Opinion ID: 2330747
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Sixth Amendment Right To Assistance Of Counsel

Text: United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149, and Gilbert v. California, 388 U.S. 263, 87 S.Ct. 1951, 18 L.Ed.2d 1178 (1967) held that a post-indictment pre-trial lineup at which the accused is exhibited to identifying witnesses is a critical stage of the criminal prosecution; that police conduct of such a lineup without notice to and in the absence of his counsel denies the accused his Sixth [and Fourteenth] Amendment right to counsel ... [3] and, that absent a waiver of the right, the confrontation is illegal. Gilbert at 272, 87 S.Ct. at 1956. Wade and Gilbert then fashioned exclusionary rules regarding identifying evidence if its source was a lineup tainted by the absence of counsel, as follows: 1) The in-court identifications of the accused at such confrontations are to be excluded unless the prosecution establishes by clear and convincing evidence that the in-court identifications were based upon observations of the suspect other than the confrontation identifications, that is that they had an independent source. Wade, 388 U.S. at 240 and 242, 87 S.Ct. at 1939. 2) Evidence that witnesses identified the accused at such a confrontation is per se to be excluded. Gilbert, 388 U.S. at 272-274, 87 S.Ct. at 1956-1957. 3) The admission of evidence to be excluded under 1) and 2) is prejudicial error unless, in any event, its introduction was harmless error. Wade, 388 U.S. at 242, 87 S.Ct. at 1940; Gilbert, 388 U.S. at 274, 87 S.Ct. at 1957. [4] See Smith and Samuels, 6 Md. App. at 65, 250 A.2d 285. The rule set out in (1) above, with respect to the admission of evidence of in-court identifications, applies the test quoted in Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 488, 83 S.Ct. 407, 417, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963). Wade, 388 U.S. at 241, 87 S.Ct. at 1939. See Smith and Samuels, 6 Md. App. at 65, 250 A.2d 285. The Supreme Court gave examples of the various factors which must be considered in the application of the Wong Sun test: [T]he prior opportunity to observe the alleged criminal act, the existence of any discrepancy between any pre-lineup description and the defendant's actual description, any identification prior to lineup of another person, the identification by picture of the defendant prior to the lineup, failure to identify the defendant on a prior occasion, and the lapse of time between the alleged act and the lineup identification. It is also relevant to consider those facts which, despite the absence of counsel, are disclosed concerning the conduct of the lineup. Wade, 388 U.S. at 241, 87 S.Ct. at 1940. The Court of Special Appeals discussed Wade and Gilbert at length in Tyler v. State, 5 Md. App. 265, 246 A.2d 634 (1968), cert. denied, 252 Md. 733 (1969), cert. denied, 405 U.S. 1039, 92 S.Ct. 1317, 31 L.Ed.2d 579 (1972); in Palmer v. State, 5 Md. App. 691, 249 A.2d 482 (1969); and in Smith and Samuels, 6 Md. App. 59, 250 A.2d 285. It recognized that the precise holdings of Wade and Gilbert went only to post-indictment lineups, Tyler, 246 A.2d at 638, but it believed that the rationale of the holdings, for reasons set out in Palmer, 5 Md. App. at 695-696, 249 A.2d 482, mandated that the exclusionary rules applied also to pre-indictment lineups and to other pre-trial confrontations, before or after indictment, which violated constitutional standards and which were not subject to fair and meaningful objective review later at trial. Smith and Samuels, 6 Md. App. at 64, 250 A.2d 285. The intermediate appellate court saw in Wade and Gilbert indication, implicit at the least, that their holdings were not to be limited to post-indictment lineups. It so held. Palmer, 5 Md. App. at 696, 249 A.2d 482. Thereafter, in this jurisdiction for a period of some four years, the Wade-Gilbert holdings were consistently applied without regard to whether the confrontation was post-indictment or pre-indictment. Jackson v. State, 17 Md. App. 167, 169, 300 A.2d 430, cert. denied, 268 Md. 749 (1973). Then on 7 June 1972 the Supreme Court decided Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U.S. 682, 92 S.Ct. 1877, 32 L.Ed.2d 411 (1972). Kirby made clear that Wade and Gilbert did not mean what the Court of Special Appeals thought those cases meant. [5] Kirby was decided on these facts. Two police officers stopped Thomas Kirby and a companion, Ralph Bean, on a Chicago street. [6] Kirby and Bean had certain articles in their possession bearing the name of Willie Shard. When no satisfactory explanation for the possession of these articles was forthcoming, the officers arrested Kirby and Bean and took them to the police station. The officers then learned that Shard had reported that he had been robbed. A police car was dispatched to pick up Shard, and he was brought to the police station. Immediately upon entering the room in the police station where [ Kirby ] and Bean were seated at a table, Shard positively identified them as the men who had robbed him two days earlier. Kirby, 406 U.S. at 684-685, 92 S.Ct. at 1879-1880. No lawyer was present and neither Kirby nor Bean had been advised of any right to the presence of counsel. More than six weeks later Kirby and Bean were indicted for the robbery of Shard. A pretrial motion to suppress Shard's identification testimony was denied, and at the trial Shard described his identifications at the police station and made an in-court identification of Kirby and Bean as the men who had robbed him. The jury found both men guilty, and Kirby's conviction was affirmed on appeal. The appellate court held that the admission of Shard's testimony was not error because the Wade-Gilbert exclusionary rules were not applicable to pre-indictment confrontations. The Supreme Court granted certiorari limited to that issue. The opinion announcing the judgment of the Court [7] concluded that a showup after arrest, but before the initiation of any adversary criminal proceeding, whether by way of formal charge, indictment, information, arraignment, or preliminary hearing of the type envisioned in Coleman v. Alabama, 399 U.S. 1, 90 S.Ct. 1999, 26 L.Ed.2d 387 (1970) is not a criminal prosecution at which the suspect is entitled to counsel. The plurality opinion stated that the Wade-Gilbert exclusionary rule arose from the guarantee of the right to counsel contained in the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. Then the plurality opinion observed: In a line of constitutional cases in this Court stemming back to the Court's landmark opinion in Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 53 S.Ct. 55, 77 L.Ed. 158 (1932), it has been firmly established that a person's Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment right to counsel attaches only at or after the time that adversary judicial proceedings have been initiated against him. 406 U.S. at 688, 92 S.Ct. at 1881. The opinion explained: The initiation of judicial criminal proceedings is far from a mere formalism. It is the starting point of our whole system of adversary criminal justice. For it is only then that the government has committed itself to prosecute, and only then that the adverse positions of government and defendant have solidified. It is then that a defendant finds himself faced with the prosecutorial forces of organized society, and immersed in the intricacies of substantive and procedural criminal law. It is this point, therefore, that marks the commencement of the `criminal prosecutions' to which alone the explicit guarantees of the Sixth Amendment are applicable. Id. at 689-690, 92 S.Ct. at 1882. The opinion noted that the Court was asked in the case before it to import into a routine police investigation an absolute constitutional guarantee historically and rationally applicable only after the onset of formal prosecutorial proceedings. Id. at 690, 92 S.Ct. at 1882. It said flatly: We decline to do so. Id. It recalled that less than a year after Wade and Gilbert were decided, the rule of those decisions was explained in Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1968) as follows: The rationale of those cases was that an accused is entitled to counsel at any `critical stage of the prosecution, ' and that a post-indictment lineup is such a `critical stage.' Kirby, 406 U.S. at 690, 92 S.Ct. at 1883, quoting Simmons, 390 U.S. at 382-383, 88 S.Ct. at 970. (Emphasis supplied in Kirby ). The Kirby opinion continued: We decline to depart from that rationale today by imposing a per se exclusionary rule upon testimony concerning an identification that took place long before the commencement of any prosecution whatever. 406 U.S. at 690, 92 S.Ct. at 1883. The Supreme Court has not retreated from its decision in Kirby nor modified it in any way, expressly or by implication. In fact, the Court has consistently affirmed it. In United States v. Mandujano, 425 U.S. 564, 96 S.Ct. 1768, 48 L.Ed.2d 212 (1976), the Court declared, citing Kirby: No criminal proceedings had been instituted against respondent, hence the Sixth Amendment right to counsel had not come into play. Id. at 581, 96 S.Ct. at 1779. In Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387, 97 S.Ct. 1232, 51 L.Ed.2d 424 (1977) the Court said that the basic contours of Kirby, which are identical in state and federal contexts ... are too well established to require extensive elaboration here. Id. at 398, 97 S.Ct. at 1239. In Moore v. Illinois, 434 U.S. 220, 98 S.Ct. 458, 54 L.Ed.2d 424 (1977), the Court restated and applied the Kirby rule: [T]he plurality opinion made clear that the right to counsel announced in Wade and Gilbert attaches only to corporeal identifications conducted `at or after the initiation of adversary judicial criminal proceedings  whether by way of formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information or arraignment.' Id., 434 U.S. at 226-227, 98 S.Ct. at 464, quoting Kirby, 406 U.S. at 689, 92 S.Ct. at 1882. The Court continued: This is so because the initiation of such proceedings `marks the commencement of the `criminal prosecutions' to which alone the explicit guarantees of the Sixth Amendment are applicable.' Id. 434 U.S. at 227, 98 S.Ct. at 464, quoting Kirby, 406 U.S. at 690, 92 S.Ct. at 1882. The rule was reiterated in Estelle v. Smith, 451 U.S. 454, 469-470, 101 S.Ct. 1866, 1876, 68 L.Ed.2d 359 (1981). See United States v. Ash, 413 U.S. 300, 321-322, 93 S.Ct. 2568, 2579-2580, 37 L.Ed.2d 619 (1973) (Stewart, J., concurring). In the light of Kirby, the Court of Special Appeals, in Jackson v. State, 17 Md. App. 167, 300 A.2d 430, cert. denied, 268 Md. 749 (1973), looked again at the position it had taken and applied. It said: The decision of this Court that the holdings of Wade and Gilbert were to be applied to pre-indictment as well as post-indictment confrontations was predicated upon our belief that such application was constitutionally compelled. Now that the Supreme Court has made clear that our belief was ill founded, we abandon our position. Id. at 171-172, 300 A.2d 430. Henceforth, the intermediate appellate court declared, [t]he holdings of Wade and Gilbert with respect to the constitutional right to counsel are to be invoked only as to those confrontations occurring at or after the initiation of adversary judicial criminal proceedings  whether by way of formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information, or arraignment. Therefore, the exclusionary rules based on right to counsel are not to be imposed upon testimony concerning an identification that took place before the commencement of the `criminal prosecution' within the meaning of Kirby. Id. Of course, our denial of a petition for a writ of certiorari as to Jackson does not put the imprimatur of this Court on an opinion of the Court of Special Appeals. But on 26 July 1974 we decided Foster and Forster v. State, 272 Md. 273, 323 A.2d 419, cert. denied, Foster v. Maryland, 419 U.S. 1036, 95 S.Ct. 520, 42 L.Ed.2d 311 (1974). In that opinion we recognized that under Kirby the per se exclusionary rules of Wade-Gilbert were to be applied only at or after the time that adversary judicial proceedings had been initiated against a defendant by way of formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information or arraignment. 272 Md. at 284, 323 A.2d 419. And we noticed with approval that, in light of Kirby, the Court of Special Appeals had abandoned its position that Wade and Gilbert applied to pre-indictment confrontations. Id. at 285, 323 A.2d 419. In Utt v. State, 293 Md. 271, 443 A.2d 582 (1982), we referred to Kirby as holding that [a] post-indictment lineup is a critical stage of a criminal prosecution, but the right to counsel does not attach to a lineup before any charges have been brought. Id. at 282, 443 A.2d 582. In short, it is now the firmly established law of this state that with respect to lineups conducted by the police to elicit evidence of the criminal agency of a suspect, the right to counsel guaranteed by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments does not attach before the initiation of adversary judicial criminal proceedings by way of indictment, information, other formal charge, arraignment, or a preliminary hearing which is within the context of Coleman v. Alabama, 399 U.S. 1, 90 S.Ct. 1999, 26 L.Ed.2d 387.