Opinion ID: 1196151
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: clear articulation of right to remain silentlegal standard and scope of the inquiry

Text: We now turn to address what a suspect must say to invoke the right to remain silent in order to require the police to respect fully the exercise of the suspect's right to cut off questioning under Miranda. People seldom speak with precise legalistic words, and in a police custodial setting while being questioned, few people would say, I hereby invoke my right to remain silent and decline to answer any further questions. The words used by a suspect often will be subject to more than one interpretation. Hence, the police and then perhaps a trial court must determine whether a suspect has invoked the right to remain silent and cut off interrogation, requiring that the police engage in conduct that scrupulously honors or fully respects the exercise of this right. Following the standard established for right to counsel cases, we hold that a suspect must clearly articulate the desire to remain silent so that a reasonable police officer in the circumstances would understand the suspect's words and conduct to mean that the suspect is asserting her Miranda right to cut off questioning, thereby requiring the police to respect fully the suspect's exercise of this right. Before undergoing a custodial interrogation, a suspect must be advised of her Miranda rights, which include the Fifth Amendment rights to have an attorney present and to remain silent in the face of questioning. See Miranda, 384 U.S. at 479, 86 S.Ct. 1602. By invoking either the right to counsel or the right to remain silent, a suspect may at any time before or during custodial interrogation cut off the questioning, and if the suspect is willing to proceed with the interrogation, she must specifically waive these rights. See id. at 473-74, 479, 86 S.Ct. 1602. If the interrogation continues without the presence of an attorney and a statement is taken, a heavy burden rests on the government to demonstrate that the defendant knowingly and intelligently waived his privilege against self-incrimination and his right to retained or appointed counsel. Id. at 475, 86 S.Ct. 1602. Once a criminal suspect invokes his right to remain silent, the police must scrupulously honor the assertion of this right in order to comply with the Miranda doctrine. As the Supreme Court explained in Mosley, 423 U.S. at 103-04, 96 S.Ct. 321: A reasonable and faithful interpretation of the Miranda opinion must rest on the intention of the Court in that case to adopt fully effective means ... to notify the person of his right of silence and to assure that the exercise of the right will be scrupulously honored.... The critical safeguard... is a person's right to cut off questioning. Through the exercise of his option to terminate questioning he can control the time at which questioning occurs, the subjects discussed, and the duration of the interrogation. The requirement that law enforcement authorities must respect a person's exercise of that option counteracts the coercive pressures of the custodial setting. We therefore conclude that the admissibility of statements obtained after the person in custody has decided to remain silent depends under Miranda on whether his right to cut off questioning was scrupulously honored. (Citations omitted.) The requirement that the police scrupulously honor a suspect's exercise of the right to remain silent does not mean that the police must cease all questioning until the suspect's attorney is present. [2] See id. at 104 & n. 10, 96 S.Ct. 321. Rather, the police must respect fully the suspect's exercise of this right, and the interrogators must counteract[ ] the coercive pressures of the custodial setting through steps such as ceasing the interrogation, allowing a significant amount of time to pass before resuming questioning, and reissuing the Miranda warnings. See id. at 104-05, 96 S.Ct. 321. In the right to counsel context, the Supreme Court instituted a clear articulation rule to trigger the safeguards envisioned by the Miranda right to counsel. See Davis v. United States, 512 U.S. 452, 459, 114 S.Ct. 2350, 129 L.Ed.2d 362 (1994). If a suspect clearly requests an attorney, then no further questioning may occur until an attorney has been made available or the suspect reinitiates the conversation. See id. at 458, 114 S.Ct. 2350; see also Romero, 953 P.2d at 554. However, if the suspect's request is ambiguous or equivocal, then police need not make an effort to clarify the statement and are free to continue the questioning. See Davis, 512 U.S. at 461-62, 114 S.Ct. 2350. To determine whether a suspect clearly invoked his constitutional right to an attorney, the Supreme Court employed the objective standard of a reasonable police officer under the circumstances. See id. at 459, 114 S.Ct. 2350. [I]f a suspect makes a reference to an attorney that is ambiguous or equivocal in that a reasonable officer in light of the circumstances would have understood only that the suspect might be invoking the right to counsel, our precedents do not require the cessation of questioning. Id. (emphasis in original). The reasonableness standard provides law enforcement with a well-defined, common sense rule. See id. at 461, 114 S.Ct. 2350. As the Supreme Court noted, police officers should not be forced to make difficult judgment calls about whether the suspect in fact wants a lawyer even though he has not said so, with the threat of suppression if they guess wrong. Id. We adopt this reasonableness rule in the context of invocation of the right to remain silentbefore the police must scrupulously honor a suspect's right to remain silent, the suspect must clearly articulate that right so that a reasonable police officer in the circumstances would understand the suspect's words and conduct to mean that the suspect wants to exercise his right to cut off further questioning. In so doing we follow the majority of other states that have considered the application of the clear articulation rule to the right to remain silent. See, e.g., State v. Owen, 696 So.2d 715, 717-18 (Fla.1997); State v. Donesay, 265 Kan. 60, 959 P.2d 862, 871-72 (1998); State v. King, 708 A.2d 1014, 1017 (Me.1998); Williams, 535 N.W.2d at 285. [3] The majority of federal jurisdictions considering the issue have applied the Davis rule to the right to remain silent as well. See, e.g., United States v. Ramirez, 79 F.3d 298, 305 (2d Cir.1996); United States v. Johnson, 56 F.3d 947, 955 (8th Cir.1995); Coleman v. Singletary, 30 F.3d 1420, 1424 (11th Cir.1994). [4] The Minnesota Supreme Court in Williams outlined the rationale for extending Davis to right to silence cases when it explained that fewer prophylactic procedures are required in the right to remain silent context. When an accused attempts to invoke his right to counsel, he indicates that he feels comfortable dealing with the authorities only with the assistance of counsel. That is not the case in the right to remain silent context, and therefore, fewer procedural safeguards are appropriate when the accused invokes the right to remain silent. Because the Supreme Court has held that the Constitution does not require police officers to confine their questioning to clarifying questions when an accused ambiguously or equivocally attempts to invoke his right to counsel, it follows by even greater logic that the Constitution does not require such a clarifying approach when an accused ambiguously or equivocally attempts to invoke his right to remain silent. 535 N.W.2d at 284-85 (citations omitted). A clear articulation rule requires a suspect to act to protect herself to some extent because the suspect must clearly express a desire to invoke her rights; however, as the Supreme Court in Davis, stated: [R]equiring a clear assertion of the right to counsel might disadvantage some suspects whobecause of fear, intimidation, lack of linguistic skills, or a variety of other reasonswill not clearly articulate their right to counsel although they actually want a lawyer present. But the primary protection afforded suspects subject to custodial interrogation is the Miranda warnings themselves. 512 U.S. at 460, 114 S.Ct. 2350. Other courts have agreed, finding that requiring sufficient clarity from suspects is not unduly burdensome on their rights. See Andrade, 925 F.Supp. at 80. Although a suspect must articulate her desire to cut off questioning with sufficient clarity that a reasonable police officer in the circumstances would understand the statement to be an assertion of the right to cut off questioning, we do not require the suspect to use special or ritualistic phrases. See Quinn v. United States, 349 U.S. 155, 162, 75 S.Ct. 668, 99 L.Ed. 964 (1955) (stating that no special combination of words is needed to invoke the right against self-incrimination). To invoke the right to remain silent, a suspect need not speak with the discrimination of an Oxford don. Davis, 512 U.S. at 459, 114 S.Ct. 2350; see also Romero, 953 P.2d at 556. Further, because suspects may have only limited skills for verbalizing their wishes in a custodial setting, a court must give a broad, rather than a narrow, interpretation to requests to cut off questioning. See Romero, 953 P.2d at 554-55 (directing courts to interpret requests for counsel broadly; quoting People v. Kleber, 859 P.2d 1361, 1363 (Colo.1993) and Michigan v. Jackson, 475 U.S. 625, 633, 106 S.Ct. 1404, 89 L.Ed.2d 631 (1986)).
Having adopted the clear articulation rule, we turn to a discussion of how a trial court must determine whether a suspect's statement is a clear assertion of her right to remain silent. The scope of a trial court's analysis should not be limited to the words as they appear on their face. A trial court should consider the words spoken by the defendant and the plain meaning of those words, but the court should also consider the totality of the circumstances surrounding the statement in order to assess the words in context. We have previously directed trial courts to examine the totality of the circumstances to assess how a reasonable officer in the circumstances would perceive a statement that might be a request for the assistance of counsel. See Romero, 953 P.2d at 555 (finding that a reasonable officer would have understood the statement, I should talk to a lawyer ... because I do want to go to trial on this to be a clear request for counsel given the surrounding circumstances). The legal standard is objectivewhether in the context of question and answer, the suspect's responses reasonably could be construed by a police officer to mean that the suspect wanted a lawyer. Id. at 556. This totality of the circumstances analysis applies equally to the right to remain silent. [5] The trial court must review a wide range of factors on a case-by-case basis in order to consider the totality of the circumstances. The trial court should assess the words spoken by the defendant and the interrogating officer, the officer's response to the suspect's words, the speech patterns of the suspect, the content of the interrogation, the demeanor and tone of the interrogating officer, the suspect's behavior during questioning, the point at which the suspect invoked the right to remain silent, and who was present during the interrogation. See Romero, 953 P.2d at 555-56; People v. Trujillo, 938 P.2d 117, 124 (Colo.1997) (employing similar factors to determine whether custodial interrogation had taken place). A court also might consider the questions that drew the statement as well as the officer's response to the statement. See Johnson, 56 F.3d at 955. Whether an officer's subsequent questions were an attempt to clarify a suspect's wishes may also be part of the totality of the circumstances analysis. The Supreme Court has not required officers to clarify a suspect's ambiguous invocation of rights, although the Court has indicated that it is often prudent police practice to do so. See Davis, 512 U.S. at 461, 114 S.Ct. 2350. In addition, when assessing the totality of the circumstances a trial court may take into account the fact that suspects may not, due to their particular characteristics and the circumstances of the police interview, request an end to questioning in the most sophisticated or legally proper form. See Romero, 953 P.2d at 554 (applying the same principle to requests for counsel). Courts may even take into account a suspect's experience with the criminal justice system, her ability to understand questions, and her ability to verbalize her wants and needs. Cf. id. at 554-55 (noting examples of personal characteristics that may be pertinent to inquiry into clarity of suspect's invocation of right to counsel). The factors we list here are not exhaustive. A trial court need not make specific findings with respect to each of these factors, and no single factor is controlling. A court may consider many or all of these factors, and a court may consider other relevant factors that we have not mentioned, as long as the court demonstrates that it has considered the totality of the circumstances. See Quezada, 731 P.2d at 734 (finding that Mosley factors are not exhaustive of inquiry into whether police scrupulously honor a suspect's right to remain silent, and that totality of circumstances inquiry must be made on case-by-case basis).