Opinion ID: 1676965
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Waiver of the State Constitutional Right to Counsel

Text: By January of 1973, when the Louisiana Constitutional Convention was meeting in its first sessions, the United States Supreme Court had established strong precedents under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments barring deliberate police efforts to elicit incriminating statements from an accused in the absence of defense counsel after the commencement of adverse judicial criminal proceedings. See Massiah, supra; McLeod, supra; Beatty, supra. The Court's cases reflect an underlying principle that, under these circumstances, the state is prohibited from communicating with the defendant about the subject of the proceedings except through his legal representative, regardless of who initiated the confrontation or whether the elicitation was overt or covert. This principle clearly indicates that a defendant in this situation has a right to rely on his attorney as the medium between himself and the state; and, correlatively, that the state owes him an affirmative obligation not to circumvent or dilute the protection afforded by the right to counsel. That the Court has elaborated upon this in later cases confirms and does not take away from the fact that the principle was established prior to the adoption of our state constitution. See Maine v. Moulton, 474 U.S. 159, 106 S.Ct. 477, 88 L.Ed.2d 481 (1985), citing and discussing Massiah, supra; Beatty, supra; and Spano, supra. The text and history of Article I, § 13 exhibit no intent to dilute the strictness of the standards previously established by the Supreme Court's Sixth Amendment jurisprudence governing the waiver of the right to assistance of counsel. On the contrary, as this court's decisions have recognized, Article I, § 13 incorporates the pre-existing general federal principles concerning whether an accused has validly waived his right to counsel or elected to represent himself. State v. Strain, 585 So.2d 540 (La.1991); City of Monroe v. Wyrick, 393 So.2d 1273 (La.1981); State v. White, 325 So.2d 584 (La.1976). See also State v. Green, 443 So.2d 531 (La.1983); State v. Trevathan, 414 So.2d 316 (La. 1982); State v. Bell, 381 So.2d 393 (La. 1980). Accordingly, we believe that it was also the constitutional intent to adopt the principle, established in the Massiah line of cases, that once the right to counsel attaches and an attorney has been appointed or retained to assist the defendant, the state must respect the defendant's right to rely on his counsel as a medium between him and the state. See State v. McGhee, 350 So.2d 370 (La.1977); Beatty v. United States, 389 U.S. 45, 88 S.Ct. 234, 19 L.Ed.2d 48 (1967) (per curiam); McLeod v. Ohio, 381 U.S. 356, 85 S.Ct. 1556, 14 L.Ed.2d 682 (1965) (per curiam); Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201, 84 S.Ct. 1199, 12 L.Ed.2d 246 (1964). The fundamental concept of defense counsel as the exclusive medium between the accused and the state is also inherent in other constitutional and ethical precepts designed to safeguard the rights of individuals in our system of adversary criminal justice. First, Article I, § 13 itself clearly guarantees to every person the right to have the assistance of his chosen or appointed counsel once adverse judicial criminal proceedings have commenced. This would be a hollow right and counsel of no assistance if the state were free to disregard the retention or appointment and circumvent the right to counsel to the person's prejudice. The denial of the opportunity for counsel to confer or consult with the accused could convert the appointment of counsel into a sham and nothing more than a formal compliance with the Constitution. Avery v. Alabama, 308 U.S. 444, 446, 60 S.Ct. 321, 322, 84 L.Ed. 377 (1939) (Black, J.). Moreover, Article I, § 13, in its final sentence, plainly indicates that the Constitution's guarantee of the assistance of counsel for indigents cannot be satisfied by a mere formal appointment; that provision mandates that [t]he legislature shall provide for a uniform system for securing and compensating qualified counsel for indigents. 1974 La. Const. Art. I, § 13. Second, district attorneys, as constitutional officers and as officers of the court, owe a duty under their oaths and ethical precepts to carry out the state's affirmative duty not to act in a manner that circumvents or dilutes the protection afforded by the right to counsel during the accusatory stage of the criminal process. A district attorney has charge of every criminal prosecution by the state in his district, La. Const.1974, Art. V, § 26(B), and has a duty to support the constitution and laws of this state. Id. Art. X, § 30. The Rules of Professional Conduct of the Louisiana State Bar Association prohibit a prosecutor from seeking to obtain from an unrepresented accused a waiver of important pretrial rights.... Rule 3.8(c). They also prevent a lawyer from communicating about the subject of the representation with a party the lawyer knows to be represented by another lawyer in the matter, or effecting the prohibited communication through a third person, including the lawyer's client. Rule 4.2. The implication of the constitution and these rules is that once the state has invoked the system of adversary criminal justice against a person by means of the first appearance or first judicial hearing, La.C.Cr.P. art. 230.1, and the court has appointed or enrolled counsel to assist him, the district attorney has the constitutional authority and the duty to demand that all other state agents respect the constitutional right to counsel of the person subject to the judicial criminal proceedings. See also Rule 8.4(e) (It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to knowingly assist or induce another, or act through another, to engage in conduct that would for the lawyer be a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct.). In fact, these ethical obligations imply a prosecutorial duty to take affirmative steps to assure that the police do not, after the initiation of adverse judicial criminal proceedings, deliberately elicit from a represented defendant incriminating statements or a waiver of important rights. See State v. Sanchez, 129 N.J. 261, 609 A.2d 400 (1992) (Discussing ethical precepts implicated in the case where a defendant was convicted of non-capital murder, in large part, on the basis of the admission into evidence of his uncounselled, post-indictment statement taken in violation of his constitutional right to counsel.). Third, this court has recognized that, in some instances, even before the initiation of adverse judicial criminal proceedings, the concept of our accusatory system of justice may require the state to honor the accused's right to rely on his attorney as the medium between himself and the state. Along with the prevailing body of other state courts, we have expressed the view that statements obtained as the result of police interference with communications between an attorney and a suspect must be suppressed. State v. Matthews, 408 So.2d 1274 (La.1982) (Attorney's request to speak with defendant refused and instruction to cease interrogation ignored); State v. Jackson, 303 So.2d 734 (La.1974) (Lawyer retained by defendant's family denied permission to communicate with defendant who was not told of lawyer's attempt). See Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412, 439 n. 10, 106 S.Ct. 1135, 1150-51 n. 10, 89 L.Ed.2d 410 (1985) (Stevens, J. dissenting, quoting Brief for American Bar Association as Amicus Curiae 4 n. 2). State v. Thomas, 406 So.2d 1325 (La.1981) (Defendant's statutory right to procure and confer with counsel attaches at post-arrest, pre-accusatory line-up); State v. Weedon, 342 So.2d 642 (La. 1977) (State's elicitation of incriminating statement from suspect during booking procedure in breach of agreement with defense counsel violated the state constitutional right to counsel). Cf., State v. McGhee, supra (Article I, § 13 of state constitution prohibits uncounselled line-up of accused during adverse judicial criminal proceedings). The previous decisions of this court dealing with the right to the assistance of counsel have not focused on the analysis, interpretation, and application of the Article I, § 13 right to counsel guarantee. Consequently, our prior decisions are not controlling in the present case for one or more reasons: (1) Most of the cases arose under the 1921 Louisiana constitution and, therefore, were not governed by our current state constitution. See, e.g., State v. Cotton, 341 So.2d 355 (La.1977); State v. Lawrence, 294 So.2d 476 (La.1974); State v. Taylor, 347 So.2d 172 (La.1977); State v. Johnson, 327 So.2d 388 (La.1976); State v. Rudolph, 332 So.2d 806 (La.1976); State v. Stewart, 325 So.2d 819 (La.1976); State v. Johnson, 306 So.2d 724 (La.1975); State v. Jefferson, 284 So.2d 577 (La.1973); State v. Edgecombe, 275 So.2d 740 (La.1973); (2) A number of cases are factually distinguishable because the alleged violation occurred prior to either the initiation of adverse judicial criminal proceedings or the appointment or retention of defense counsel, or both. See, e.g., State v. Huntley, 418 So.2d 538 (La.1982); State v. Thomas, supra; State v. Vaughn, 378 So.2d 905 (La. 1979); State v. Cotton, supra; State v. Hargrove, 330 So.2d 895 (La.1976); State v. Lawrence, supra; and (3) Many cases were based upon interpretations and applications of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel guarantee. See, e.g., State v. Harper, 430 So.2d 627 (La.1983); State v. Huntley, supra; State v. Thomas, 406 So.2d 1325 (La.1981); State v. Siegel, 366 So.2d 1358 (La.1978); State v. Spears, 350 So.2d 603 (La.1977); State v. Lawrence, supra; State v. Nero, 319 So.2d 303 (La. 1975). Moreover, at times we may have partially misperceived the Supreme Court's interpretations of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. For example, in State v. Harper, 430 So.2d 627, 634 (La.1983), this court correctly indicated that the federal right to counsel attaches upon the commencement of adversarial proceedings but mistakenly concluded that an accused may waive his Sixth Amendment right to counsel without the knowledge or assistance of the lawyer that the court had appointed to assist him in the adversarial judicial criminal proceedings. Evidently, this court was misled by the Supreme Court's opinion in Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387, 97 S.Ct. 1232, 51 L.Ed.2d 424 (1977). The Court held that the deliberate elicitation of incriminating statements from a represented defendant after the initiation of adverse judicial criminal proceedings was a right to counsel violation. But the Court short-circuited its analysis by saying that Brewer had not validly waived his right to counsel because, under the facts, he displayed no intention to relinquish that right. However, in subsequent opinions, the Court has reaffirmed the true basis for that result, viz., that under the principles established in the Massiah line of cases, the defendant cannot waive his Sixth Amendment right to counsel on his own once it attaches and he has retained or accepted appointment of counsel by the court. Patterson v. Illinois, supra; Maine v. Moulton, supra. Cf., Holloway v. State, 780 S.W.2d 787 (Tex.Cr. App.1989); Dew v. United States, 558 A.2d 1112 (D.C.1989); People v. Kidd, 129 Ill.2d 432, 136 Ill.Dec. 18, 544 N.E.2d 704 (1989). See also 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). Furthermore, State v. Harper, supra, is also distinguishable from the present case on its facts. In Harper, the state did not commit a second, separate violation of the defendant's right to counsel by arranging to have him confined virtually incommunicado in another parish for investigatory purposes without the knowledge or assistance of his court-appointed counsel. On the other hand, in Harper, the police officers reminded Harper that he had court-appointed counsel with whom he was free to consult prior to talking with them about a waiver or submitting to interrogation. The officers in the present case did not remind Hattaway of the court-appointed attorney or specifically offer to let Hattaway confer with him. Instead, they gave Hattaway a warning that reasonably could have led him to believe that he did not have a court-appointed lawyer from whom he could receive assistance prior to deciding whether to waive his rights or talk to the officers. Therefore, even under the partially anomalous federal right to counsel principles applied in Harper, the conduct of the deputies in Bienville Parish toward Hattaway fell below that standard and amounted to a violation of his constitutional rights.