Opinion ID: 3039443
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the state court acted contrary to supreme

Text: COURT PRECEDENT BY USING ANDERSON’S RESPONSES TO RE-INTERROGATION TO FIND A VALID WAIVER The state appellate court attempted to bolster its conclusion about Anderson’s statements by claiming that he waived his right to remain silent in continuing to answer police questions after he stated, “I plead the Fifth”: By continuing to talk to the police officers, defendant demonstrated a willingness to continue to discuss the case . . . . Accordingly, while words of invocation were spoken by the defendant, the court concludes that, in any case, he effectively waived the right to remain silent by what followed. Put another way, the state court suggests that because the officers ignored Anderson’s unequivocal invocation of the Fifth Amendment, their questioning caused him to keep talking, resulting in a waiver of his right to remain silent. This analysis directly contravenes clear Supreme Court precedent, thereby providing another ground upon which to grant the writ under § 2254(d)(1). Smith mandates that all questioning must immediately cease once the right to remain silent is invoked, and that any subsequent statements by the defendant in response to continued interrogation cannot be used to find a waiver or cast ambiguity on the earlier invocation. The Supreme Court’s somewhat lengthy but crystal clear recitation of this principle bears repeating: Where nothing about the request for counsel or the circumstances leading up to the request would render it ambiguous, all questioning must cease. In these ANDERSON v. TERHUNE 18409 circumstances, an accused’s subsequent statements are relevant only to the question whether the accused waived the right he had invoked. Invocation and waiver are entirely distinct inquiries, and the two must not be blurred by merging them together. . . . With respect to the waiver inquiry, we accordingly have emphasized that a valid waiver “cannot be established by showing only that [the accused] responded to further police-initiated custodial interrogation.” Using an accused’s subsequent responses to cast doubt on the adequacy of the initial request itself is even more intolerable. “No authority, and no logic, permits the interrogator to proceed . . . on his own terms and as if the defendant had requested nothing, in the hope that the defendant might be induced to say something casting retrospective doubt on his initial statement that he wished to speak through an attorney or not at all.” Smith, 469 U.S. at 98-99 (internal citations omitted). The prejudice from Anderson’s confession cannot be soft pedaled, and the error was not harmless. Brecht v. Anderson, 507 U.S. 619, 623 (1993). I would grant the writ of habeas corpus.