [AEDPA] is that [federal]

judges will sometimes encounter convictions that theybelieve

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 35

to be mistaken, but that they must nonetheless uphold.”); see

also Brown v. Payton, 544 U.S. 133, 148–49 (2005) (Breyer,

J., concurring) (stating that even though he likely would have

found a constitutional violation “[w]ere [he] a California state

judge,” the state court’s denial of habeas relief was

reasonable).

Under this unforgiving standard, Judge Murguia has the

better of the argument. This is not a case where the state

judges were confused about the law or overlooked key

evidence, as in Taylor v. Maddox, 366 F.3d 992, 1008 (9th

Cir. 2004). No, the Court of Appeal’s opinion is carefully

crafted to exploit every ambiguity in the timid utterances of

a scared and lonely teenager. Another uneven contest that

Sessoms was bound to lose.

While I agree with Judge Murguia’s analysis and join her

dissent, it’s just as well that our view doesn’t command a

majority. If the State of California can’t convict and sentence

Sessoms without sharp police tactics, it doesn’t deserve to

keep him behind bars for the rest of his life. I have seen far

too many cases where police extract inculpatory statements

from suspects they believe to be guilty, then stop looking for

evidence, confident that the courts will uphold the

interrogation, no matter how tainted. See, e.g., Milke v. Ryan,

711 F.3d 998, 1001–02 (9th Cir. 2013); Taylor, 366 F.3d at

996–97. This can lead to wrongful convictions, as innocent

interrogation subjects confess with surprising frequency. See

Saul M. Kassin et al., Police-Induced Confessions: Risk

Factors and Recommendations, 34 Law & Hum. Behav. 3,

3–5 (2009); Brandon L. Garrett, Judging Innocence,

108 Colum. L. Rev. 55, 88–89 (2008). When courts bend

over backwards to salvage evidence extracted byquestionable

methods, they encourage police to take such shortcuts rather

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36 SESSOMS V. GROUNDS

than doing the arduous legwork required to obtain hard

evidence.

The state courts should have been far more vigilant in

correcting and condemning the detectives’ improper conduct,

particularly since it involved a naïve teenager who clearly

tried very hard to invoke his constitutional right to have a

lawyer present during questioning. The state courts having

failed Sessoms, I’m glad that a majority of our en banc court

is able to conclude that the state courts were unreasonable. I

hope their view prevails in the end.

CALLAHAN, Circuit Judge, dissenting:

This case is before our en banc panel for a second time

after the Supreme Court vacated our prior opinion and

remanded for further consideration in light of Salinas v.

Texas, 133 S. Ct. 2174 (2013). I concur in Judge Murguia’s

dissent. I write separately to stress that I read the Supreme

Court’s remand for further consideration in light of Salinas as

precluding the majority’s conclusion that Sessoms’s

comments were so unambiguous as to render the California

Court of Appeal’s opinion unreasonable.

Although Salinas concerned the right to remain silent

rather than the right to counsel, Justice Alito’s plurality

opinion in Salinas sets forth a controlling perspective.1 He

1 Sessoms’s claim would clearly fail under Justice Thomas’s concurring

opinion, which Justice Scalia joined. Justice Thomas wrote: “In my view,

Salinas’ claim would fail even if he had invoked the privilege because the

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first reiterated that “[t]he privilege against self-incrimination

‘is an exception to the general principle that the Government

has the right to everyone’s testimony.’” 133 S. Ct. at 2179

(quoting Garner v. United States, 424 U.S. 648, 658 n.11). 

He explained that the requirement that the privilege be clearly

invoked:

ensures that the Government is put on notice

when a witness intends to rely on the privilege

so that it may either argue that the testimony

sought could not be self-incriminating, see

Hoffman v. United States, 341 U.S. 479, 486,

71 S. Ct. 814, 95 L. Ed. 1118 (1951), or cure

any potential self-incrimination through a

grant of immunity, see Kastigar v. United

States, 406 U.S. 441, 448, 92 S. Ct. 1653, 32

L. Ed.2d 212 (1972).

133 S. Ct. at 2179. Justice Alito further elaborated that “[a]

witness’ constitutional right to refuse to answer questions

depends on his reasons for doing so, and courts need to know

those reasons to evaluate the merits of a Fifth Amendment

claim.”2 Id. at 2183.

prosecutor’s comments regarding his precustodial silence did not compel

him to give self-incriminating testimony.” 133 S. Ct. at 2184.

 

2

 Justice Alito added the following footnote:

The dissent suggests that officials in this case had no

“special need to know whether the defendant sought to

rely on the protections of the Fifth Amendment.” Post,

at 2186–2187 (opinion of BREYER, J.). But we have

never said that the government must demonstrate such

a need on a case-by-case basis for the invocation

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The application of this perspective to Sessoms’s situation

precludes a finding that the California Court of Appeal’s

decision was “based on an unreasonable application of,

clearly established Federal law.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1).

The opinions in Salinas confirm that the Supreme Court

had not previously ruled on the degree of certainty required

for a pre-Miranda request for counsel. Justice Alito saw

Salinas’s unexplained silence in response to the prosecutor’s

question as ambiguous. He does not deny that Salinas could

have asserted his right against self-incrimination under the

Fifth Amendment as his reason for declining to answer. Nor

does he deny that if Salinas had invoked his rights under the

Fifth Amendment, the prosecutor would have been barred at

trial from commenting on Salinas’s silence.

The logic behind the determination that Salinas’s silence

was ambiguous leads to the conclusion that Sessoms’s

comments concerning counsel were also ambiguous. In both

instances the defendants were at police stations. Although

Salinas may not have been “in custody,” Sessoms had

voluntarily placed himself in custody. In both instances, the

officers had legitimate reasons for needing specificity. In

Salinas, as noted, the officers could have considered grants of

immunity. Similarly, with Sessoms, the officers might have

considered grants of immunity and definitely needed to know

requirement to apply. Any such rule would require

judicial hypothesizing about the probable strategic

choices of prosecutors, who often use immunity to

compel testimony from witnesses who invoke the Fifth

Amendment.

133 S. Ct. at 2183 n.4. The majority appears to succumb to “judicial

hypothesizing.”

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whether under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), and

Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477 (1981), they were required

to cease the interrogation even before they gave a Miranda

warning.

As a practical matter, Salinas’s reason for not answering

the officer’s question was more obvious than Sessoms’s

intent. The officer asked Salinas whether his shotgun would

match the shells recovered at the scene of the murder. 

Salinas, 133 S. Ct. at 2178. It is hard to imagine a question

that more obviously calls for an incriminating answer. In

contrast, as Judge Murguia’s dissent notes, Sessoms’s

statements are in themselves ambiguous.3

In light of the case

law cited by Judge Murguia, the California Court of Appeal’s

decision that Sessoms’ statements were ambiguous cannot be

considered “an unreasonable determination of the facts in

light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” 

28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2).

The majority, perhaps seeking to avoid this conclusion,

purports to grant relief on the first prong of § 2254(d),

holding that the California Court of Appeal “landed on an

unreasonable application of clearly established federal law.” 

Maj. Op. at 30–31. The State court’s alleged failings were

that it “analyzed each statement separately, [and] did not

explore the context in which the statements were made.” Id.

3

It might further be noted that as a practical matter, a suspect may, on

occasion, benefit from waiving his Miranda rights in exchange for

immunity or a bargained sentence. This reality supports the requirement

that a request for counsel be unambiguous because a defendant may

mention his Fifth Amendment rights as a negotiating tactic.

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The California Court of Appeal’s decision, however,

speaks for itself. The court wrote:

“ ‘[A] statement either is such an assertion of

the right to counsel or it is not.’ [Citation.]

Although a suspect need not ‘speak with the

discrimination of an Oxford don,’ [citation],

he must articulate his desire to have counsel

present sufficiently clearly that a reasonable

police officer in the circumstances would

understand the statement to be a request for an

attorney. If the statement fails to meet the

requisite level of clarity, Edwards does not

require that the officers stop questioning the

suspect. [Citation.]” (Davis, supra, 512 U.S.

at p. 459.)

In the present case, although defendant twice

explicitly referred to an attorney, neither

statement was an unequivocal or

unambiguous request for counsel. On the first

occasion, defendant asked, “There wouldn’t

be any possible way that I could have a . . .

lawyer present while we do this?” As the

court found, this was a question, not an

unambiguous request. Defendant’s second

reference to an attorney was “Yeah, that’s

what my dad asked me to ask you guys . . . uh,

give me a lawyer.”

We find defendant’s first statement is legally

indistinguishable from the equivocal remarks

in Davis, “‘Maybe I should talk to a lawyer’”

(Davis, supra, 512 U.S. at p. 455), and in

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People v. Crittenden (1994) 9 Cal.4th 83, 123

(Crittenden), “‘Did you say I could have a

lawyer?’” These equivocal remarks in Davis

and Crittenden were not requests for counsel

triggering the Edwards rule. (Davis, supra,

512 U.S. at p. 462.) Similarly, “[i]n the

present case, defendant did not unequivocally

state that he wanted an attorney, but simply

asked a question.” (Crittenden, supra,

9 Cal.4th at p. 130.)

Nor was defendant’s second reference to an

attorney an unequivocal request for an

attorney. At best, it was a statement of his

father’s advice to him. We cannot find such

a statement to be “sufficiently clear[ ] that a

reasonable police officer in the circumstances

would understand the statement to be a

request for an attorney.” (Davis, supra,

512 U.S. at p. 459.)

People v. Sessoms, No. C041139, 2004 WL 49720 at *3 (Ca.

Ct. App. Jan. 12, 2004) (citations as set forth in the original).

Indeed, the majority opinion appears to reflect a

disagreement with the California Court of Appeal’s view of

the facts, not its application of clear Federal law.4 The

4 The majority’s distinction between a determination of fact and the

application of clearly established Federal law is less than clear. It notes

that the California Court of Appeal identified “the governing Supreme

Court precedents, Miranda, Edwards and Davis,” but then opines that the

court “unreasonably applied those precedents by analyzing Sessoms’s

statements in isolation rather than collectively and in context.” Maj. Op.

at 22. This suggests that where, as here, the underlying facts are not

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42 SESSOMS V. GROUNDS

opinion states: “[t]he only reasonable interpretation of ‘give

me a lawyer’ is that Sessoms was asking for a lawyer,” Maj.

Op. at 26; “[v]iewed in the context of Sessoms’s prior request

that the detectives make counsel available to him during the

interrogation, it was unreasonable to hold that Sessoms’s

second statement, ‘give me a lawyer,’ was an ambiguous

request for counsel,” Maj Op. at 27; and “[t]here was no

ambiguity regarding what Sessoms wanted: a lawyer.” Maj.

Op. at 30. These appear to be disagreements with the State

court’s view of the facts, not with the application of clear

Federal law.

Critically, some of the reasons offered by the majority to

support its conclusion were rejected by the Supreme Court in

Salinas. The majority asserts that the “detectives understood

that Sessoms was requesting counsel,” Maj. Op. at 24; and

that the “detectives’ behavior confirms that—like any

reasonable law enforcement officers—they understood that

Sessoms was requesting counsel.” Maj Op. at 29. However,

the plurality opinion in Salinas noted that the Court had

“repeatedly held that the express invocation requirement

applies even when an official has reason to suspect that the

answer to his question would incriminate the witness.” 

133 S. Ct. at 2181. Thus, as in Salinas, whether Sessoms’s

statements were ambiguous does not turn on whether the

disputed, a determination of whether a suspect’s statement concerning

counsel is ambiguous is a question of law, not fact. This does not seem

right.

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detectives probably understood that Sessoms was requesting

counsel.5

Furthermore, as Judge Murguia notes in her dissent, the

detectives’ reaction was consistent with concerns that

Sessoms might be invoking his right to counsel. As Justice

Alito explained in Salinas, the Government is entitled to a

clear invocation in order that it may consider curing “any

potential self-incrimination through a grant of immunity.” 

133 S. Ct. at 2179. Here, the detective did not ignore

Sessoms statements, but returned to the subject, telling

Sessoms “[i]f you said you didn’t want to make any statement

without an attorney, we’re not really going to be able to talk

to you.” In response, Sessoms did not ask for counsel. Nor

is he claiming that he was pressured into an involuntary

waiver. Rather, he asserts that his two statements were so

clear as to require the immediate cessation of questioning. I

do not read the Supreme Court’s opinions in Salinas, or

Davis, as directing such a conclusion.

Because Supreme Court precedent does not compel a

determination, either as a matter of law or fact, that

Sessoms’s statements, either separatelyor together, constitute

an unambiguous invocation of his right to counsel, we are

compelled to deny him relief. “A state court’s determination

that a claim lacks merit precludes federal habeas relief so

long as ‘fairminded jurists could disagree’ on the correctness

5 Such a test was implicitly rejected in cases such as Davis v. United

States, 512 U.S. 452, 459 (1994) (“Maybe I should talk to a lawyer.”); and

United States v. Younger, 398 F.3d 1179, 1187 (9th Cir. 2005) (“[B]ut,

excuse me, if I am right, I can have a lawyer present through all this,

right?”). In both instances, the officers probably understood the intent

behind the defendants’ ambiguous statements.

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44 SESSOMS V. GROUNDS

of the state court’s decision.” Harrington v. Richter, 131 S.

Ct. 770, 786 (2011). Indeed, recognizing the deference due

to the California Court of Appeal’s determination is the most

reasonable explanation for why the Supreme Court vacated

our prior en banc opinion and remanded the case for

consideration in light of Salinas. I would follow the Supreme

Court’s advice rather than challenge it to order our

compliance.

MURGUIA, Circuit Judge, with whom KOZINSKI, Chief

Judge, and SILVERMAN,CALLAHAN, and IKUTA, Circuit

Judges, join, dissenting:

When Congress enacted the Antiterrorism and Effective

Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), it severely restricted

the power of federal courts to provide relief to habeas

petitioners convicted in state court, even when we might

believe that the conviction was the result of unlawful

proceedings. The statutory provision at issue here, 28 U.S.C.

§ 2254(d), provides that

[a]n application for a writ of habeas corpus on

behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the

judgment of a State court shall not be granted

with respect to any claim that was adjudicated

on the merits in State court proceedings unless

the adjudication of the claim–

(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to,

or involved an unreasonable application of,

clearly established Federal law, as determined

by the Supreme Court of the United States; or

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(2) resulted in a decision that was based on an

unreasonable determination of the facts in

light of the evidence presented in the State

court proceeding.

Our inquiry falls under § 2254(d)(1); specifically, we must

consider whether the California Court of Appeal

“unreasonabl[y] appli[ed]” the Supreme Court’s holding in

Davis v. United States, 512 U.S. 452, 459 (1994). Davis held

that a suspect “must articulate his desire to have counsel

present sufficiently clearly that a reasonable police officer in

the circumstances would understand the statement to be a

request for an attorney” before the interrogating officers are

required to stop questioning the suspect under the Supreme

Court’s rule in Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477 (1981).

1

Under AEDPA, this inquiry is much narrower than simply

evaluating whether the state court correctly applied Davis.

For purposes of § 2254(d)(1), “an

unreasonable application of federal law is

different from an incorrect application of

federal law.” A state court must be granted a

deference and latitude that are not in operation

when the case involves [direct review].

Harrington v. Richter, 131 S. Ct. 770, 785 (2011) (quoting

Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 410 (2000)). Indeed, we

may only grant habeas relief where “there is no possibility

1 As the majority correctly observes, although the Supreme Court’s

holding in Davis applied only to waivers of the right to counsel made after

a suspect had been informed of and waived his Miranda rights, Salinas v.

Texas, 133 S. Ct. 2174 (2013), suggests that the “unambiguous request”

rule applies in a pre-waiver context as well.

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fairminded jurists could disagree that the state court’s

decision conflicts with [the Supreme] Court’s precedents.” 

Id. at 786.

The Supreme Court has recognized that AEDPA, by its

intention and design, prohibits us from granting relief in

almost all cases in which a petitioner alleges that federal law

has been unreasonably applied. See id. “As amended by

AEDPA, § 2254(d) stops short of imposing a complete bar on

federal court relitigation of claims already rejected in state

proceedings.” Id.

Thus, AEDPA has the effect of limiting this court’s

consideration of Sessoms’s petition to an excruciatingly

narrow question. It does not matter whether we believe that

the state court incorrectly applied Davis. It does not matter

whether we believe that the state court’s decision was

inconsistent with the vital constitutional principle that

animated Edwards – that “an accused, . . . having expressed

his desire to deal with the police only through counsel, is not

subject to further interrogation bythe authorities until counsel

has been made available to him.” 451 U.S. at 484–85. It

does not matter whether the best practice for the officers

interrogating Sessoms would have been to ask him to clarify

whether he indeed wanted the assistance of counsel. Under

AEDPA, the only question that matters to us now is whether

any fairminded jurist could determine that Sessoms “ma[de]

a reference to an attorney that [was] ambiguous or equivocal

in that a reasonable officer in light of the circumstances

would have understood only that the suspect might be

invoking the right to counsel.” Davis, 512 U.S. at 459.

I believe that a fairminded jurist could reach such a

conclusion. Sessoms first asked, “There wouldn’t be any

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SESSOMS V. GROUNDS 47

possible way that I could have a, a lawyer present while we

do this?” This question, punctuated with hesitation and

conditions and phrased in the negative, is subject to different

interpretations and comparable to statements that this court

and other courts have found ambiguous. Compare Davis,

512 U.S. at 455 (“Maybe I should talk to a lawyer.”); United

States v. Younger, 398 F.3d 1179, 1187 (9th Cir. 2005)

(“[B]ut, excuse me, if I am right, I can have a lawyer present

through all this, right?”); Clark v. Murphy, 331 F.3d 1062,

1065 (9th Cir. 2003) (“I think I would like to talk to a

lawyer.”), overruled on other grounds by Lockyer v. Andrade,

538 U.S. 63 (2003); United States v. Doe, 170 F.3d 1162,

1166 (9th Cir. 1999) (“What time will Isee a lawyer?”); Diaz

v. Senkowski, 76 F.3d 61, 63–65 (2d Cir. 1996) (“I think I

want a lawyer.”); Lord v. Duckworth, 29 F.3d 1216, 1218–21

(7th Cir. 1994) (“I can’t afford a lawyer but is there any way

I can get one?”); with Anderson v. Terhune, 516 F.3d 781,

783 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc) (“I plead the Fifth.”); Edwards,

451 U.S. at 479 (“I want an attorney before making a deal.”).

Sessoms followed up his question by stating, “That’s

what my dad asked me to ask you guys . . . uh, give me a

lawyer.” It is unclear if Sessoms was merely expressing his

father’s opinion or if he was agreeing with his father and he

himself wanted an attorney. Either interpretation is plausible. 

A reasonable jurist could conclude that telling a detective,

“My dad told me to ask for a lawyer” is different than saying,

“I want a lawyer.” Because a reasonable jurist could find

either of Sessoms’s statements – or both, considered together

– ambiguous or equivocal, relief is barred by AEDPA.

The majority points to the detective’s behavior in reaction

to Sessoms’s statements as evidence that the detective

believed Sessoms had invoked his right to counsel. 

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According to the majority, the officer attempted to “talk

Sessoms out of an attorney,” which demonstrates that the

officer understood Sessoms to have invoked his right to speak

with counsel. The detective’s reaction, however, could easily

have been that of an officer faced with a suspect who only

might have invoked his right to counsel. The detective’s

acknowledgment of Sessoms’s statements about speaking to

an attorney supports this theory:

Uh, I want to back up to your question you

asked about an attorney. Um, first, before you

ask questions, uh, I’m going to tell you why

we’re here, just lay it out and be up front. 

And then – then I’m going to advise you of

your rights. And then it’s up – for you to

decide if you want the attorney or not.

The majority believes the officers should have answered

Sessoms’s question by simply saying “yes,” reading him his

Miranda rights, and then terminating the interrogation in the

absence of a clear waiver. Maj. Op. at 25–26. The majority

likewise believes that, in the brief exchange before Sessoms

was read his Miranda rights, the detective manipulated

Sessoms into waiving his right to counsel. Again, however,

Sessoms is not claiming that he was pressured into an

involuntary waiver, but only that he asked for counsel, which

should have terminated the interrogation. “[T]he likelihood

that a suspect would wish counsel to be present is not the test

for applicability of Edwards.” McNeil v. Wisconsin, 501 U.S.

171, 178 (1991). Unless Sessoms clearly invoked his right to

counsel, the police officers were not required to take any

particular course of action in response to his statements or

questions. See Davis, 512 U.S. at 460. As such, the

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majority’s focus on the detective’s reaction to Sessoms’s

statements is misplaced.

While the majority correctly observes that the state court

should have considered Sessoms’s statements together rather

than in isolation, that is not a basis for granting habeas relief

where, as here, the state court could have reached the same

outcome even if it had done so. See Harrington, 131 S. Ct. at

786 (“[A] habeas court must determine what arguments or

theories supported or . . . could have supported[] the state

court’s decision; and then it must ask whether it is possible

fairminded jurists could disagree that those arguments or

theories are inconsistent with the holding in a prior decision

of this Court.”). Although the majority may offer the most

logical interpretation of what Sessoms was attempting to

communicate byhis statements, there are other interpretations

that are at least reasonable, even if less compelling.

2 Even

taking Sessoms’s statements together, those statements

contained just enough ambiguity that a fairminded jurist

could conclude that Sessoms was indicating only that he

might want the assistance of counsel.

I acknowledge that this reasoning results in a harsh

outcome for a nineteen-year-old who turned himself in,

expressly told the officers that his father wanted him to have

a lawyer, and may have simply been trying to be respectful

2 The majority’s characterization of this assessment as “jettison[ing] the

only ‘logical interpretation’ of Sessoms’s statements,” Maj. Op. at 28,

misapprehends the structure that AEDPA imposes on our inquiry. We do

not seek to identify the best interpretation of Sessoms’s statements. Our

task is to identify the universe of reasonable interpretations. Here, if the

state court’s understanding of Sessoms’s statements can meet the

extremely low bar that the Supreme Court has set for reasonableness, then

we are precluded from granting relief.

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when asking for counsel. However, the potential for a harsh

outcome does not permit us to disregard AEDPA’s “highly

deferential standard for evaluating state-court rulings, which

demands that state-court decisions be given the benefit of the

doubt.” Cullen v. Pinholster, 131 S. Ct. 1388, 1398 (2011)

(quoting Woodford v. Visciotti, 537 U.S. 19, 24 (2002) (per

curiam)).

Could the police officers have assumed that Sessoms was

in fact asking for a lawyer? Yes. Was it objectively

unreasonable for the California Court of Appeal to hold that

a police officer could have interpreted Sessoms’s statement

as merely a possible request for a lawyer, which would not

require the officer to stop the interrogation? I cannot say that

it was. Because this court is constrained by the deference

mandated by AEDPA, even when faced with a close case in

which it may have ruled differently than the state court, I

respectfully dissent.

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