Court Opinion

ID: 9464540
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:36:53.363045+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:42.137908
License: Public Domain

THORNBERRY, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
Although I join in Judge Ainsworth’s able opinion, I write briefly to emphasize the limited nature of the court’s holding and the proper application of the harmless error rule in the context of comments on post-arrest silence.
Miranda itself makes clear that “the mere fact that [a defendant] may have answered some questions or volunteered some statements on his own does not deprive him of the right to refrain from answering further inquiries.” Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 445, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1612, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). See also Booton v. Hanauer, 541 F.2d 296 (1 Cir. 1976); United States v. Williams, 181 U.S.App.D.C. 188, 556 F.2d 65, cert. denied, 431 U.S. 972, 97 S.Ct. 2936, 57 L.Ed.2d 1070 (1977). Accordingly, the. rule *1294of Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610, 96 S.Ct. 2240, 49 L.Ed.2d 91 (1976), applies when the prosecutor comments on the defendant’s failure to provide a post-arrest exculpatory story after offering other information to the arresting officers. See Booton, supra. It is equally clear that Doyle is inapplicable where the defendant does not remain silent but “attempt[s] to explain at length” his version of the incident. United States v. Berdick, 555 F.2d 1329, 1331 (5 Cir. 1977).
The instant case is not one in which a defendant who answered certain post-arrest questions, without offering an exculpatory story, is impeached at trial with his failure to have provided such an explanation after his arrest. Rather, Mireles told the arresting officer that he had borrowed the truck from his uncle to move his own furniture to a new residence. At trial, however, he testified that one Rivas had hired him to move the furniture, and the prosecutor was free to impeach that testimony with Mireles’ prior inconsistent explanation.
In footnote 8 of the court’s opinion, Judge Ainsworth discusses briefly the harmless error rule in the Doyle setting, suggesting that even if the prosecutor’s comments and questions in the instant case were improper, they were mild, ambiguous, and harmless. However, we have previously indicated that ambiguity alone does not save such statements from the application of the Doyle rule, United States v. Stevens, 538 F.2d 1203 (5 Cir. 1976), and warned that the “infusion of ‘harmlessness’ into error must be the exception, and the doctrine must be sparingly employed” in this context. Chapman v. United States, 547 F.2d 1240, 1250 (5 Cir.), cert. denied, 431 U.S. 908, 97 S.Ct. 1705, 52 L.Ed.2d 393 (1977). Obviously, the best course is for prosecutors to “scrupulously avoid all reference to or use of [the] accused’s assertion of his right to remain silent.” United States v. Wycoff, 545 F.2d 679, 682 (9 Cir. 1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1105, 97 S.Ct. 1135, 51 L.Ed.2d 556 (1977).