Opinion ID: 2009063
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel

Text: Sites maintains that he had a right under the Sixth Amendment to the Federal Constitution to communicate with counsel prior to submitting to the chemical sobriety test. He asserts that the pretest period is a critical stage of the drunk driving prosecution in that the defendant is called upon to make a choice between taking or not taking the test  a choice, he says, which will have a substantial and irreversible impact on the ensuing trial. As Sites puts it, the decision whether to take the test is the whole ball game in drunk driving cases. He states: If [the drunk driving suspect] submits and is in fact intoxicated, he has virtually no chance of winning the criminal case. If he refuses, he loses his license. A police officer quickly and mechanically reading a litany of rights cannot help him to make this choice. An attorney, professionally obligated to assist the suspect, may well be able to guide him toward the least of the evils. Under the Sixth Amendment, a right to counsel attaches, inter alia, at the time of certain evidence-gathering processes which are deemed critical stages of the criminal prosecution as an extension of a defendant's right to representation by counsel in court. Some courts have held that a Sixth Amendment right to counsel, which is applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, does afford a person apprehended for drunk driving a right to communicate with counsel before deciding whether to take a chemical sobriety test. See State v. Welch, 135 Vt. 316, 376 A.2d 351 (1977); State v. Fitzsimmons, 93 Wash.2d 436, 610 P.2d 893 (1980); State v. Bristor, 9 Kan. App.2d 404, 682 P.2d 122 (1984). Most courts, however, have reached a contrary conclusion, finding no Sixth Amendment right to counsel. See Campbell v. Superior Court, 106 Ariz. 542, 479 P.2d 685 (1971); State v. Vietor, 261 N.W.2d 828 (Iowa 1978); State v. Jones, 457 A.2d 1116 (Me. 1983); Spradling v. Deimeke, 528 S.W.2d 759 (Mo. 1975); State v. Petkus, 110 N.H. 394, 269 A.2d 123 (1970), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 932, 91 S.Ct. 1522, 28 L.Ed.2d 867 (1971); Seders v. Powell, 298 N.C. 453, 259 S.E.2d 544 (1979); McNulty v. Curry, 42 Ohio St.2d 341, 328 N.E.2d 798 (1975); State v. Newton, 291 Or. 788, 636 P.2d 393 (1981); Law v. Danville, 212 Va. 702, 187 S.E.2d 197 (1972); Holmberg v. 54-A Judicial District Judge, 60 Mich. App. 757, 231 N.W.2d 543 (1975). The Supreme Court in Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U.S. 682, 92 S.Ct. 1877, 32 L.Ed.2d 411 (1972) clearly limited the scope of that which may be deemed a critical stage of the criminal prosecution. It held that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel does not attach until or after the initiation of an adversarial criminal proceeding by way of indictment, information, or other formal charge, arraignment or a preliminary hearing of the type involved in Coleman v. Alabama, 399 U.S. 1, 90 S.Ct. 1999, 26 L.Ed.2d 387 (1970). The Kirby test has been reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in a number of later cases. See United States v. Gouveia, ___ U.S. ___, 104 S.Ct. 2292, 81 L.Ed.2d 146 (1984); Estelle v. Smith, 451 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 1866, 68 L.Ed.2d 359 (1981); Moore v. Illinois, 434 U.S. 220, 98 S.Ct. 458, 54 L.Ed.2d 424 (1977); Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387, 97 S.Ct. 1232, 51 L.Ed.2d 424 (1977); United States v. Mandujano, 425 U.S. 564, 96 S.Ct. 1768, 48 L.Ed.2d 212 (1976). Consistent with Kirby and its progeny, we recently held in Webster v. State, 299 Md. 581, 474 A.2d 1305 (1984) that the formal charge is the legal event that marks the starting point of the right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment. In the present case, Sites was not formally charged until 1:45 a.m. on May 15, 1982, which was twenty minutes after he took the breathalyzer test and fifty minutes after he signed the consent form. We therefore conclude that his request for counsel before taking the test was not made at a critical stage of the proceeding and that, consequently, no Sixth Amendment right to the assistance of counsel attached before the test was administered. [3]