Opinion ID: 571296
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Evidence of silence upon arrest

Text: 24
25 Mr. Parrish also challenges his conviction on the ground that there was constitutional error in the admission of testimony that he remained silent when told he was under arrest. 26 Mr. Parrish was sitting in his car, when a DEA agent approached him, asked him to exit the car, and told him he was under arrest. Tr. at 121. Mr. Parrish got out of the car without saying anything and was then read his Miranda rights. After he was given Miranda warnings, he did make some statements. It was not until the morning of trial that the prosecution informed Mr. Parrish's attorney of the statements that Mr. Parrish had made after he had been given Miranda warnings. The prosecution intended to introduce these statements as evidence. 27 At the trial, the prosecutor began asking questions about the arrest. At the first question (When you approached Mr. Parrish and told him he was under arrest, did he say anything to you at that point?), Mr. Parrish's defense attorney objected. He asked the court for a sidebar conference. 28 In the sidebar conference, Mr. Parrish's attorney told the court that he had learned of the statements only that morning and that he believed he could have had them suppressed. During the discussion, one of the prosecutors pointed out that there were really two issues: (1) Mr. Parrish's initial silence in response to being placed under arrest, and (2) the post-Miranda statements: 29 MR. KING: There is one additional point, your Honor, and that is when the officer came up and said, You are under arrest for a federal narcotics charge, something to that effect, he didn't respond to anything, and then he was ordered out of the car and then was read his Miranda rights and then there were certain questions answered. I think there's really two questions. One is that there was a statement by the officer with no response by the defendant and then there's specific Miranda rights and specific questions. Tr. at 123. 30 Neither the defense attorney nor the judge pursued the issue of Mr. Parrish's pre-Miranda silence at this point. The defense attorney, who was still concentrating on the post-Miranda statements, addressed the issue of whether Mr. Parrish had voluntarily waived his Miranda rights. Tr. at 124. 31 The judge then sustained the objection (apparently limited to the post-Miranda statements), and twice told the prosecutor to go into another area. The prosecutor apparently still wanted to ask about Mr. Parrish's post-arrest, pre-Miranda silence. He asked the judge, Another area, or simply the initial question? There was one question. The judge directed the prosecutor to read the question back in front of the jury. (Read the last question back. Ask the question.) The prosecutor, following the court's direction, then read: The question was at the time Mr. Parrish was placed under arrest, did he make any immediate response? The witness answered No, and Mr. Parrish's attorney objected and moved for mistrial. (Judge, again, I have an objection and a motion for a mistrial.) Tr. at 125. The judge did not respond to the objection; he merely denied the motion for a mistrial and directed the prosecutor to go on to the next question. Thus, the silence was admitted. 32 The prosecutor then asked What happened after that?, and the witness described telling Mr. Parrish that he was under arrest for a narcotics violation and asking Mr. Parrish if he could speak English, and Mr. Parrish answering yes. The defense attorney objected again and moved for mistrial. The court sustained the objection, telling the prosecutor (again) that he was not going to let him elicit any of those statements. The prosecutor responded, Okay, that is what I was not clear on. 33
34 This court has ... held that it is a violation of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to allow a prosecutor to use as evidence of guilt a defendant's refusal to talk to the police. United States v. Ramos, 932 F.2d 611, 616 (7th Cir.1991). See United States v. Davenport, 929 F.2d 1169, 1174 (7th Cir.1991); United States ex rel. Savory v. Lane, 832 F.2d 1011, 1017-18 (7th Cir.1987); United States v. Caro, 637 F.2d 869, 876 (2d Cir.1981). But see United States v. Harrold, 796 F.2d 1275, 1279 (10th Cir.1986), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 1037, 107 S.Ct. 892, 93 L.Ed.2d 844 (1987). In Savory, the defendant, approached with questions in a non-custodial setting, refused to talk about the murders with which he was later charged. At trial, his refusal to talk to police during this initial questioning was introduced in the prosecution's case-in-chief. There are certain factual differences between Mr. Parrish's case and Savory. In Savory, the defendant affirmatively refused to answer questions. Here Mr. Parrish was only momentarily silent and later did make statements, the existence (not the contents) of which was disclosed to the jury. Unlike Savory, Mr. Parrish took the stand. Despite these differences, the present case falls under Savory. The fact that Mr. Parrish later took the stand does not allow the prosecutor to introduce impeaching evidence in its case-in-chief. 4 35 Nor can we accept the government's suggestion that there was no implication of guilt in the evidence of Mr. Parrish's momentary silence because the information was given in response to a preliminary question and because the jury was made aware that Mr. Parrish did make some statements after being read his Miranda rights. The government likens the present case to Lindgren v. Lane, 925 F.2d 198 (7th Cir.1991) and United States v. Ramos, 932 F.2d 611 (7th Cir.1991). In Lindgren, the court examined the prosecutor's intentions and the circumstances in which the evidence was introduced to determine whether there was error. However, Lindgren involved not evidence of silence, but evidence, inadvertently elicited, that the defendant had asked for an attorney. The prosecutor did not follow up on the request for a lawyer or refer to it in closing argument. The court stated that the circumstances surrounding the testimony and the use made of it by the prosecutor should be considered in determining whether there had been error. The court determined that there was no evidentiary use made of the defendant's invocation of the right to counsel. The government now asks us to apply a similar reasoning to the evidence of Mr. Parrish's silence. However, unlike the prosecutor in the Lindgren case, the prosecutor here asked his question expecting the answer he got--that Mr. Parrish made no response. 36 The government also relies upon Ramos where the court required, as a prerequisite for constitutional error, either that it be the prosecutor's manifest intention to refer to the defendant's silence or that the remark was of such a character that the jury would 'naturally and necessarily' take it to be a comment on the defendant's silence. Ramos, 932 F.2d at 616. 5 The government argues that the question here was merely preliminary and incidental to asking about the arrest, the Miranda warnings, and the post-Miranda statements. Therefore, the government claims that 37 the record establishes that it was not the government's 'manifest intention' to refer to the defendant's silence. The lack of any response by Parrish upon arrest was mentioned only as a result of a preliminary question. The government was seeking to elicit from the witness ... that he had given Parrish Miranda warnings and that Parrish waived these rights and made some statements. 38 Appellee's Br. at 25. We cannot accept this argument as an accurate characterization of the record. Here, the prosecutor returned to the question after the objection to the statements made after the Miranda warnings had been sustained. Therefore it is difficult to conclude that, when it was asked the second time, the question was preliminary to eliciting the already excluded statements. Here, the prosecutor deliberately elicited a direct reference to the defendant's silence upon initial confrontation with law enforcement officers. 39
40  '[B]efore a federal constitutional error can be held harmless, the court must be able to declare a belief that it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.'  Arizona v. Fulminante, --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 1257, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991) (quoting Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 828, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967)). To find an error harmless, the court must determine  'whether there is a reasonable possibility that the [errors] complained of might have contributed to the conviction.'  United States ex rel. Ross v. Fike, 534 F.2d 731, 734 (7th Cir.1976) (quoting Fahy v. Connecticut, 375 U.S. 85, 86-87, 84 S.Ct. 229, 230-31, 11 L.Ed.2d 171 (1963)). Judge Pell summarized succinctly the nature of our inquiry in Mauricio v. Duckworth, 840 F.2d 454, 459 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 869, 109 S.Ct. 177, 102 L.Ed.2d 146 (1988): 41 In United States ex rel. Savory v. Lane, 832 F.2d 1011 (7th Cir.1987), we held that in assessing whether errors of constitutional magnitude, such as the one at issue here, are harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, we must determine 'whether there is a reasonable possibility that the [errors] complained of might have contributed to the conviction.'  Id. at 1019 (quoting Fahy v. Connecticut, 375 U.S. 85, 86-87, 84 S.Ct. 229, 230, 11 L.Ed.2d 171 (1963)). In essence, the inquiry comes down to the question, whether absent the constitutionally-forbidden evidence, honest and fairminded jurors might very well have brought in not-guilty verdicts. Burns v. Clusen, 798 F.2d 931, 943 (7th Cir.1986) (citing Chapman, 386 U.S. at 25-26, 87 S.Ct. at 828-29). Typically, we require other evidence of guilt to be overwhelming before concluding a constitutional error was harmless. Savory, 832 F.2d at 1020; United States v. Shue, 766 F.2d 1122, 1132-33 (7th Cir.1985); United States ex rel. Burke v. Greer, 756 F.2d 1295, 1302 (7th Cir.1985). 42 Accord Hunter v. Clark, 934 F.2d 856, 860-61 (7th Cir.1991). Nevertheless, even when the evidence was not overwhelming, we have found the error harmless beyond a reasonable doubt when convinced that the impact of the objectionable material was negligible. See Fencl v. Abrahamson, 841 F.2d 760, 769 (7th Cir.1988); Hanrahan v. Thieret, 933 F.2d 1328, 1340 (7th Cir.1991) (considering the strength and believability of the defense in evaluating harmless error). In Fencl, we relied on the following factors to guide our determination: (1) the brevity of the prosecutor's references to the defendant's silence, (2) the minor role of the references in the government's case when viewed as part of the entire record, and (3) the fact that most of the references were made during the witness's narration of a sequence of events designed to show not that the defendant was silent, but that he voluntarily told the authorities inconsistent stories. Fencl, 841 F.2d at 769. 43 Under these standards, we conclude that the admission of testimony concerning Mr. Parrish's post-arrest silence was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Mr. Parrish's momentary silence could be evaluated as having independent evidentiary significance only if the jury was asked to construe that silence as discrediting his story that he was at the site for a reason entirely unrelated to the drug transaction--the sale of a car. Perhaps it could have been argued that one might expect a somewhat more vocal reaction than silence when an innocent unsuspecting person is confronted by law enforcement officers and placed under arrest. There are, in our view, several problems with that argument in the context of this case. First, such an inference is not inexorable; many persons might be too shocked to speak. Secondly, the record affirmatively shows that the silence was momentary. The agent immediately inquired as to Mr. Parrish's ability to understand English. Perhaps most importantly, the jury was never asked to draw that inference. There was a single reference by the DEA agent to Mr. Parrish's initial silence. This single reference occurred in the midst of discussion about the admissibility of other matters. There was no reference to it on cross-examination of Mr. Parrish or in either opening statements or closing arguments. Viewed in the context of the entire record, the single reference to Mr. Parrish's silence was minor, and we are convinced its admission had no impact on the jury. Moreover, there were weaknesses in Mr. Parrish's defense: Mr. Parrish's testimony on the stand was directly contradicted at more than one point by the eyewitness testimony of the agents. In short, there is no reasonable possibility that the error contributed to the conviction.