Opinion ID: 3051134
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: the state court’s decision was contrary to

Text: SUPREME COURT PRECEDENT BY FINDING A WAIVER BASED ON ANDERSON’S RESPONSES TO RE-INTERROGATION [10] The state appellate court attempted to bolster its conclusion about Anderson’s statements by claiming that he waived his right to remain silent in continuing to answer police questions after he stated, “I plead the Fifth”: [W]hile words of invocation were spoken by the defendant, the court concludes that, in any case, he effectively waived the right to remain silent by what followed. . . . By continuing to talk to the police officers, defendant demonstrated a willingness to continue to discuss the case Put another way, the state court endorses the principle that once the officers ignored Anderson’s unequivocal invocation of the Fifth Amendment, their questioning kept him talking and resulted in a waiver of his right to remain silent. This analysis directly contravenes Supreme Court precedent: “[U]nder the clear logical force of settled precedent, an accused’s postrequest responses to further interrogation may not be used to cast retrospective doubt on the clarity of the initial request itself.” Smith, 469 U.S. at 100 (emphasis in original). [11] Smith mandates that all questioning must immediately cease once the right to remain silent is invoked, and that any subsequent statements by the defendant in response to continued interrogation cannot be used to find a waiver or cast ambiguity on the earlier invocation. The Supreme Court’s somewhat lengthy recitation of this principle is particularly instructive in this case: ANDERSON v. TERHUNE 1397 Where nothing about the request for counsel or the circumstances leading up to the request would render it ambiguous, all questioning must cease. In these circumstances, an accused’s subsequent statements are relevant only to the question whether the accused waived the right he had invoked. Invocation and waiver are entirely distinct inquiries, and the two must not be blurred by merging them together. . . . With respect to the waiver inquiry, we accordingly have emphasized that a valid waiver “cannot be established by showing only that [the accused] responded to further police-initiated custodial interrogation.” Using an accused’s subsequent responses to cast doubt on the adequacy of the initial request itself is even more intolerable. “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.” Id. at 98-99 (internal citations omitted) (emphasis, alteration and second ellipsis in original). We are not faced with a situation where there was a break in questioning after the Miranda invocation. Instead, police simply continued the conversation up to the point that Anderson said, “I’d like to have an attorney present.” Only at that point did they stop the interrogation and turn off the recorder. But it was too late. [12] We cannot simply suppress the portion of the interrogation that occurred after the invocation of the right to silence and before Anderson’s purported re-initiation of the interrogation. Doing so would eviscerate the mandate to “scrupulously honor[ ]” the invocation of Miranda rights. We understand the 1398 ANDERSON v. TERHUNE phrase “scrupulously honor” to have practical meaning. For the “right to remain silent” to have currency, there must be some silence. The interrogation must stop for some period of time. See Miranda, 384 U.S. at 473-74; Mosley, 423 U.S. at 103-04. Although the Supreme Court has yet to tell us how long the break in questioning must last, in this case there was no cessation at all. Because the interrogation was continuous to that point, we need not determine whether Anderson waived his right to counsel after viewing a videotape of his alleged accomplice nor do we need to address his coercion claim. [13] The prejudice from Anderson’s confession cannot be soft pedaled, and the error was not harmless. Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 623 (1993). The confession was central to the conviction. See Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 296 (1991) (“A confession is like no other evidence. Indeed, the defendant’s own confession is probably the most . . . damaging evidence that can be admitted against him.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Although deference must be given to state court determinations under AEDPA, we would be abdicating our responsibility to abide by Supreme Court precedent and to police the Constitution’s boundaries were we to permit such an egregious violation of Miranda to go unchecked. [14] The judgment of the district court is reversed and the case is remanded with instructions to grant the writ. REVERSED AND REMANDED. SILVERMAN, Circuit Judge, with whom RAWLINSON,