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

Heading: The Violations of Appellant's Fifth Amendment Rights

Text: 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.