Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/454/988.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 01:11:50+00:00

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This case offers an instructive example of a phenomenon not uncommon in constitutional law. The Constitution is a [454 U.S. 988 , 989] written document, but cases and controversies involving its provisions necessarily result in opinions from this Court. Those opinions themselves contain aphorisms, whose resemblance to the actual text of the Constitution grows increasingly remote as they are used as substitutes for the text itself, applied to wholly different situations than that addressed in the original case, or simply used as convenient "catchwords" to justify a given result. In my opinion, that is what has happened here. Constitutional building blocks have been piled on top of one another so that the connection between the original provision in the Constitution and the application in a particular case is all but incomprehensible.
Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201, 206 , 1203 (1964), reversed the conviction of an accused on the ground that he had been denied "the basic protections of [the Sixth Amendment] when there was used against him at his trial evidence of his own incriminating words, which federal agents had deliberately elicited from him." One building block was used to reach that result. Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932), held that a trial court's failure to appoint counsel in a capital case until the trial began violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it deprived the defendants of an opportunity to consult with an attorney, and have him investigate their case and prepare a defense. In Massiah, the Court implicitly concluded that the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of the assistance of counsel includes a promise of the companionship of counsel, at least when an interrogation takes place following the initiation of criminal proceedings. 1 But Massiah was further expanded in Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387 (1977), at least insofar as the latter case appeared to establish an extremely heavy burden which the prosecution must carry to demonstrate waiver [454 U.S. 988 , 990] of the right to counsel, despite the existence of a voluntary admission by one who has been informed of and understands his rights. Nevertheless, Brewer emphasized that an accused has a right to the presence of counsel only when the government interrogates him. Id., at 400, 401. In Brewer, detectives "deliberately and designedly set out to elicit information from" the defendant. Id., at 399. In the present case, the lower federal courts held in a habeas corpus proceeding that the Massiah rule was violated when the State introduced against respondent evidence of incriminating statements which he volunteered to the prosecutor in a brief telephone conversation. Thus, another building block is added to support a result even further from the text of the Constitution from which it purports to derive.
Ultimately, the jury acquitted respondent of forgery, but convicted him of embezzlement. Respondent appealed to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. He argued, in part, that the District Attorney's telephone request for handwriting exemplars should have been preceded by the warnings required in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 , 16 L. Ed.2d 694 (1966). The Court of Criminal Appeals rejected this argu- [454 U.S. 988 , 992] ment, concluding that the telephone call did not amount to custodial interrogation, Stringer v. State, 372 So.2d 378, 382 (1979). It noted that "the admission was a volunteered statement, not in response to a question calling for such an answer." Ibid. The court also dismissed the contention that the conviction was invalid because the District Attorney had violated an ethical obligation imposed by the Alabama Code of Professional Responsibility to contact respondent's attorney before initiating the telephone call. Assuming that a breach of ethical obligations had occurred, it could provide no basis for reversing a criminal conviction. Id., at 382-383. Finally, the court concluded that any error in admission of the District Attorney's testimony was harmless . "[T]he appellant testified at trial that he signed William Malone's name to the check. In fact his whole defense was that he had Malone's permission to sign the check." Id., at 383. The court affirmed respondent's conviction, and the Alabama Supreme Court denied a writ of certiorari. Ex parte Stringer, 372 So.2d 384 (1979).
"the securing of an incriminating statement from a defendant who was represented by counsel after indictment in the absence of presence of defense counsel or a waiver thereof is a deprivation of such a defendant's right to counsel as that right is described in Massiah v. United States, [ 377 U.S. 201 (1964)]. Due to the fact that without the evidence obtained by the prosecuting official the State's case would have likely failed, it is impossible to conclude that the obtaining of this statement was harmless error." App. to Pet. for Cert. 6a-7a. [454 U.S. 988 , 993] The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed for the reasons set forth in the District Court's opinion. 640 F.2d 383 ( 1981).
It is scarcely surprising that fewer and fewer capable lawyers can be found to serve on state benches when they may find their considered decisions overturned by the ruling of a- [454 U.S. 988 , 994] single federal district judge on grounds as tenuous as these. This case represents, not merely one more piece of grist in a giant judicial mill, but a vivid illustration of the misapplication of the precedent of this Court by a single federal habeas court,3 followed by a conclusion that the habeas court's version of our case law required exclusion of evidence which the state court system had found to be harmless. I would therefore grant the petition for certiorari in this case.
[ Footnote 1 ] The holding of Massiah was immediately rendered authoritative in the States by virtue of another judicial building block-the "selective incorporation" of the Sixth Amendment by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth accomplished in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963).
[ Footnote 3 ] The District Judge in this case also rendered the initial decision ultimately reversed in Beatty v. United States, 389 U.S. 45 (1967). Beatty was a one-sentence per curiam opinion, resting on the authority of Massiah. In his opinion in this case, the judge recalled that experience in offering consolation to the District Attorney: "Prosecuting officials and trial judges acting with absolute good faith and sincerity oftentimes take acts which run afoul of principles of law declared by the Supreme Court of the United States. This court found itself in the same position in Beatty v. United States . . . ." App. to Pet. for Cert. 9a. Perhaps that experience rendered the District Court hypersensitive to allegations of Massiah error. While this possibility may help to illuminate the reasons for the judgment below, however, it cannot substitute for a careful analysis of the constitutional issues, especially when the federal court sits in judgment on the courts of the State by virtue of its power to issue a writ of habeas corpus.

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