Opinion ID: 2442105
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Detectives Obtained Appellant's Confession by Violating His Fifth Amendment Rights

Text: In Miranda v. Arizona , [6] the Supreme Court held that police must follow certain procedures to protect a suspect's Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination from the inherently compelling pressures of custodial interrogation. [7] Unless those procedures are followed, the Court stated, no statement obtained from the defendant can truly be the product of his free choice. [8] In brief, to counteract the coercive pressure of custodial interrogation, the police must inform a suspect before any questioning that he has both a right to remain silent and a right to the presence of an attorney. [9] If the suspect, at any time prior to or during questioning, invokes his right to remain silent, the interrogation must cease. [10] If the suspect requests counsel, the interrogation must cease until an attorney is present. [11] Furthermore, [e]ven absent the suspect's invocation of these Fifth Amendment rights, his statement during a custodial interrogation is inadmissible at trial unless the prosecution can establish that the accused `in fact knowingly and voluntarily waived [his] rights' when making the statement. [12] For a waiver to be valid, it must be `voluntary in the sense that it was the product of a free and deliberate choice rather than intimidation, coercion, or deception,' and `made with a full awareness of both the nature of the right being abandoned and the consequences of the decision to abandon it.' [13] Thus, any evidence that the [suspect] was threatened, tricked, or cajoled into a waiver will, of course, show that [he] did not voluntarily waive his privilege. [14] And the suspect must be aware that his right to remain silent would not dissipate after a certain amount of time and that police would have to honor his right to be silent and his right to counsel during the whole course of interrogation. [15] In other words, the suspect [must] know [ ] that [his] Miranda rights can be invoked at any time. [16] In Michigan v. Mosley , [17] the Supreme Court emphasized that the critical safeguard in Miranda's framework is the suspect's right to cut off questioning: Through the exercise of his option to terminate questioning [the suspect] can control the time at which questioning occurs, the subjects discussed, and the duration of the interrogation. The requirement that law enforcement authorities must respect a person's exercise of that option counteracts the coercive pressures of the custodial setting.[ [18] ] Accordingly, the Court concluded, the admissibility of statements obtained after the person in custody has decided to remain silent depends under Miranda on whether his `right to cut off questioning' was `scrupulously honored.' [19] In Edwards v. Arizona, [20] the Supreme Court determined that even the requirement of a knowing, intelligent, and voluntary waiver is not sufficient by itself to protect a suspect's Fifth Amendment rights once the suspect has asked for counsel; additional safeguards are necessary. [21] The Court accordingly added what it subsequently called a second layer of prophylaxis, [22] by holding that when an accused has invoked his right to have counsel present during custodial interrogation, a valid waiver of that right cannot be established by showing only that he responded to further police-initiated custodial interrogation even if he has been advised of his rights.... [H]aving expressed his desire to deal with the police only through counsel, [the accused] is not subject to further interrogation by the authorities until counsel has been made available to him, unless the accused himself initiates further communication, exchanges, or conversations with the police.[ [23] ] And, the Court also held, if the suspect chooses to re-initiate further communication with the police, any resumption of custodial interrogation requires that there then be a valid waiver of the right to counsel and the right to silence. [24] In conjunction with these holdings, the Edwards Court took pains to reemphasize Miranda's earlier holding that at the time the suspect asserts his right to counsel, the interrogation must cease. [25] The connection between that requirement and the Edwards initiation-and-waiver requirements for any recommencement of the interrogation is clear. The fundamental purpose of the Edwards rule is to preserve the integrity of an accused's choice to communicate with police only through counsel, by preventing police from badgering a defendant into waiving his previously asserted Miranda rights. [26] The premise of the rule is that, once a suspect asks for counsel, subsequent requests for interrogation pose a significantly greater risk of coercion stemming not only from the police's persistence in trying to get the suspect to talk, but also from the continued pressure that begins when the individual is taken into custody as a suspect and sought to be interrogatedpressure likely to increase as custody is prolonged. [27] The Edwards presumption of involuntariness ensures that police will not take advantage of the mounting coercive pressures of prolonged police custody, by repeatedly attempting to question a suspect who previously requested counsel until the suspect is badgered into submission. [28] In other words, the suspect must understand that he has a genuine, unconstrained choice whether to permit further interrogation or not; he must know[ ] from his earlier experience that he need only demand counsel to bring the interrogation to a halt. [29] Otherwise Edwards's suspect-initiation-and-waiver requirement cannot serve its intended purpose; it would be meaningless or illusory. Consequently, where the police have disregarded a suspect's assertion of his Fifth Amendment right to counsel by continuing his custodial interrogation in counsel's absence and persisting in repeated efforts to wear down his resistance and make him change his mind, [30] and thereby have conveyed to the suspect that he has no real choice whether he will be interrogated further, Edwards's preconditions for the resumption of the interrogation cannot be met (unless adequate curative measures are taken). As the Eleventh Circuit has explained, Although Edwards permits further interrogation if the accused initiates the conversation, the validity of this waiver logically depends on the accused being free from further interrogation. In other words, the initiation must come prior to the further interrogation; initiation only becomes an issue if the agents follow Edwards and cease interrogation upon a request for counsel.... Edwards would be rendered meaningless if agents were permitted to continue interrogation after the request for counsel, and then claim that the consequent response by the accused represented initiation and permitted a waiver of the asserted counsel right.[ [31] ]
It is undisputed that the detectives violated appellant's Fifth Amendment rights during his initial thirteen-hour overnight interrogation. The Miranda violations were flagrant: the detectives used a variety of improper means as they tried to coerce a confession from appellant. Not only did the detectives persist for hours in questioning appellant and urging him to change his mind despite his repeated assertions of his rights to cut off questioning and to have an attorney present. And not only did they verbally abuse him, deprive him of sleep, ignore his symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, isolate him, keep him handcuffed to a chair for hours, and otherwise subject him to physical and mental discomfort and stress. Appallingly, the detectives also disparaged his exercise of his constitutional rights to counsel and a trial as contrary to his best interests, misled him regarding the benefits of confessing, threatened him that they were going to up the charges if he did not tell the truth, and evenin their zeal to extract a confession in this high profile casefed him what he should say ( e.g., say, hey, you know, I was drinking, I was, you know, I was on drugs or something; show remorse) regardless of its truth. This was badgering with a vengeance. By any measure, the coercion exerted on appellant to waive his constitutional rights and confess was extraordinary. Had appellant given in at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, there is no doubt his confession should have been suppressed. Appellant did not give in at 8:30 a.m., of course. Exhausted, he took the opportunity to sleep for a few hours first; then he gave in. The issue before us is whether, despite the earlier Miranda violations, appellant validly initiated the resumption of his interrogation within the meaning of Edwards and validly waived his Fifth Amendment rights. In my view, the government has not carried its burden of showing that appellant did either of those things. The government has not shown a genuine initiation by appellant, because he was afforded no choice in the matter: he remained in the detectives' custody, they told him their questioning would continue when he awoke (whether he liked it or not), and their earlier conduct made clear to appellant that he could not prevent or terminate his further interrogation by asserting his Fifth Amendment rights. What he had to look forward to, therefore, if he continued to resist, was more of the same obnoxious, coercive, and seemingly unending harassment that he had endured for thirteen hours. The fact that appellant chose to surrender and to avoid putting himself through the ringer again shows only that the detectives' badgering succeeded in overcoming his will; it hardly establishes that appellant chose of his own volition to initiate further communication with the police. For much the same reasons, in my view, the government has not met its burden of showing that appellant knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily waived his Fifth Amendment rights. It is utterly immaterial that appellant was aware of his rights in the abstract and knew enough to try to assert them. When he actually and repeatedly did assert his rights, his assertions were ignored. In this high-profile investigation, Detectives Ross and Thompson made appellant understand, he had no Fifth Amendment rights that he could assert effectively. It is, again, immaterial that the detectives to whom appellant confessed may not have known he had asserted his Fifth Amendment rights. [32] The important point is that when appellant's interrogation recommenced, Detective Crespo and Sergeant Young did not tell appellant they now were prepared, despite the prior violations by Detectives Ross and Thompson, to honor his rights if he chose to assert them. They did nothing to lead appellant to think that, at long last, his rights would be honored; nor anything to remedy their predecessors' other coercive and misleading interrogation tactics. Because the police made it clear to appellant that he was powerless to exercise his Fifth Amendment rights, he could not knowingly, intelligently or voluntarily waive them so long as he was in their control. A purported waiver of the right to cut off questioning [33] cannot be deemed a knowing and intelligent choice where the suspect is led to believe he cannot exercise that right; it cannot be deemed a voluntary choice where the suspect is led to believe he has no choice. Furthermore, in evaluating whether appellant validly waived his Fifth Amendment rights, we may not ignore all the other grave abuses perpetrated during his overnight interrogation. The fact that appellant was able to withstand those abuses during his prolonged incommunicado interrogation for as long as he did is hardly evidence, as my colleagues take it to be, that his eventual confession flowed from a constitutionally valid waiver of his rights not when there was never a break in appellant's custody; he knew his interrogation was slated to resume; and he had every reason to apprehend that his interrogators would continue to run roughshod over his rights. The government's claim that the coercive effects of those abuses on appellant subsided with a few hours' sleep in the station house cellblock is neither plausible nor supported by any evidence. That appellant appeared refreshed after his rest does not mean he was uninfluenced by his earlier mistreatment. The detectives did nothing to dispel the coercive effects of their misconduct or to correct the misinformation they furnished appellant to induce him to confess. Lastly, it is unpersuasive to argue that appellant's initiation and waiver were valid because he acted out of remorse for having assaulted and robbed an elderly woman. The evidence shows that appellant's expressions of remorse were simply the product of the detectives' violation of his rights. It was after appellant unsuccessfully invoked his right to cut off the questioning that the detectives improperly honed in on the serious and inflammatory circumstances of the robbery and counseled appellant to show remorse in order to flip it on around to the positive side. Indeed, it is striking how appellant parroted what the detectives instructed him to say. They told him his best hope was to show remorse and that anyone in his position would want to get the crime off their chest. When he confessed, appellant reiterated that he felt bad and decided to get it off [his] chest. Detective Thompson told him to say he was drinking and try to minimize the offense. When appellant confessed, he said he was drinking and offered other facts in extenuation ( e.g., the victim had offended him, a bystander told him to rob her (after he had been drinking), he did not know she was that old, and he had never committed such a crime before). If appellant followed his advice, Detective Thompson told him, he would be able to plead guilty to only a straight robbery. When appellant confessed, he repeated that he wanted to take the robbery and did not need the assault and all that other stuff. Appellant's expressions of remorse may have been genuine, but they fail to prove the validity of his initiation and waiver. For the preceding reasons, I dissent from my colleagues' conclusion that appellant knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily waived his Fifth Amendment rights, and that his confession was the product of a free and deliberate choice rather than intimidation. Ante at 234. In my view, the record shows exactly the opposite.