Opinion ID: 3039443
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: in clear violation of miranda, the state court

Text: UNREASONABLY CONCLUDED THAT ANDERSON’S INVOCATION (“I PLEAD THE FIFTH”) WAS AMBIGUOUS Against this backdrop, the state court accurately recognized that Anderson unambiguously invoked his right to remain silent when he stated, “I plead the Fifth,” but then went on to eviscerate that conclusion by stating that the comments were “ambiguous in context”: In the present case, the defendant’s comments were ambiguous in context because they could have been interpreted as not wanting officers to pursue the particulars of his drug use as opposed to not wanting to continue the questioning at all. By asking defendant what he meant by pleading the fifth, the officers asked a legitimate clarifying question. Using “context” to make an unambiguous invocation ambiguous defies both common sense and established Supreme Court law. Although the Supreme Court has observed that in invoking a constitutional right, “a suspect need not ‘speak with the discrimination of an Oxford don,’ ” Davis v. United States, 512 U.S. 452, 459 (1994) (quoting id. at 476 (Souter, J., concurring)), Anderson would meet even this erudite standard. This is not a case where the officers or the court were left scratching their heads as to what Anderson meant. Nothing was ANDERSON v. TERHUNE 18405 ambiguous about the statement “I plead the Fifth.”3 That invocation should have brought an immediate end to questioning. Miranda, 384 U.S. at 473. Instead of honoring the request, the interrogating officers decided to “play dumb,” hoping to keep Anderson talking by responding, “Plead the Fifth. What’s that?” This effort to keep the conversation going was almost comical. The officer knew what “I plead the Fifth” meant. It is baffling that the state court determined that “[b]y asking defendant what he meant by pleading the Fifth, the officers asked a legitimate clarifying question.” Nothing needed clarification. What about the words “I plead the Fifth” would be unclear, ambiguous, or confusing to a reasonable officer? See Connecticut v. Barrett, 479 U.S. 523, 529 (1987) (holding in the context of the invocation of the right to counsel that “[i]nterpretation is only required where the defendant’s words, understood as ordinary people would understand them, are ambiguous”). Rather, the officer hoped Anderson would explain more about the murder, the exact topic he did not want to talk about. They knew that continuing the interrogation was “reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response” from Anderson. Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 303 (1986). And they were right. The Supreme Court has countenanced clarifying questions only to ascertain whether the suspect actually invoked the right to remain silent. See, e.g., Miranda, 384 U.S. at 444-45 (focusing only on the threshold question of whether the accused “indicate[d] in any manner and at any stage of the process that he wish[ed] to consult with an attorney before speaking” when deciding whether police had honored their Fifth Amendment rights); Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 3 See Arnold v. Runnels, 421 F.3d 859, 866 (9th Cir. 2005) (holding, with respect to a defendant who said that he did not want to talk on tape, that “it is difficult to imagine how much more clearly a layperson . . . could have expressed his right to remain silent.”). 18406 ANDERSON v. TERHUNE 484-85 (1981) (focusing on whether accused had actually “expressed his desire” for, or “clearly asserted” his invocation of his Fifth Amendment rights); Smith v. Illinois, 469 U.S. 91, 95 (1984) (holding that “[t]his case concerns the threshold inquiry: whether Smith invoked his right to counsel in the first instance”). Ignoring this principle, the state court found that the comments were ambiguous “because they could have been interpreted as not wanting officers to pursue the particulars of his drug use as opposed to not wanting to continue the questioning at all.” While the majority defers to this far-fetched reasoning, the rationale for the state court decision falls of its own weight. The police did not ask Anderson what subject he did not want to discuss; nor did any of their follow-up questioning address this topic. The state court’s characterization is a fanciful re imagining of the colloquy between Anderson and the police, and under AEDPA, certainly an unreasonable determination of the facts. Significantly, the question can hardly be characterized as one to clarify or double-check whether Anderson invoked his right to remain silent, the only legitimate clarifying inquiry authorized by Supreme Court precedent. Smith, 469 U.S. at 95. The state court’s conclusion that “[i]t was the defendant, not the interrogators, who continued the discussion,” ignores the bedrock principle that the interrogators should have stopped all questioning. A statement taken after the suspect invoked his right to remain silent “cannot be other than the product of compulsion, subtle or otherwise.” Miranda, 384 U.S. at 474. Finally, even taken on its own terms, the majority’s factual hair-splitting is mistaken. It makes no sense to split hairs and say that maybe, just maybe, Anderson wanted to talk about the murder and not about his drug use because, in fact, the drug use was inextricably intertwined with the murder. It is precisely this kind of hairsplitting that the Supreme Court wanted to avoid when it fashioned the bright-line rule in Miranda. Davis, 512 U.S. at 461 (noting that the benefit of the bright-line rule is the “clarity and ease of application” that can be applied by officers in the ANDERSON v. TERHUNE 18407 real world without “unduly hampering the gathering of information” by forcing them to make “difficult judgment calls” with a “threat of suppression if they guess wrong”). No guess work was required here. But under the majority’s interpretation of Miranda and its progeny, every time a suspect unequivocally invokes the right to remain silent, the police can ask follow-up questions to clarify whether he really, really wants to invoke the right and to parse the subject matter—“what specifically do you not want to talk about?” The majority’s holding allows the police to turn the Fifth Amendment into a game of “Twenty Questions,” permitting the police to continue the interrogation and forcing the suspect to take a multiple choice quiz. Such a practice is tantamount to endless re-interrogation. Where the initial request to stop the questioning is clear, “the police may not create ambiguity in a defendant’s desire by continuing to question him or her about it.” Barrett, 479 U.S. at 535 n.6 (Brennan, J., concurring). By parsing Anderson’s invocation into specific subjects, the police “failed to honor a decision of a person in custody to cut off questioning, either by refusing to discontinue the interrogation upon request or by persisting in repeated efforts to wear down his resistance and make him change his mind.” Michigan v. Mosley, 423 U.S. 96, 105-06 (1975). The net result is that such follow-up questions allow “the authorities through ‘badger- [ing]’ or ‘overreaching’—explicit or subtle, deliberate or unintentional—[to] wear down the accused and persuade him to incriminate himself.” Smith, 469 U.S. at 98. Looking at this case through the AEDPA lens of deference does nothing to change my conclusions. The state court’s decision to ignore an unambiguous declaration of the right to remain silent is directly contrary to Miranda. To the extent the question is one of interpretation of Miranda and related Supreme Court precedent, the state court’s interpretation is flatly unreasonable. See Runnels, 421 F.3d at 867. And to 18408 ANDERSON v. TERHUNE characterize Anderson’s statements as ambiguous was certainly an unreasonable finding of fact.