Opinion ID: 1676965
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Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sixth Amendment Pre-Trial Right to Counsel

Text: It is not difficult to state the basic Sixth Amendment right to counsel principles in general terms. A criminal defendant's pre-trial right to counsel does not fully vest until two conditions have been met. First, the right to counsel attaches only after the commencement of adverse judicial criminal proceedings. Second, the right exists only during pre-trial confrontations that can be considered critical stages during adverse judicial criminal proceedings. If the defendant is deprived of the assistance of counsel during a critical stage after the commencement of adverse judicial criminal proceedings, his right to counsel is violated. Generally speaking, a defendant may validly waive a constitutional right if he does so voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently in advance of its infringement. After the right to counsel has attached and counsel has been retained or appointed to represent the defendant in the adverse judicial criminal proceedings, however, the defendant has the right to rely on counsel as the medium between himself and the state. Correlatively, the state has an affirmative duty not to circumvent or dilute the protection afforded by the right to counsel. Because the concepts of attachment, adverse judicial criminal proceedings, critical stages and waiver of the right to counsel are important to the interpretation of our state right to counsel provision, we will examine briefly the significant cases in which they evolved and have been explained.
Between 1932 and 1972, the United States Supreme Court steadily expanded the scope of the pretrial right to counsel. This expansion was based primarily on a functional analysis of whether the presence of counsel at a particular stage of the criminal process was necessary to protect the defendant's ultimate interest in a fair trial. See Comment, The Pretrial Right to Counsel, 26 Stanford L.Rev. 399-400 (1974). During this era, the Supreme Court held essentially that whenever the assistance of counsel was necessary for this purpose, the Sixth Amendment right to counsel attached and became fully activated; therefore, the state's confrontation of an uncounselled person at such a critical stage constituted a violation of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. In Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 53 S.Ct. 55, 77 L.Ed. 158 (1932), the Court recognized the importance of the assistance of counsel during critical stages prior to trial by reversing the convictions of defendants who had been denied legal assistance until immediately before the commencement of a capital rape trial. The Court found that because of the lack of time for preparation and investigation, the legal assistance provided could not have been effective. Therefore, the Court held that the defendants had been denied due process by the deprivation of counsel during perhaps the most critical period of the proceedings against [them], the period between arraignment and trial. Id. at 57, 53 S.Ct. at 59. Almost thirty years later, the Court used the Powell reasoning to develop a functional critical stages analysis. In Hamilton v. Alabama, 368 U.S. 52, 82 S.Ct. 157, 7 L.Ed.2d 114 (1961), the Court held that while arraignment would not necessarily be a critical stage in all jurisdictions, it was in an Alabama capital case because the defendant was required to raise a number of defenses and pleas at the arraignment or lose them permanently. The rationale of this decision was that counsel is constitutionally required at all critical stages in criminal proceedings at which rights may be preserved or lost. Using this analysis, the Court extended an accused's right to counsel to certain critical pretrial confrontations where the results might well settle the accused's fate and reduce the trial to a mere formality. United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 224, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 1931, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967). E.g., Boyd v. Dutton, 405 U.S. 1, 92 S.Ct. 759, 30 L.Ed.2d 755 (1972) (per curiam) (arraignment); Coleman v. Alabama, 399 U.S. 1, 90 S.Ct. 1999, 26 L.Ed.2d 387 (1970) (preliminary examination); Arsenault v. Massachusetts, 393 U.S. 5, 89 S.Ct. 35, 21 L.Ed.2d 5 (1968) (per curiam) (probable cause hearing at which the defendant pleaded guilty); White v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 59, 83 S.Ct. 1050, 10 L.Ed.2d 193 (1963) (preliminary hearing at which a plea was made). C.f., Estelle v. Smith, 451 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 1866, 68 L.Ed.2d 359 (1981) (pretrial court-ordered psychiatric examination); Mempa v. Rhay, 389 U.S. 128, 88 S.Ct. 254, 19 L.Ed.2d 336 (1967) (combination probation-revocation and sentencing hearing). In United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967), the Court enlarged the scope of the right to counsel and indicated that it extends to all pretrial identification confrontations. Although the line-up in that case occurred after the defendant's indictment, the Court expansively indicated that the right to counsel attaches at any critical stage, regardless of when or where it happens or whether adverse judicial criminal proceedings have been initiated: [T]he accused is guaranteed that he need not stand alone against the state at any stage of the prosecution, formal or informal, in court or out, where counsel's absence might derogate from the accused's right to a fair trial.... In sum, the principle of Powell v. Alabama and succeeding cases requires that we scrutinize any pretrial confrontation of the accused to determine whether the presence of his counsel is necessary to preserve the defendant's basic right to a fair trial.... Id. at 226-227, 87 S.Ct. at 1931-32. The Wade Court defined as a critical stage any pretrial procedure in which a meaningful defense or a fair trial could potentially be impaired if an uncounselled defendant were subjected to a confrontation by the state. In succeeding cases, however, the Court retrenched from the language of Wade and limited the critical stages analysis to the period following the commencement of adverse judicial criminal proceedings.
In 1972, a plurality of the Supreme Court concluded that the right to counsel cannot attach prior to the initiation of adverse judicial criminal proceedings. Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U.S. 682, 92 S.Ct. 1877, 32 L.Ed.2d 411 (1972). The plurality reasoned that because the purpose of the right to counsel is to assure rough equality of legal representation between the defendant and the state in court proceedings, the right does not come into play until the adversarial or judicially supervised accusatory phase of the criminal process is reached. The opinion of the court elaborated: 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 the 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 (citations omitted). Subsequently, the Court adopted the Kirby plurality's rationale and held that while a person is entitled to assistance of counsel during confrontations that may be considered critical stages of the criminal process, the right to counsel attaches only after the initiation of adverse judicial criminal proceedings. McNeil v. Wisconsin, ___ U.S. ___, 111 S.Ct. 2204, 115 L.Ed.2d 158 (1991); Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387, 97 S.Ct. 1232, 51 L.Ed.2d 424 (1977). The plurality in Kirby did not draw a single, bright fact-based line marking the earliest point at which the Sixth Amendment right to counsel attaches. But the plurality clearly indicated that the right attaches when the state's role shifts from investigation to accusation, as signalled by the initiation of adverse judicial criminal proceedings. The Court's later decisions have consistently followed this view. McNeil v. Wisconsin, ___ U.S. ___, 111 S.Ct. 2204, 115 L.Ed.2d 158 (1991); Michigan v. Jackson, 475 U.S. 625, 106 S.Ct. 1404, 89 L.Ed.2d 631 (1986); Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387, 97 S.Ct. 1232, 51 L.Ed.2d 424 (1977). See also Patterson v. Illinois, 487 U.S. 285, 108 S.Ct. 2389, 101 L.Ed.2d 261 (1988); Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412, 106 S.Ct. 1135, 89 L.Ed.2d 410 (1986); Moore v. Illinois, 434 U.S. 220, 98 S.Ct. 458, 54 L.Ed.2d 424 (1977). Furthermore, the Supreme Court has plainly indicated that in most jurisdictions a person's initial court appearance or first judicial hearing signals the beginning of judicial criminal proceedings and the shift of the state's role from investigation to accusation for purposes of the attachment of his right to counsel. McNeil v. Wisconsin, ___ U.S. ___, 111 S.Ct. 2204, 115 L.Ed.2d 158 (1991) (Right to counsel attached and had been invoked when defendant was brought before a county court commissioner for his initial appearance on an armed robbery charge.); Michigan v. Jackson, 475 U.S. 625, 106 S.Ct. 1404, 89 L.Ed.2d 631 (1986) (The defendant's arraignment, actually a first appearance rather than a pleading-stage formal arraignment, marked the initiation of adverse judicial proceedings.); Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387, 97 S.Ct. 1232, 51 L.Ed.2d 424 (1977) (The defendant's arraignment on the warrant caused the right to counsel to attach.). The arraignment on the warrant that occurred in Brewer v. Williams, supra, was substantially similar to the first step in judicial criminal proceedings in most American jurisdictions. This first step is also referred to as the first appearance, initial presentment, or preliminary arraignment. 1 LaFave & Israel, Criminal Procedure, § 1.4, p. 21 (1984); Kamisar, LaFave & Israel, Modern Criminal Procedure 8-9 (4th ed. 1974); Grano, Rhode Island v. Innis: A Need to Reconsider the Constitutional Premises Underlying the Law of Confessions, 17 Amer.Crim.L.Rev. 1, 28-29 (1979).
In general, the right to counsel may be waived just as other constitutional rights. However, in the 1960's, the Supreme Court's cases established a principle that erected a virtually per se barrier to a represented defendant's waiving the right to counsel on his own with respect to incriminating statements deliberately elicited by the state after the commencement of accusatory or adverse judicial criminal proceedings. In the 1980's, the Court lowered the waiver standards, allowing a state to prove as easily as it could a Miranda waiver that an unrepresented person relinquished his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. But the Court has made clear that, once an accused has a lawyer, a separate set of constitutional protections is activated, preventing a represented defendant from waiving his right to counsel without the assistance of his lawyer during adverse judicial criminal proceedings. The Supreme Court first characterized the question of waiver of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel in Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 82 L.Ed. 1461 (1938), as an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege. Id. at 464, 58 S.Ct. at 1023. In other words, the state was required to prove that the accused knew what he was doing and that his choice was made with eyes open. Adams v. United States ex rel. McCann, 317 U.S. 269, 279, 63 S.Ct. 236, 242, 87 L.Ed. 268 (1942). Moreover, the Court made clear that the right to counsel does not depend upon a request by the defendant, Carnley v. Cochran, 369 U.S. 506, 513, 82 S.Ct. 884, 888, 8 L.Ed.2d 70 (1962). Cf., Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 471, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1626, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966); and courts must indulge in every reasonable presumption against waiver. E.g., Brockhart v. Janis, 384 U.S. 1, 86 S.Ct. 1245, 16 L.Ed.2d 314 (1966); Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60, 70, 62 S.Ct. 457, 464, 86 L.Ed. 680 (1942). These strict standards apply equally to an alleged waiver of the right to counsel whether at trial or at a critical stage of pretrial proceedings. Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 238-40, 93 S.Ct. 2041, 2053, 36 L.Ed.2d 854 (1973); United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 237, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 1937, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967). In the 1960's, the Supreme Court established a virtually absolute rule that the state cannot constitutionally obtain incriminating statements from a defendant after the initiation of adverse judicial criminal proceedings in the absence of his retained or appointed counsel. Although the principal cases dealt with post-indictment interrogations and covert elicitations, the underlying principle of each decision was that once the state's role shifts from investigation to accusation, the defendant is entitled to the assistance of counsel as the exclusive medium between himself and the state during adverse judicial criminal proceedings. By the same token, the decisions imply that during the judicially supervised accusatory process, the state cannot circumvent defense counsel to obtain a waiver of rights from the accused. In Spano v. New York, 360 U.S. 315, 79 S.Ct. 1202, 3 L.Ed.2d 1265 (1959), an indicted defendant was coercively interrogated by police until the early hours of the morning despite his repeated requests to see his lawyer. A unanimous Court reversed his conviction on the ground that the confession obtained by this interrogation was involuntary and therefore should not have been admitted into evidence at trial. Four Justices, in two concurring opinions, stated that they would also have reached this result on the ground that Spano's Sixth Amendment right to the assistance of counsel was violated. They reasoned that to permit police to produce the vital evidence in the form of a confession which is useful or necessary to obtain a conviction in the absence of counsel, after the right to counsel has attached, is to deny the accused effective representation by counsel at the only stage when legal aid and advice would help him. Id. at 325-326, 79 S.Ct. at 1208-09. See also, id. at 326-327, 79 S.Ct. at 1209 (Stewart, J., concurring). As Justice Douglas succinctly put the point, [W]hat use is a defendant's right to effective counsel at every stage of a criminal case if, while he is held awaiting trial, he can be questioned in the absence of counsel until he confesses? Id. at 326, 79 S.Ct. at 1209. The Court adopted the position of the concurring Spano Justices in Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201, 84 S.Ct. 1199, 12 L.Ed.2d 246 (1964). After Massiah had been indicted for conspiracy to possess and to distribute cocaine, retained a lawyer, pleaded not guilty, and had been released on bail, a government agent electronically eavesdropped on his conversation with a cooperating co-indictee. Government agents instructed the informant to engage the defendant in conversation relating to the crimes. Massiah made several incriminating statements, and these were brought before the jury through the testimony of the government agent. The Court reversed Massiah's conviction on the ground that the incriminating statements were obtained in violation of Massiah's rights under the Sixth Amendment. The Court stressed the fact that the interview took place after indictment, at a time when Massiah was clearly entitled to the assistance of counsel. Relying on Justice Douglas' Spano concurrence, the Court concluded that the need for, and consequently the right to, the assistance of counsel applied equally in this extrajudicial setting as at the trial itself. 377 U.S. at 204, 84 S.Ct. at 1201. Consequently, the Court held: [Massiah] was denied the basic protections of [the right to the assistance of counsel] when there was used against him at trial evidence of his own incriminating words, which federal agents had deliberately elicited from him after he had been indicted and in the absence of his counsel. Id. at 206, 84 S.Ct. at 1203. A year later, in McLeod v. Ohio, 381 U.S. 356, 85 S.Ct. 1556, 14 L.Ed.2d 682 (1965) (per curiam), the Court summarily applied the Sixth Amendment to a situation involving explicit questioning of a suspect by law enforcement officers that occurred after adversary judicial criminal proceedings had been commenced. The Court stated that whatever the uncertainties as to what constitutes deliberate elicitation or self-incriminating admissions, any police conduct constituting interrogation triggers the Sixth Amendment right. See 1 McCormick on Evidence § 153, p. 604 (1992). Some courts, after McLeod, concluded that Massiah applies to exclude post-indictment incriminating statements of an accused to government agents in the absence of counsel, even when not deliberately elicited by a government-initiated confrontation or induced by misapplication engendered by trickery or deception. LaFave and Israel, Criminal Procedure § 6.4 at 461 (1984). See Hancock v. White, 378 F.2d 479 (1st Cir.1967). See also United States v. Crisp, 435 F.2d 354, 358 (7th Cir.1970), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 947, 91 S.Ct. 1640, 29 L.Ed.2d 116 (1971); United States ex rel. O'Connor v. New Jersey, 405 F.2d 632, 636 (3d Cir.1969), cert. denied, 395 U.S. 923, 89 S.Ct. 1770, 23 L.Ed.2d 240 (1969). Two years later, in Beatty v. United States, 389 U.S. 45, 88 S.Ct. 234, 19 L.Ed.2d 48 (1967) (per curiam), the Court held that these principles apply when the confrontation is instigated by the suspect rather than the government agent and the interrogation is overt instead of covert. In that case, where the defendant requested the meeting and initiated and led the conversation in which incriminating statements were made to an undercover agent, and which involved explicit questioning, the Solicitor General made the argument that the decisive fact in Massiah was that the police set up the confrontation between the accused and a police agent at which incriminating statements were elicited. The Court rejected this argument in an opinion that simply cited Massiah. The Supreme Court continued to apply and explain the Massiah, McLeod and Beatty principles in the 1970's, and 80's. In Maine v. Moulton, 474 U.S. 159, 106 S.Ct. 477, 88 L.Ed.2d 481 (1985), the Court held that the state clearly violated the defendant's Sixth Amendment right when it arranged to record conversations between its informant and the defendant, who had retained counsel after being indicted on several counts of auto theft, concerning the pending charges. According to the Court, the state exploited an opportunity to confront the accused without his counsel being present because it knew or must have known that the two were meeting for the express purpose of discussing the pending charges and planning a defense for the trial. The Court concluded that the Sixth Amendment guarantees the accused, at least after the initiation of formal charges, the right to rely on counsel as a `medium' between him and the State. [T]his guarantee includes the State's affirmative obligation not to act in a manner that circumvents the protections afforded the accused by invoking this right.... Id. at 176, 106 S.Ct. at 487. Accordingly, the underlying principle to be distilled from Massiah, McLeod, and Beatty, as Moulton explained, is that the Sixth Amendment is violated when the State obtains incriminating statements by knowingly circumventing a represented defendant's right to have counsel present in a confrontation between the accused and a state agent. Id. at 176, 106 S.Ct. at 487. See also United States v. Henry, 447 U.S. 264, 100 S.Ct. 2183, 65 L.Ed.2d 115 (1980). Recently, in Patterson v. Illinois, 487 U.S. 285, 108 S.Ct. 2389, 101 L.Ed.2d 261 (1988), the Supreme Court relaxed the strict standard for a waiver of the right to counsel, except in cases in which the suspect is in fact represented by counsel and adverse judicial criminal proceedings have commenced. In Patterson, the Court refused to bar police from approaching a suspect whose Sixth Amendment right to counsel had attached but who had not retained counsel or had a lawyer appointed for him. The Court explicitly rejected arguments that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is superior to the Miranda right derived from the Fifth Amendment and that consequently waiver standards for the former should be more stringent than for the latter. Id. at 297, 108 S.Ct. at 2397. See generally, 1 McCormick on Evidence § 153, pp. 604-606 (4th ed. 1992); Comment, Patterson v. Illinois: Applying Miranda Waivers to the Sixth Amendment Right to Counsel, 74 Iowa L.Rev. 1261 (1989); 79 J.Crim.L. & Criminology 795 (1988). Ordinarily, then, the police in the situation addressed by Patterson need only give the accused the standard Miranda warnings in order to provide an adequate basis for the accused's valid waiver of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Patterson v. Illinois, 487 U.S. at 293, 108 S.Ct. at 2395. On the other hand, the Supreme Court in Patterson did not diminish the virtual per se rule prohibiting the state's circumvention of defense counsel after adverse judicial criminal proceedings have been initiated and defense counsel has been retained or appointed. The Court noted, as a matter of some significance that the defendant had not retained or had a lawyer appointed to represent him at the time he was questioned by the authorities. Id. at 290, n. 3, 108 S.Ct. at 2393, n. 3. The Court warned that [o]nce an accused has a lawyer, a distinct set of constitutional safeguards aimed at preserving the sanctity of the attorney-client relationship takes effect. See Maine v. Moulton .... Indeed, the analysis changes markedly once an accused even requests the assistance of counsel. See Michigan v. Jackson .... Id. at 290, n. 3, 108 S.Ct. at 2393, n. 3. In fact, the Patterson Court expressly limited its holding to unrepresented defendants when it stated: [B]ecause the Sixth Amendment's protection of the attorney-client relationship the right to rely on counsel as a `medium' between [the accused] and the Stateextends beyond Miranda's protection of the Fifth Amendment right to counsel, see Maine v. Moulton ... there will be cases where a waiver which would be valid under Miranda will not suffice for Sixth Amendment purposes. Id. at n. 9. Consequently, in view of Patterson's reservation of greater rights to represented defendants and Maine v. Moulton 's reaffirmation of the state's obligation not to circumvent the represented defendant's right to be dealt with only through defense counsel during adverse judicial criminal proceedings, which was recognized and approved by Patterson, we believe that the Sixth Amendment principles recognized in Massiah, McLeod and Beatty continue to bar any interrogation of the defendant after the commencement of adverse judicial criminal proceedings against a person who has retained or been appointed counsel. Other state courts have reached the same conclusion. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, for example, concluded: [I]f a suspect is in fact represented by counsel and the case progresses to the point at which the Sixth Amendment applies, the Sixth Amendment imposes requirementsincluding waiver standardsnot demanded by Miranda and the Fifth Amendment. These requirements have the purpose of preserving the attorney-client relationship, an objective essential to Sixth Amendment concerns and of no significance to Miranda concerns. Thus, we hold that where a relationship between the accused and his attorney is established after the Sixth Amendment has become applicable, the Sixth Amendment precludes dissolution of that relationship in the absence of counsel. Holloway v. State, 780 S.W.2d 787, 795 (Tex.Cr.App.1989). See also, Dew v. United States, 558 A.2d 1112, 1116 (D.C.1989) ([O]nce counsel has been `accepted by appointment' in a criminal case, the sixth amendment bars police-initiated interrogation of the accused except through arrangements with defense counsel); People v. Kidd, 129 Ill.2d 432, 136 Ill.Dec. 18, 544 N.E.2d 704 (1989) (The state violated the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel by deliberately eliciting incriminating statements by overt, direct interrogation of the defendant in the absence of appointed counsel for later use at a death penalty hearing.). Cf., United States v. Thomas, 474 F.2d 110 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 412 U.S. 932, 93 S.Ct. 2758, 37 L.Ed.2d 160 (1973) ([O]nce a criminal defendant has either retained an attorney or had an attorney appointed for him by the court, any statement obtained by interview from such defendant may not be offered in evidence for any purpose unless the accused's attorney was notified of the interview which produced the statement and was given a reasonable opportunity to be present.).