Court Opinion

ID: 9450411
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:46:23.913645+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:18.235678
License: Public Domain

SOBELOFF, Chief Judge, with whom BELL, Circuit Judge,
joins (dissenting).
Perhaps the most recalcitrant problem to engage the attention of courts in the area of law enforcement stems from the inveterate police practice of pressing for confessions behind closed doors where the accused is without access to legal guidance. That such inquisitions involve elements of coercion has long been recognized. Correction has been impeded by the inherent difficulty of ascertaining the truth between the possibly false or exaggerated claims of the accused and the customary unanimous denials of the police who in the circumstances can be the only witnesses.
In recent years courts have come to realize with ever increasing clarity that the practice often presents more than debatable issues of coercion. It is now established on the highest authority that “when the process has shifted from investigatory to accusatory — when its focus is on the accused and its purpose is to elicit a confession,” the accused must be permitted to consult with a lawyer. This is the requirement of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States as made obligatory upon the states by the Fourteenth. Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 492, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977 (1964).
I.
As the majority opinion recites, when Davis, a prison escapee, was arrested in Belmont, North Carolina, on September 21, 1959, the Charlotte police “received permission of the warden of the state prison to lodge him in the Charlotte City Jail and to keep him temporarily in their custody.” The opinion also states, correctly, that the Charlotte police sought the custody of Davis because “they thought he might be a suspect in the Cooper murder [case].”
From the outset, the authorities did not put him in the jail customarily used for lengthy detention of persons awaiting trial, where suitable kitchen, bathing and other facilities are afforded, but lodged him in a lockup in Detective Headquarters across the street, which is habitually used for brief, overnight detentions only. Unusual too, and highly indicative of the purpose of the police in pursuing this course, is the specific notation made on the arrest sheet: “Do not allow anyone to see Davis, or allow him to use telephone.”
Some of the ensuing events are in dispute, but others are incontestable. Certain it is that not until the defendant had remained in solitary confinement for 16 days did he confess. The testimony is in conflict as to details, such as the extent and continuity of the questioning, the claims of threats, beatings, scantiness of food, etc. Such contradictions are inevitable. In many cases the fact finder may stifle his doubts by adopting a merely quantitative measure in appraising the testimony. He may accept the denials of the police who outnumbered the lone accused in the station house and on the witness stand, and may reject the prisoner’s claims. Yet because of the very nature of the dispute the fact finder cannot be quite sure.
*780In the present case, however, certain powerful objective facts remain untouched even by the sweeping denials of the officers. First is their plainly manifested purpose, indeed avowed by them on the arrest sheet, to enforce absolute and uninterrupted seclusion during the interrogation. This ineluctable piece of evidence remains undenied and undeniable. It dominates the record and challenges the police version more eloquently and more conclusively than any oral testimony. The instruction not to permit anyone access to Davis and not to allow him to communicate with the outside world can mean only that it was the determination of his custodians to keep him under absolute control where they could subject him to questioning at will in the manner and to the extent they saw fit, until he would confess. To achieve their goal they made sure that he would not have the means of asserting his constitutional right to consult counsel and of exercising his constitutional right not to incriminate himself. The circumstances were at best calculated to weaken his will and to permit the prisoner no support from counsel or friend. The historic fact is that he did not break until the sixteenth day of confinement. Only after he had confessed was the isolation terminated.
Rarely do police officials make a written declaration, as they did here, of a design to deny their prisoner’s right to counsel and his other constitutional rights.1 This undisputed fact is sufficient to invalidate the confession irrespective of the District Court’s resolution of any disputed issues of fact.
We turn first to the violation of the right to counsel as ground for the exclusion of the resulting confession.
il.
On the uncontroverted facts, the principle of Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758 (1964), is applicable. In that case, the Supreme Court formulated its holding in two separate statements. The first was:
“[W]here, as here, the investigation is no longer a general inquiry into an unsolved crime but has begun to focus on a particular suspect, the suspect has been taken into police custody, the police carry out a process of interrogations that lends itself to eliciting incriminating statements, the suspect has requested and been denied an opportunity to consult with his lawyer, and the police have not effectively warned him of his absolute constitutional right to remain silent, the accused has been denied ‘the Assistance of Counsel’ in violation of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution as ‘made obligatory upon the States by the Fourteenth Amendment,’ Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. [335], at 342 [83 S.Ct. 792, at 795, 9 L.Ed.2d 799], and that no statement elicited by the police during the interrogation may be used against him at a criminal trial.” The Court says in summation:
“We hold only that when the process shifts from investigatory to accusatory — when its focus is on the accused and its purpose is to elicit a confession — our adversary system begins to operate, and, under the circumstances here, the accused must be permitted to consult with his lawyer.”
Thus Escobedo announced no new constitutional right, but indicated circum*781stances in which the right to counsel previously announced in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792 (1963), would be available.
The Supreme Court’s holding in Es-cobedo was explicitly based upon its
earlier teachings in Hamilton v. Alabama, 368 U.S. 52, 82 S.Ct. 157, 7 L.Ed.2d 114 (1961); White v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 59, 83 S.Ct. 1050, 10 L.Ed.2d 193 (1963); and Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201, 84 S.Ct. 1199, 12 L.Ed.2d 246 (1964), that under the Constitution a state criminal defendant is entitled to the “guiding hand of counsel” when a critical stage in the proceedings has been reached. The doctrinal importance of Escobedo is found in its recognition that the interrogation of a suspect in police custody is a critical juncture in the criminal process, and that the inquisition may not be persisted in without according him the right to counsel. Otherwise, the real trial occurs in the police station, and the trial in court is:
“no more than an appeal from the interrogation; and the ‘right to use counsel at the formal trial [would be] a very hollow thing [if], for all practical purposes, the conviction is already assured by pretrial examination.’ In re Groban, 352 U. S. 330, 344 [77 S.Ct. 510, 519, 1 L.Ed.2d 376] (Black, J., dissenting)” quoted in Escobedo, 378 U.S. at pp. 487-488, 84 S.Ct. at p. 1763.
Today’s opinion would limit Escobedo to its precise facts and in so doing loses sight of the basic doctrine of that case.
The majority would codify into a rigid formula the particularities of Escobedo, namely, that a lawyer has been previously employed, is present in the station house, peers through a glass door and makes futile efforts to signal his client who is then being spirited out of sight. It is inconceivable that the Court meant to make the Escobedo doctrine available only in cases with features which are its exact carbon copy. It is true that the Court used the qualifying phrase “under the circumstances here.” This should not be read as the equivalent of “only under the circumstances here.”
It is as illogical to exclude from the operation of the Escobedo doctrine all but the very circumstances of that case, disregarding cases presenting analogous circumstances, as it would be to embrace within its doctrine, indiscriminately, all cases irrespective of circumstances. We have here no borderline case where the police may fairly claim some latitude in questioning a person whose status is still obscure. Davis was definitely the suspect when he was arrested and sealed off in the special lockup. From then on the officers’ concentrated effort was to draw out of his own mouth words that would perfect the case against him. Apart from any physical mistreatment or threats, which are charged but denied, questioning him and keeping him out of the way of any possible help from lawyer or friend from September 21 to October 6 was a bald violation of his rights.
Nor is there any force in the argument that Davis, according to the credited testimony of the police, did not ask for a lawyer. It has been adjudicated that the failure to demand counsel at other critical points works no forfeiture of the right. Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201, 84 S.Ct. 1199 (1964); White v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 59 (1963); Cam-ley v. Cochran, 369 U.S. 506, 513, 82 S.Ct. 884, 8 L.Ed.2d 70 (1962); Hamilton v. Alabama, 368 U.S. 52, 82 S.Ct. 157 (1961). Neither should the right be lost for failure to assert it when the accused is subjected to interrogations in the police station. Escobedo does not make it necessary under all circumstances for the person in custody to ask to see a lawyer. It happens that Escobedo did make such a request. The District Judge here has accepted testimony of the police that Davis did not specifically request counsel. For present purposes it is unnecessary to challenge the finding.
*782Moreover, when police have gone to the length of giving written instructions that the prisoner is not to be allowed to be seen by anyone or to use the telephone, it is fantastic to insist that he should have formally requested a lawyer. Much good it would have done him! Since the order had been issued to deny Davis all contact with the outside, it would be naive to think that the police behaved toward him in such a way as to leave him under the impression that a request for counsel would be honored.
But the finding as to whether or not Davis did in fact make such a request is unimportant. The point was underscored by the California Supreme Court in People v. Dorado, 40 Cal.Rptr. 264, 394 P.2d 952, which held applicable the rule announced in Escobedo, irrespective of whether or not the defendant has actually requested counsel.
“We find no strength in an artificial requirement that a defendant must specifically request counsel; the test must be a substantive one: whether or not the point of necessary protection for guidance of counsel has been reached. * * * We should not penalize the defendant who, not understanding his legal rights, does not make the formal request and by such failure demonstrates his helplessness.” 2
It is also true that Escobedo had employed a lawyer who was not permitted to speak to him during the police interrogation. Davis had no lawyer and the police made sure that he should have none while they worked to get his confession. The factual distinctions between the two cases seem immaterial. Indeed, in their totality, the circumstances here are more aggravated than in Escobedo.
It was found by the District Court, in accordance with the police testimony, that at the time of the written confession the defendant was advised of his right to remain silent and warned that the statement which he was asked to sign could be used “for or against” him in a court of law and that he was informed of his right to counsel. Accepting the finding, one may ask, of what earthly use was it, having kept this man incommunicado for 16 days until after he had made an oral confession, to tell him only then of his constitutional right to maintain silence? At that stage the police were merely going through the mechanics of getting evidence in writing of the previously obtained oral confession. Cautioning the prisoner then was utterly ineffective and can import validity to neither the oral nor the written confessions. The court should disregard this hollow gesture designed to legitimate the illegal proceedings.
Because the Supreme Court’s decision in Escobedo came after Davis’ state trial and after the District Court’s habeas corpus hearing, a question may be raised as to its retroactive application.3 But Escobedo is merely a particularization of the right to counsel declared in Gideon. While the Supreme Court has not yet expressly declared Gideon to be retroactive, in Escobedo itself, it so applied the Gideon rule. Other federal and state courts have held Gideon to be retroactive.4 Since Gideon has been given retroactive application so should Escobedo.
*783For all of these reasons, and upon the very findings of the District Court, Davis’ confession should have been rejected as having been obtained in violation of his right to counsel. Any use of the confession was prohibited irrespective of questions of voluntariness, and its admission into evidence requires reversal. However, because the record also shows that the confession was the product of the persistent coercive efforts of the police to obtain an acknowledgment of guilt, there is an additional reason for its exclusion. This further reason will be considered next.
III.
In dealing with the issue of voluntariness of the confession, the court entertains too narrow a concept of the scope of appellate review. It accepts as virtually unreviewable findings of fact what in reality are erroneous conclusion of law. Also it too readily defers to findings that are clearly erroneous. Closer scrutiny discloses that some of the findings are without sufficient evidentiary support, being refuted by undisputed facts which the lower court has either overlooked or failed to accord proper weight. If this court were to analyze the findings and recognize their true nature, it could not hold the confession voluntary.
With all respect for the District Court, the conclusion is inescapable that in this instance it has failed in its task of fact finding and has not applied the correct legal standard. It is true that the police version of events surrounding the detention contrasts with Davis’ account. But here, the District Court, in upholding the police version, has either ignored or rejected uncontroverted evidence indicating the coereiveness of the circumstances of Davis’ detention. Surprisingly, for example, its opinion makes no reference whatever to the uncontroverted fact of greatest significance — the tell-tale notation on the police blotter, which directs that Davis be held incommunicado. When a finding rests upon testimony that is made utterly unworthy of credit by a predominant undisputed fact in the record, it is the duty of an appellate court to declare the finding clearly erroneous.
In relation to the place of detention chosen by the police, it is uncontradicted that the Charlotte city jail, where Davis was held, was an “overnight” jail, with extremely limited facilities. Highly suspect is the choice of this jail instead of the Mecklenburg County Jail, used for prisoners whose detention is to extend beyond a day or so. Coupling this with the admitted fact that from the time of Davis’ arrest he was a suspect in the Cooper murder, it is too plain for doubt that the unusual place and duration of the detention and the strict secrecy were decided upon precisely because this best fitted the officers’ plan to persist until they could draw a confession from the prisoner. Indeed, what other reason was there for not returning the defendant to the prison from which he had escaped, or putting him in the Mecklen-burg County Jail?
The District Court found that the police, at Davis’ request, had contacted his sister and it also rejected the sister’s testimony that she had been turned away from the police station on two occasions when she asked to see Davis. The court was free to treat each of these pieces of testimony as worthy or not worthy of belief. However, the objective fact that neither the sister nor anyone else saw Davis until after the confession is unchallenged. This uncontradicted fact, when considered in conjunction with the explicit directions on the police blotter, demonstrates the error of the District Court’s conclusion that Davis was not held incommunicado. If this does not constitute holding a man incommunicado, the word is meaningless.
*784At the habeas corpus hearing the police admitted conducting daily interrogations of Davis. They claimed, however, that in the first 12 days their questions concerned thefts and unlawful entries committed by him after his escape, and that they did not ask him about the Cooper murder till October 3. This is palpable camouflage. It is not humanly possible that, notwithstanding their extraordinary arrangements, including seclusion of their subject in the special lockup, they refrained for almost two weeks from asking him about the Cooper murder, but confined their questions to some petty' thefts. This is what the police ask the court to believe, despite their testimony that the Cooper murder was the reason they sought the consent of the Director of Prisons to hold Davis. Their version is that they interrogated him on October 3, after they had taken him to the cemetery, the scene of the murder. Even if the police testimony on this point is accepted, the questioning on the last four days is not to be considered in isolation, for the constant interrogation on the preceding 12 days doubtless had a cumulative effect, and its clear purpose was to break the prisoner’s alibi in the murder case and not primarily to solve the minor offenses. According to the police themselves, the commission of the murder was consistently denied by Davis. At noon on October 6, after persistent earlier denials of guilt, he refused to answer questions concerning the death of Mrs. Cooper. But the questioning continued.
Thereupon a-remarkable scene was enacted. A police lieutenant knelt in prayer with Davis. Whether it happened upon Davis’ initiative, as the District Court found, or at the officer’s instigation, as he plainly testified at the habeas corpus hearing (see n. 6, majority opinion), is not important.
if, as the court acknowledges, a clergyman’s religious exhortations are suspect when the apparent purpose is to produce a confession,5 how gravely questionable, for a somewhat different reason, must be the psuedo religious ministrations of a policeman. Particularly is this so when he appears on the scene at the instance of the team of inquisitors that has engaged in repeated efforts to “break” the prisoner and his sole purpose is to clinch the case against the man in his custody.
Police solicitude for the defendant’s spiritual welfare would be less suspect if the police, so eager to provide religious comfort to a man who “did not know how to pray,” had sent for a minister then, instead of having a policeman play the role of minister. It is noteworthy that although the police lieutenant substituted for a minister in the preconfession prayer, the police had ready access to a minister after the confession, who visited the accused and obligingly returned with a purported endorsement from Davis of the “good treatment” accorded him at Headquarters.6
The spectacle evoked by this record of the police officer and his prisoner uniting in prayer challenges the ingenuousness of the entire process. We are told that after a short prayer was pronounced, followed by a period of silence, Davis admitted that he had killed the woman in the cemetery. Thus the officer*’s px*ay-ex% at least, was answered.
As the Attorney General of Nox*th Carolina would have it, nothing that the police had done in 16 days influenced the confession. A “bland,” almost banal little prayer, recited by the lieutenant and his quai’ry worked a miracle of repentance and confession. Far more reasonable is the conclusion that the confession came in response to the pragmatic appeal *785addressed to Davis in his predicament by Lieutenant Sykes: “Davis, go in there and sign that paper so that you can get something to eat and get a hot bath.” It requires no profound insight to understand that before the prayer incident occurred the long isolation and secret interrogation without the benefit of counsel had insidiously worked its destructive effect. The prayer was injected into evidence by the state to divert attention from the legally vulnerable process that really led to the confession. This was an attempt to present a plausible alternative cause in explanation of the confession.
In no case on record has a confession been upheld where the prisoner was accorded similar treatment over so protracted a period. The decided cases involved at most incommunicado detentions for a few hours or a few days.7 The confession in the present case was not a voluntary act, born of free will. It was the product of the massed efforts of some seven policemen against a single individual, constituting unlawful inducement and coercion. Haynes v. Washington, 373 U.S. 503, 519, 83 S.Ct. 1336 (1963). This is far from announcing an absolute rule forbidding all questioning of suspects. It is enough to say here that keeping a person in a police lockup for more than two weeks without opportunity to get advice or help, for the purpose of questioning him, is fundamentally unfair. A confession obtained under such conditions may not be used against him.
Davis’ conviction was predicated upon the use of a confession obtained in breach of his constitutional rights in two respects — he was denied his right to counsel, and was subjected to a set of circumstances which were, in their totality, coercive. The conviction should not be permitted to stand.

. When it came to the attention of the Supreme Court, it sharply criticized a practice substantially identical to the one here in question. Haynes v. Washington, 373 U.S. 503, 505, 83 S.Ct. 1336, 10 L.Ed.2d 513 (1963). There, Haynes admitted participation in a recently corn-mitted robbery. Instead of charging him ■with the crime, the police booked him for “investigation” and placed him on the “small book.” Prisoners so booked were not permitted to make phone calls or have any visitors. The Court condemned this practice.

. A trial judge of the New York Supreme Court, Queens County, has held Escobe-do to be applicable only where the prisoner has requested and been denied the assistance of counsel. People v. Agar, 253 N.Y.S.2d 761 (1964).

. See Meador, Habeas Corpus and the “Retroactivity” Illusion, 50 Va.L.Rev. 1115 (1964), who suggests that because the writ of habeas corpus tests whether the petitioner is presently detained in violation of the Constitution, there is no issue of retroactivity, and the habeas court must apply the Constitution as presently construed. The legality of the detention in the past, he suggests, is not, therefore, the determinative consideration.

. United States ex rel. Durocher v. La Vallee, 330 F.2d 303 (2d Cir. 1964), cert, denied, 377 U.S. 998, 84 S.Ct. 1921, 12 L.Ed.2d 1048 (1964); Palumbo v. *783State of New Jersey, 334 F.2d 524 (3d Cir. 1964); and in this Circuit see Jones v. Cunningham, 319 F.2d 1, 4 .(1963) (concurring opinion). The Michigan and Pennsylvania Supreme Courts have so held in In re Palmer, 371 Mich. 656, 124 N.W.2d 773 (1963), and McCray v. Bundle, 415 Pa. 65, 202 A.2d 303 (1964).

. See Kruse, The Role of the Clergyman in the Coerced Confession, 1 Washburn L.J. 414 (1961).

. The minister admitted on cross-examination that for many years he had “cooperated” with the police, that he had visited many prisoners, and on several occasions later gave testimony about Ms conversations with them.

. The undisputed length of detention exceeds that in Turner v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 338 U.S. 62, 69 S.Ct. 1352, 93 L.Ed. 1810 (1949) (four nights and five days); or Fikes v. Alabama, 352 U.S. 191, 77 S.Ct. 281, 1 L.Ed.2d 246 (1957) (five nights and five days); or Reck v. Pate, 367 U.S. 433, 81 S.Ct. 1541, 6 L.Ed.2d 948 (1961) (three nights and four days); or Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U.S. 568, 81 S.Ct. 1860, 6 L.Ed. 2d 1037 (1961) (four nights and five days); or Haynes v. Washington, 373. U.S. 503, 83 S.Ct. 1336 (1963) (sixteen, hours).