Opinion ID: 7089211
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Tench Again Invokes His Right to Counsel

Text: {¶ 98} Later during the same interview, Tench asked, Can I call my cousin? Weinhardt again explained that he wanted to notify Tench's family first:  [O]nce your cousin knows, your family's going to know. There was further discussion of who was going to notify Tench's family, with Tench asking Weinhardt to let him do it and Weinhardt refusing. Then Weinhardt asked Tench if he could take a DNA mouth swab, and Tench agreed. {¶ 99} Questions like Can I have an attorney? are often not treated as clear invocations of the right to counsel. See generally State v. Raber , 189 Ohio App.3d 396 , 2010-Ohio-4066 , 938 N.E.2d 1060 , ¶ 19-20 (9th Dist.) (citing cases). However, in the context of Tench's previous unequivocal requests for his attorney, we think that his request to call his cousin, whom he had identified as his attorney, 4 must be  considered a clear invocation of the right. Given that, we must again determine whether Weinhardt or Tench initiated discussion of the case after Tench invoked his right to counsel. {¶ 100} We first consider whether Weinhardt's request for consent to take a DNA swab constituted police-initiated custodial interrogation, Edwards , 451 U.S. at 484 , 101 S.Ct. 1880 , 68 L.Ed.2d 378 . We conclude that it did not. [U]sing a buccal swab on the inner tissues of a person's cheek in order to obtain DNA samples is a search. Maryland v. King , 569 U.S. 435 , 446, 133 S.Ct. 1958 , 186 L.Ed.2d 1 (2013). By making this request, Weinhardt was asking Tench to consent to a search. But a request to search does not amount to interrogation. United States v. Smith , 3 F.3d 1088 , 1098 (7th Cir.1993). Thus, even if a suspect in custody has invoked his right to counsel, police do not violate Edwards by asking him to consent to a search. United States v. Shlater , 85 F.3d 1251 , 1255-1256 (7th Cir.1996). {¶ 101} After that request, Tench asked again: Listen, can I just call my cousin, please? Weinhardt assured him that he would be allowed to call her very soon but he wanted to be sure Tench's family was notified about Mary's death first. Tench also asked to call his girlfriend, asserting that he was supposed to meet her at 7:00, and Weinhardt said, I'm going to let you make those phone calls, yes. {¶ 102} Tench then began talking about his girlfriend and how she was going to    help [him] figure this out. That led him to talk about his mother's death: All I've been doing all day is thinking, 'What the hell happened? That's not like her not to show up. I'm not going to let my dad down.'   {¶ 103} Again, Tench invoked the right to counsel by asking to call his cousin. Again, therefore, we must determine who initiated discussion of the case after this invocation. {¶ 104} As we explain above, the discussion of who was going to notify Tench's family about the murder was relat[ed] to routine incidents of the custodial relationship and thus in that discussion, Tench did not  'initiate' a conversation in the sense in which that word was used in Edwards . Bradshaw , 462 U.S. at 1045 , 103 S.Ct. 2830 , 77 L.Ed.2d 405 . We think that conclusion also applies to the discussion whether Tench could call his girlfriend. See Collins v. State , 172 So.3d 724 , 737 (Miss.2015) (suspect's query about how long things would take, because he needed to call his employer if he was going to miss work, related to routine incident of custodial relationship and did not initiate conversation as contemplated by Edwards ). {¶ 105} But after that discussion, and without prompting on the part of Weinhardt, Tench began to talk about his mother's death. Her death, of course, was the subject of the investigation. Thus, we conclude that it was again Tench who initiated conversation about the case. {¶ 106} To sum up, although Tench invoked his right to counsel at various times before and during the first interrogation, we conclude that after each invocation, he was the one who initiated discussion about the case. Weinhardt did not initiate such discussion when he administered Miranda warnings, explained why Tench could not call his sister or cousin, or asked Tench to let him take a buccal swab.