Opinion ID: 748614
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Voluntariness of Winsett's Statements

Text: 14 The trial court in this case found that the police officers violated Winsett's Miranda rights and that the prosecution could not use the statements in its case-in-chief. The court also ruled, though, that the statements were not involuntary and that they could be used for impeachment purposes. Winsett did not contest this finding of voluntariness at trial and did not raise the issue on direct appeal. In post-conviction proceedings, Winsett argued that the evidence pertaining to Glenn Spruille should have been excluded because the officers obtained this evidence by violating his Miranda protections. He did not, however, challenge the voluntariness of his statements in these post-conviction proceedings or in his petition to the district court for a writ of habeas corpus. Normally, a party waives those issues it fails to raise in the district court. See, e.g., Henderson v. DeTella, 97 F.3d 942, 946 (7th Cir.1996), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 1471, 137 L.Ed.2d 683 (1997). As in the context of the exhaustion of state-court remedies, it is not enough here that the petitioner pleaded some of the same basic facts and made a somewhat similar claim. See Anderson v. Harless, 459 U.S. 4, 6, 103 S.Ct. 276, 277, 74 L.Ed.2d 3 (1982). We must decide, therefore, whether Winsett presented his voluntariness challenge to the district court. 15 Winsett typed a four-page description of the grounds on which he sought a writ of habeas corpus. For the most part, the petition details the numerous state court rulings in his case. Its only reference to the voluntariness of his statements is a recapitulation of the trial court's ruling on the question. Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus, No. 94 C 821, at 6 ([T]he trial judge stated that there was no showing that the police used any trickery so as to render the confession involuntary, and that the confession would be admissible to impeach Petitioner if he were to testify.). Nowhere in the petition does Winsett plead any facts--much less any legal arguments-that would support a claim of involuntariness. He complains about his interrogation by police officers only in terms of the violation of his Miranda rights; when describing this violation, he never provides specific factual examples of police conduct that might have also rendered his statements involuntary, but rather speaks only in conclusory terms regarding the Miranda violation. There was nothing in Winsett's petition from which the district court could have inferred an involuntariness challenge, and we find it telling that he has never objected to the district court's failure to consider the issue. 16 Winsett cannot expect the district court to presume a voluntariness challenge simply because he demonstrated a violation of his Miranda rights. It may be true that the same facts can sometimes trigger both a Fifth Amendment prohibition on the use of involuntary statements and the Miranda exclusionary rule. As the bulk of this opinion explains, however, the two protections are constitutionally distinct, and Winsett does not plead one automatically by pleading the other. Winsett tacitly concedes this point when he alleges that his trial counsel was incompetent for arguing the Miranda point without objecting also to the trial court's voluntariness determination. Thus, we cannot consider Winsett's voluntariness challenge because he did not present it to the district court. 17