Opinion ID: 75961
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Precedent Concerning Custodial Interrogations

Text: 174 The principal case on which Isaacs bases his claim is Edwards v. Arizona, a decision handed down by the Supreme Court after the 1980 interrogation of Isaacs, but before the 1985 interrogation. In Edwards, the defendant asserted his right to counsel after having been taken into custody. 451 U.S. at 478, 101 S.Ct. at 1881-82. At that time the police stopped interrogating Edwards, but they reinitiated questioning the following morning, and Edwards subsequently confessed his guilt. 451 U.S. at 479, 101 S.Ct. at 1882. The Supreme Court considered whether the police ran afoul of Miranda by reinitiating interrogation after the defendant's invocation of the right to counsel. 175 The Edwards Court noted that Miranda rights may be waived, but that waivers of counsel must not only be voluntary, but also constitute a knowing and intelligent relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege, a matter which depends in each case upon the particular facts and circumstances surrounding that case, including the background, experience, and conduct of the accused. Id. at 482, 101 S.Ct. at 1884 (citations and quotations omitted). The Court proceeded a step further, however, concluding that an additional, prophylactic rule protecting the right to counsel was called for, stating: 176 [A]lthough we have held that after initially being advised of his Miranda rights, the accused may himself validly waive his rights and respond to interrogation, the Court has strongly indicated that additional safeguards are necessary when the accused asks for counsel; and we now hold 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. We further hold that an accused, such as Edwards, having expressed his desire to deal with the police only through counsel, 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. 177 Id. at 484-85, 101 S.Ct. at 1884-85. The Supreme Court commented that this approach was consistent with Miranda 's recognition that the assertion of the right to counsel was a significant event and that once exercised by the accused, the interrogation must cease until an attorney is present. Id. at 485, 101 S.Ct. at 1885. The Court then concluded: We reconfirm these views and, to lend them substance, emphasize that it is inconsistent with Miranda and its progeny for the authorities, at their instance, to reinterrogate an accused in custody if he has clearly asserted his right to counsel. Id. 178 The Supreme Court built on Edwards in subsequent cases, including in Arizona v. Roberson, 486 U.S. 675, 108 S.Ct. 2093, 100 L.Ed.2d 704 (1988), a decision released after Isaacs' conviction but before his direct appeal was completed. In Roberson, the defendant was arrested at the scene of a just-completed burglary, and indicated to the police that he wanted a lawyer before answering any questions. 486 U.S. at 678, 108 S.Ct. at 2096. Three days later, while the defendant was still in custody pursuant to the original arrest, a different police officer interrogated him about a different burglary. Id. The officer conducting the second interrogation was not aware that Roberson had requested the assistance of counsel after he was arrested. Id. 179 The question before the Supreme Court in Roberson was whether the re-initiation by the police of interrogation concerning a separate offense from the one for which the defendant invoked the right to counsel violated Edwards. The Court held that, after a person in custody invokes the right to counsel, the police cannot initiate interrogation, even if it concerns offenses other than ones for which the person is being held. The Court noted that the prophylactic protections that the Miranda warnings provide to counteract the `inherently compelling pressures' of custodial interrogation and to `permit a full opportunity to exercise the privilege against self-incrimination,' are implemented by the application of the Edwards corollary that if a suspect believes that he is not capable of undergoing such questioning without advice of counsel, then it is presumed that any subsequent waiver that has come at the authorities' behest, and not at the suspect's own instigation, is itself the product of the `inherently compelling pressures' and not the purely voluntary choice of the suspect. 486 U.S. at 681, 108 S.Ct. at 2097 (citations and quotations omitted). 180 The Roberson Court stated that the Miranda and Edwards bright-line rule[s] have the benefit of providing `clear and unequivocal' guidelines to the law enforcement profession. Id. at 682, 108 S.Ct. at 2098. The Court then went on to hold that the bright-line, prophylactic Edwards rule applies even if the police-initiated interrogation concerns a different investigation. Id. The Court stated that: 181 As a matter of law, the presumption raised by a suspect's request for counsel — that he considers himself unable to deal with the pressures of custodial interrogation without legal assistance — does not disappear simply because the police have approached the suspect, still in custody, still without counsel, about a separate investigation.... Roberson's unwillingness to answer any questions without the advice of counsel, without limiting his request for counsel, indicated that he did not feel sufficiently comfortable with the pressures of custodial interrogation to answer questions without an attorney. This discomfort is precisely the state of mind that Edwards presumes to persist unless the suspect himself initiates further conversation about the investigation; unless he otherwise states, there is no reason to assume that a suspect's state of mind is in any way investigation-specific. 182 Id. at 683-84, 108 S.Ct. at 2099 (citations and quotations omitted). 183 The Roberson Court went on to note that the Fifth Amendment right to counsel is different from the offense-specific, Sixth Amendment right, because the Fifth Amendment right is protected by the prophylaxis of having an attorney present to counteract the inherent pressures of custodial interrogation, which arise from the fact of such interrogation and exist regardless of the number of crimes under investigation or whether those crimes have resulted in formal charges. Id. at 685, 108 S.Ct. at 2100. The Supreme Court held that the Fifth Amendment, Edwards concerns are not overcome by simply re-apprizing the defendant of Miranda rights before interrogation or by the fact that the later investigation is conducted by a different law enforcement organization. Id. at 686-87, 108 S.Ct. at 2101. Therefore, the Court concluded that the request for counsel must be observed [w]hether a contemplated reinterrogation concerns the same or a different offense, or whether the same or different law enforcement authorities are involved in the second investigation. Id. at 678-88, 108 S.Ct. at 2101. As the Court stated in a later case again distinguishing the Fifth Amendment right to counsel from the offense-specific Sixth Amendment right, [t]he purpose of the Miranda-Edwards guarantee ... is to protect a quite different interest [from the Sixth Amendment]: the suspect's `desire to deal with the police only through counsel.' McNeil v. Wisconsin, 501 U.S. 171, 178, 111 S.Ct. 2204, 2209, 115 L.Ed.2d 158 (1991) (citation omitted). 184 The year after Roberson, the Supreme Court revisited Edwards and again extolled the benefits of its clear and unequivocal guidelines. See Minnick v. Mississippi, 498 U.S. 146, 151, 111 S.Ct. 486, 490, 112 L.Ed.2d 489 (1990). 19 In Minnick, the defendant was arrested for murder, and he indicated his desire to have an attorney present. Id. at 148, 111 S.Ct. at 488. The defendant met with an attorney the following day, and then, two days after that, police initiated an interrogation during which time he made incriminating statements. Id. at 149, 111 S.Ct. at 488-89. The Supreme Court considered whether the reinterrogation violated Edwards, or whether the protections of Edwards cease after a defendant has the opportunity to consult with an attorney. 185 In answering this question, the Minnick Court began by reiterating that the purpose behind the Edwards rule was to prevent the badgering of defendants by the police, and to ensure that statements are not the result of coercive pressures by the police. Id. at 150-51, 111 S.Ct. at 489-90. The Court stated: 186 Edwards is designed to prevent police from badgering a defendant into waiving his previously asserted Miranda rights. The rule ensures that any statement made in subsequent interrogation is not the result of coercive pressures. 187 Id. (citations omitted). 188 The Court then stated that [t]he merit of the Edwards decision lies in the clarity of its command and the certainty of its application, and held that the protection of Edwards [does not] terminate[ ] once counsel has consulted with the suspect. Id. Instead, the Court held that: 189 In our view, a fair reading of Edwards and subsequent cases demonstrates that we have interpreted the rule to bar police-initiated interrogation unless the accused has counsel with him at the time of questioning. Whatever the ambiguities of our earlier cases on this point, we now hold that when counsel is requested, interrogation must cease, and officials may not reinitiate interrogation without counsel present, whether or not the accused has consulted with his attorney. 190 Id. at 153, 111 S.Ct. at 491. 20 Therefore, on several occasions, the Supreme Court has interpreted Edwards broadly in order to provide clear and unequivocal rules designed to prevent the badgering of defendants by the police. 191 Although we have never addressed the applicability of Edwards or Roberson to a defendant in Isaacs' position, this Court has applied these cases in other contexts on several occasions. See Tukes v. Dugger, 911 F.2d 508, 515 (11th Cir.1990) (applying Edwards and Roberson ); Kight v. Singletary, 50 F.3d 1539, 1548 (11th Cir. 1995) (applying Edwards and Roberson, and noting that the 5th Amendment rights protected by these decisions are not offense-specific). In addition to these cases applying Edwards and Roberson in a straightforward manner, we also considered limitations on the Edwards rule in Dunkins v. Thigpen, 854 F.2d 394 (11th Cir.1988). In that case, we held that a break in custody dissolves a defendant's Edwards claim. Id. at 397. 192 It is in light of this framework that we must decide whether the Georgia Supreme Court unreasonably applied Supreme Court precedent in holding that the Edwards and Roberson protections do not extend to a defendant in Isaacs' position — one who has already been tried and convicted of the crime for which he was taken into custody and with respect to which he asserted a right to counsel. Although we have not had occasion to address this particular issue, some other courts have. 193 We have found only two cases from our sister circuits addressing the issue of whether the Edwards protections continue to apply to a prisoner who is in custody following conviction for the crime for which he or she initially asserted the right to deal with the police only through counsel, the Eighth Circuit in United States v. Arrington, 215 F.3d 855 (8th Cir.2000), and the Sixth Circuit in United States v. Hall, 905 F.2d 959 (6th Cir.1990). 194 The Eighth Circuit agreed with the Sixth Circuit's earlier decision in Hall that the Edwards protections do not continue indefinitely just because a person remains in custody. Arrington, 215 F.3d at 856. In doing so, the Arrington court rejected the defendant's argument for suppression of statements which he gave to a federal agent while in confinement for a conviction on an unrelated offense. After reciting the Edwards and Roberson holdings, the court reasoned: 195 Although the Fifth Amendment right to counsel continues throughout the duration of police custody, we find no support in Edwards or Roberson for Arrington's contention that the right also continu[es] ad infinitum, and certainly not where, as here, the accused has entered a guilty plea and has begun serving his sentence. When Arrington was arrested on state charges, he validly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to counsel and that right was scrupulously honored throughout the state proceedings. After pleading guilty to the state flight charge, Arrington was transferred from police custody to correctional custody to serve his sentence. At that point, Arrington was no longer `in custody' as that term has been used in the context of Edwards and Roberson,  and Edwards and Roberson were no longer applicable as a basis for suppressing Arrington's statement to the ATF agent. Thus, the district court properly denied Arrington's motion to suppress his statement. 196 Id. at 856-57 (citations and quotations omitted). See also United States v. Hall, 905 F.2d 959 (6th Cir.1990) (the two judges in the majority limiting the reach of Edwards and Roberson by focusing on factual differences including the short time period in the Supreme Court cases between the invocation of the right to counsel and the challenged interrogations, as compared to the three-month time period in Hall, and the fact that Hall was in the penitentiary as a convicted prisoner, unlike the defendants in Edwards and Roberson ). 197 In addition to these two decisions by federal circuit courts, a Maryland appeals court recently addressed at length the issue before us. See Clark v. State, 140 Md.App. 540, 781 A.2d 913 (2001). The Clark court discussed the various approaches taken by other courts confronting the issue of whether Edwards protections extend indefinitely, and recognized that courts, including this one, 21 have drawn a distinction between  Miranda custody and incarceration following a conviction. Id. at 945-46. Based on this distinction, the Clark court held that there is a break in custody, for purposes of determining whether Edwards applies, after a defendant is convicted and released to the general prison population, stating: But the extended period of time during which the inmate was incarcerated but was not in Miranda custody is a break in custody that has the effect, like any other break in custody, of allowing his question-proof status to end. Id. at 947 (citations and quotations omitted). The court concluded that Edwards and its progeny were distinguishable, stating: 198 Edwards, Roberson, and Minnick were all cases in which reinterrogation took place within three days of the prisoner's invocations of their right to counsel. The evil sought to be avoided was police badgering. But with a gap of more than five years between police interrogation sessions, it is impossible to say that the Montgomery County police badgered Clark into waiving his right to counsel. Application of the Edwards rule to cases like the one at hand would not help achieve Edwards 's goal of preventing police badgering, nor would it accomplish any other discernable public good. Common sense dictates that, if a rule is devised to prevent badgering a suspect into giving up his right to counsel, and because of an immense time gap, no badgering even arguably occurred, then blind obedience to the rule is not required. Put another way, when, as here, the factual circumstances of a case fall into a predictable, potentially recurring pattern to which the underlying policy of Miranda and Edwards cease to apply, then so too does the bright-line of Edwards cease to shine. 199 Id. at 947-48 (citations and quotations omitted). See also Laurie Magid, Questioning the Question-Proof Inmate: Defining Miranda Custody for Incarcerated Suspects, 58 Ohio S.L.R. 883 (1997) (discussing Edwards cases, and endorsing approach subsequently adopted by the Clark court). 200 In contrast to these decisions, some state courts have held that the Edwards and Roberson protections continue even after a defendant has pleaded guilty to, and been incarcerated for, the charge with respect to which he originally invoked his Fifth Amendment right to counsel. In United States v. Green, 592 A.2d 985 (D.C.Ct.App.1991), the D.C. Court of Appeals found that this conclusion was required in light of the Supreme Court's repeated focus on the clear and unequivocal and prophylactic nature of the Edwards and Roberson rules. Id. at 987-89. The court noted that, as in Isaacs' case, considerable time had passed since the original invocation of the right to counsel, but the court concluded that: 201 [W]e think only the Supreme Court can explain whether the Edwards rule is time-tethered and whether a five-month interval, during which no efforts at custodial interrogation took place, is too long a period to justify a continuing irrebuttable presumption that any police-initiated waiver was invalid. Until the Court provides further guidance, we are persuaded that so long as the defendant remains in custody the fact that the police did not reinitiate interrogation until five months after he invoked his right to counsel cannot be adequate reason, alone or combined with the factors already treated, to justify a departure from Edwards' command. 202 Id. at 989-90. The Green court also noted that it was significant that the important intervening event in that case — the guilty plea to the original charge — was not inconsistent with the defendant's expressed desire to only deal with the police with counsel present. Id. at 990-91. Therefore, the court found that Edwards and Roberson were still applicable. 22 Accord Kochutin v. State, 813 P.2d 298 (Alaska App.1991) (holding that the Edwards protections continue to apply indefinitely to a defendant who invokes those rights and remains in custody, even after the defendant is convicted and serving his sentence), vacated by Kochutin v. State, 875 P.2d 778 (Alaska App.1994) (vacating original decision based on subsequent determination that there was a break in the defendant's custody). Cf. Commonwealth v. Perez, 411 Mass. 249, 581 N.E.2d 1010, 1015-17 (1991) (assuming but not deciding that Edwards protection continues following conviction and during incarceration, but finding that error was harmless). 203 In light of this precedent, we conclude for a number of reasons that the Georgia Supreme Court's adjudication of Isaacs' Edwards claim may not be disturbed. As an initial matter, in light of the conflicting authority concerning the reach of Edwards and Roberson under the circumstances of this case, and in particular in light of the decisions by the Sixth and Eighth Circuits holding that Edwards does not apply under facts similar to those in this case, we cannot conclude that the Georgia Supreme Court unreasonably applied, or acted contrary to, relevant Supreme Court precedent. To do so would be to discount or disregard the prevailing trend among the federal circuits as unreasonable. 204 Moreover, we find reasonable the approach taken by those courts that have held that Edwards does not apply to a defendant who has been convicted and who remains in custody only in the sense that he is incarcerated as part of the general prison population. 23 Under such circumstances, we believe that the Georgia Supreme Court acted reasonably by determining that the facts were sufficiently far removed from Edwards and its progeny, and that the concerns over police badgering were sufficiently attenuated, to find that the Edwards protections had ceased. Edwards is designed to counteract the coercive pressures of being in custody. See Minnick, 498 U.S. at 150-51, 111 S.Ct. at 489-90. But for Isaacs, and many other inmates who might have invoked the right to counsel at some past time, incarceration in prison is an accustomed milieu and is far from the potentially coercive situation that gives rise to concerns over police badgering. Therefore, the concerns underlying Edwards and its progeny are weaker under the circumstances of this case. 205 Similarly, we agree with our sister circuits, as well as the Maryland appellate court in Clark, that nothing in the existing Supreme Court precedent requires the conclusion that the Edwards protections continue ad infinitum, thereby perpetually shielding inmates from questioning regarding crimes unrelated to those which originally led them to invoke the right to counsel. As the Clark court cogently observed:  Edwards, Roberson, and Minnick were all cases in which reinterrogation took place within three days of the prisoner's invocations of their right to counsel. 781 A.2d at 947. Accordingly, we readily conclude that the decision of the Georgia Supreme Court is not contrary to clearly established Supreme Court precedent. Indeed, it would be quite a stretch from the facts of those cases to conclude that the same protections continue forever for a defendant who has been convicted and is serving his time in prison. 206 Also, we believe that the Georgia Supreme Court's decision gains additional support from our decision in Garcia v. Singletary, 13 F.3d 1487 (11th Cir.1994). In Garcia, we held that a person's status as an inmate does not automatically constitute `in custody,' for Miranda purposes. Id. at 1490. In that case, we held that a prison guard who engaged in on-the-scene questioning of an inmate whom he observed starting a fire, had not violated Miranda by failing first to inform the inmate of his rights. Id. at 1489-91. We held that the inmate had not been subject to a custodial interrogation, and that Miranda consequently was not implicated. Id. at 1492. Although Garcia did not involve an Edwards claim, we did recognize in that case that, at least for purposes of Miranda (the case on which Edwards is based), incarceration in prison is not necessarily the same as  Miranda custody. This approach recognizes that incarceration in the general prison population is the accustomed milieu for many inmates, rather than the type of coercive situation that was the source of concern in Miranda and its progeny. We see no reason why the Georgia Supreme Court could not reasonably conclude that the same type of reasoning could apply in the Edwards context. If it did so, then the court also could have reasonably concluded, as the Maryland appellate court did in Clark, that incarceration following a conviction constitutes a break in Miranda custody, thereby ending the Edwards protections. 207 Finally, we are mindful that the Supreme Court has exercised some caution before expanding any judicially-created prophylactic rule beyond the circumstances under which the rule was originally created. See Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 96 S.Ct. 3037, 49 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1976). Instead, courts first should engage in a pragmatic analysis which takes account of the societal costs of extending such a rule to a new situation. Id. at 488, 96 S.Ct. at 3049. As mentioned above, the concerns underlying Edwards and its progeny are certainly attenuated under the facts of this case where there is no evidence of police badgering, the interrogation initiated by the police occurs while the defendant is serving his sentence, and the interrogation takes place years after the defendant's conviction. Under these circumstances, we do not think that the Georgia Supreme Court acted unreasonably by failing to extend Edwards and its progeny to Isaacs' situation. 208 Therefore, we conclude for all these reasons that the Georgia Supreme Court's adjudication of Isaacs' Edwards claim was neither contrary to, nor an unreasonable application of, established Supreme Court precedent, and it is due to be affirmed pursuant to § 2254(d)(1). 209