Opinion ID: 3010620
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the doyle violation

Text: The Supreme Court established in Doyle v. Ohio that it is improper for a prosecutor to cause the jury to draw an impermissible inference of guilt from a defendant's postarrest silence. 426 U.S. at 610. Doyle involved two defendants who, upon taking the witness stand in their own defense, claimed that a narcotics informant had framed them for the crime. The prosecutor asked each defendant on cross-examination whether he had told the framing story to the police after his arrest. Defense counsel objected strenuously, arguing that the prosecution could not impeach the defendants on this basis because _________________________________________________________________ 1. This case is not subject to the terms of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214 (1996), because Hassine filed his habeas petition well before the April 24, 1996, date on which the AEDPA took effect. 8 the defendants were merely exercising their right to remain silent after arrest. However, the objections were overruled and the defendants were compelled to admit that they had not provided an exculpatory story to the authorities following their arrests and the reading of their Miranda rights. On appeal, the defendants argued that the prosecutor's line of questioning violated the due process guarantees inherent in the right to remain silent. The Supreme Court agreed, reversing their convictions in light of Miranda's implicit assurance that silence will have no adverse consequences. The Court stated that it would be fundamentally unfair and a deprivation of due process to allow the arrested person's silence to be used to impeach an explanation subsequently offered at trial. Id. at 618. Therefore, the Court held, the use for impeachment purposes of petitioners' silence, at the time of arrest and after receiving Miranda warnings, violate[s] the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Id. at 619. In this case, we believe that the state prosecutor violated the due process principles established in Doyle by seeking to elicit testimony about Hassine's post-arrest, postMiranda silence. The record shows that the prosecutor's cross-examination of Hassine proceeded as follows: Prosecutor: How long have you been sitting in jail, sir? Hassine: Close to seven months. Prosecutor: And you have been sitting in Bucks Country Prison? Hassine: No, sir. Prosecutor: You were in Bucks County Prison for a time? Hassine: About a month and a half. Prosecutor: You were sitting in Holmesburg Prison? Hassine: For about five months. Prosecutor: And another prison? Hassine: Delaware County. Prosecutor: And conditions are not very good? Hassine: No, sir. Prosecutor: You sat for seven months in prison with the knowledge of what was really involved in regard to this gun, and you just kept it to 9 yourself because your attorney said to keep it to yourself? Hassine's Attorney: Objection. The Court: Sustained. Prosecutor: But you kept it to yourself until you came in to a court of law today and said it for the first time, in any event, outside of perhaps your family or your lawyer? Hassine's Attorney: Objection. Prosecutor: For the first time? Hassine's Attorney: That is objected to. The Court: Sustained. On three occasions, and over three objections, the prosecutor asked Hassine why he had remained silent about the crime after his arrest and after Miranda warnings had been given. It is clear from these questions that the prosecutor was attempting to elicit the precise inferences that the State is prohibited from exploiting under Doyle. Further, the trial court did not provide, and defense counsel did not request, any curative instructions for the jury. In this regard, the instant case is distinguishable from Greer v. Miller, 483 U.S. 756 (1987), where the Supreme Court found no Doyle violation. In Greer, the sequence of events -- a single question, an immediate objection, and two curative instructions -- clearly indicate[d] that the prosecutor's improper question did not violate [the petitioner's] due process rights. Id. at 766. Here, the prosecutor asked questions concerning the amount of time Hassine had spent in prison, questioned Hassine about the poor conditions he had experienced in confinement, and then, despite objections by the defense, asked three questions that are clearly prohibited by Doyle, and then made statements in his closing that could be understood to refer to that same silence. Moreover, the trial court gave no curative instructions at all. We thus find that the government violated Hassine's right to due process under Doyle. In so ruling we reject the State's argument, and the view of the Pennsylvania Superior Court in Hassine I, 490 A.2d 10 at 451, that the prosecutor's questions were nonetheless permissible because Hassine had opened the door in his direct testimony to inquiries about his post-arrest silence. Hassine had told the jury on direct examination that his attorney had offered to make him available to the police, by, for example, offering to present his father to the police in connection with identifying the gun. The State contends that by asking Hassine about his post-arrest silence, the prosecutor was merely challenging Hassine's testimony as to his behavior following arrest by impeaching Hassine's claim on direct examination that he was available and willing to cooperate with the authorities. The State's argument is based on an exception contained in footnote eleven in Doyle, which provides that post-arrest silence could be used by the prosecution to contradict a defendant who testifies to an exculpatory version of events and claims to have told the police the same version upon arrest. 426 U.S. at 619 n.11. As the Supreme Court explained, [i]n that situation the fact of earlier silence would not be used to impeach the exculpatory story, but rather to challenge the defendant's testimony as to his behavior following arrest. Id. We agree that the State's argument has some allure under Doyle as a basis for the prosecutor to use Hassine's post-arrest silence for impeachment. However, we find, as the district court did, that Hassine's direct testimony was far too innocuous and ambiguous to constitute an exculpatory version that would justify the pointed crossexamination in this case. The Doyle footnote applies when a witness testifies on the stand to a version of events and indicates that he previously told that version to law enforcement. The government can then pursue its position that the story was not previously told, and may bring out on cross-examination the fact that the defendant was silent following arrest. As the one case cited in the Doyle footnote makes clear, to be admissible, keeping silence must be much more than ambiguous. It must appear to be an act blatantly inconsistent with the defendant's trial testimony. United States v. Fairchild, 505 F.2d 1378, 1382 (5th Cir. 1975). In this case, however, there is no contention that Hassine described a version of events on the stand and 11 indicated that he had previously told that same story to the police. Rather, the only testimony which harkens back to Hassine's previous behavior deals with his declaration that he was available for further questioning. Hassine did not claim to have told the police an exculpatory story after arrest, did not imply that he had participated actively in the investigation, and never suggested that he had surrendered his right to silence by speaking directly with the authorities. The only relevance of the prosecutor's questioning to Hassine's previous silence, therefore, implicates his right to remain silent more than it constitutes questioning probative of his truth or credibility.2 The Doyle footnote exception only permits the prosecution to use post-arrest silence to impeach the credibility of the defendant's version of what he did following arrest; the government cannot use the silence to impeach the exculpatory story itself or to draw inferences suggesting the defendant's guilt. See Doyle, 426 U.S. at 619 n.11; United States v. Gant, 17 F.3d 935, 941 (7th Cir. 1994) ([T]he government may use defendant's silence for the limited purpose of impeaching his testimony; it may not argue that the defendant's silence is inconsistent with his claim of innocence.); Alo v. Olim, 639 F.2d 466, 468 (9th Cir. 1980) (questions implying that the defendant's silence is substantive evidence of guilt are not permitted under the Doyle exception). In the present case, rather than simply asking Hassine if he had told his story to the police after arrest, the prosecutor asked incredulously, [y]ou sat for seven months in prison with the knowledge of what was really involved in regard to the his gun, and you just kept it to yourself because your attorney said to keep it to yourself? We believe that questions like this clearly invite _________________________________________________________________ 2. Hassine's appeal thus differs greatly from Fairchild, where the court determined that post-arrest silence was admissible because the defense attorney had specifically asked the defendant if he had cooperated fully with the FBI and U.S. Attorney's office in responding with anything that you all wanted. 505 F.2d at 1383; see also Leecan v. Lopes, 893 F.2d 1434, 1442 (2d Cir. 1990) (emphasis added) (finding that an inquiry into post-arrest silence was warranted where the defendant's testimony left the clear implication that he had proffered his alibi to the police upon surrender). 12 the jury -- in violation of Doyle -- to reject Hassine's story and to infer that Hassine's post-arrest silence was a sign of his guilt. Consequently, we conclude that the footnote eleven exception in Doyle is of no aid to the State. The prosecutor violated Hassine's right to due process at trial by seeking to draw impermissible inferences about Hassine's postMiranda silence following arrest.