Court Opinion

ID: 9493608
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:12:57.907206+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:55.699211
License: Public Domain

McKEOWN, Circuit Judge,
Dissenting:
The prosecution’s penalty phase case rested on Mr. Anderson’s confessions to the Utah killings and the psychiatrist’s interview with him. This evidence was obtained from Anderson while he was held for 76 hours in a California jail without the benefit of an arraignment hearing, and in violation of County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44, 111 S.Ct. 1661, 114 L.Ed.2d 49 (1991). The chain of events began when Anderson affirmatively declined to answer investigators’ questions about the Utah killings, instead telling them that “silence is [a] virtue.” 1 At that point, the police could have proceeded to arraign him on the murder charge for which he had been arrested, but they did not. Instead, police held him in custody until Utah officials could travel to California. No matter how you slice it, Anderson’s continued confinement without arraignment was for one purpose-to investigate the Utah murders in the hope of getting a confession from Anderson. The majority recognizes these circumstances but holds that suppression of this evidence is not warranted as “fruit of the poisonous tree.” I conclude otherwise. In this instance the apple did not fall far from the tree, which was tainted by the McLaughlin violation. The majority has given Mr. Anderson a Fourth Amendment right without any remedy. Our precedent and fairness dictate a different result. I therefore dissent on this point. I join the remainder of the majority’s thoughtful analysis and conclusions.
i. McLaughlin violation
The majority concludes, and I agree, that the state violated Anderson’s Fourth Amendment rights. McLaughlin makes clear that if a probable cause determination does not occur within 48 hours of *1101arrest, the government has the burden of demonstrating the existence of a bona fide emergency or other extraordinary circumstance. 500 U.S. at 57, 111 S.Ct. 1661. The McLaughlin violation in this case, however, was not due to emergency, neglect, or even the mere passage of time.
Here, Anderson was arraigned over three full days after his arrest — a delay for which the state was unable to provide any valid justification. In fact, the police did not need to investigate further before charging Anderson. They already had his confession to the Lyman murder. Nor, as they admit, did they need the Utah information for their initial charging decision. As it turns out, they did not even charge him with a capital crime for another two months.
Anderson was arrested in the early morning of May 26. At 7:04 the same morning, he told police that he did not want to answer any questions about Utah. Anderson was placed in isolation and held without a probable cause determination until Utah officials could arrive and question him about other killings, and until a psychiatrist could interview him. Police held him knowing that Anderson, in the meantime, would not see a lawyer. They did so knowing that he would not see a judge. It wasn’t until two days after his arrest, on May 28, that Utah authorities arrived to interview him. On the evening of May 28, the prosecutor arranged for an interview by Dr. Flanagan, a psychiatrist employed by the California Department of Corrections. Anderson was not arraigned until the following day, May 29. Nothing happened in the time between arrest and May 29 that would have prevented a timely arraignment. Only after Anderson confessed to Utah police, and made incriminating statements to the psychiatrist, was his ease brought before the court for a probable cause determination that was over 28 hours overdue.
Suppression of evidence is an appropriate remedy for a McLaughlin violation if it is the “fruit of the poisonous tree” under Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975). In Brown, the Supreme Court identified a two-part suppression analysis: First, as a threshold matter, if the statement was involuntary, it is inadmissible. See id. at 601, 95 S.Ct. 2254. Second, if the confession was voluntary, then the court must apply a four-factor test. That test aims to determine whether the police obtained the confession by exploiting the Fourth Amendment violation, or if the confession was “sufficiently an act of free will to be purged of the primary taint.” Id. at 602-04, 95 S.Ct. 2254 (quoting Wong Sun v. United States, 871 U.S. 471, 486, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963)). Simply put, the purpose of the test is to determine whether the “causal chain” between the Fourth Amendment violation and the statement has been broken. The four factors are: (1) the presence or absence of warnings under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966); (2) the temporal proximity of the Fourth Amendment violation and the confession; (3) the presence of intervening circumstances; and (4) the need to deter the official misconduct. See Brown, 422 U.S. at 603-04, 95 S.Ct. 2254 (discussing factors). Although these factors are not a perfect fit with the circumstances of a McLaughlin violation, they are an adaptable and instructive means of analyzing the attenuation of the causal links. Here, each of the four factors weighs in favor of suppression, especially the fourth factor-deterrence-which is deemed to be “particularly important.”
As an initial matter, I concur with the majority’s determination that Anderson’s incriminating statements were voluntary. Mr. Anderson was lawfully arrested, given his Miranda rights, later consented to questioning and waived his Miranda rights, and spoke without coercion.2 But *1102this is only a threshold question; given the voluntariness of the statements, it is necessary under Brown to analyze the four factors to determine whether the government has met its burden with respect to admissibility.
The first Brown factor is the presence or absence of Miranda warnings. The record demonstrates that Anderson was given Miranda warnings before the May 28 confession and the Flanagan interview. The record also shows, however, that Anderson took steps to exercise his right to silence when he told police “silence is virtue,” and said that he would like to wait before answering questions. The delay in arraignment occurred, in large part, in order to wait out Anderson’s silence until the Utah officials arrived. This factor, then, could weigh against or in favor of suppression, depending on its purpose. If the purpose of this factor is merely to assess compliance with the Fifth Amendment and Miranda, no violation has been found and it would weigh against suppression. This approach, however, would appear to piggyback on the threshold voluntariness inquiry, rendering it essentially duplicative of that analysis. On the other hand, if this factor aims to assess the impact of the invocation or waiver of Miranda rights on the connection between the Fourth Amendment violation and the confession ultimately obtained, the picture looks quite different. Although Anderson had received his Miranda rights, after he invoked silence3 the officers decided to hold him (violating McLaughlin) until he confessed. In this case, the initial Miranda recitation and invocation suggest a greater, not a lesser, connection between the Fourth Amendment violation and the confession. Because the Brown factors are aimed at assessing the “causal chain” between the violation and the confession, 422 U.S. at 602, 95 S.Ct. 2254, I conclude that the latter analysis applies, and that this factor weighs in favor of suppression.
The second factor is the temporal proximity between the Fourth Amendment violation and the confession. This factor carries an unusual valence in a McLaughlin case. In the usual Brown situation, an illegal arrest is followed by a later statement; thus, the passage of time weakens the causal link. See, e.g., United States v. Crews, 445 U.S. 463, 471, 100 S.Ct. 1244, 63 L.Ed.2d 537 (1980) (“In the typical ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’ case, however, the challenged evidence was acquired by the police after some initial Fourth Amendment violation ... ”) (italics in original). In a McLaughlin case, however, the Fourth Amendment violation is ongoing— there is no pause in which “free will” terminates the effect of the violation. The extended detention itself is a violation, which begins at an unidentified point (presumptively, no later than 48 hours after arrest) and continues through the confession. See, e.g., State v. Huddleston, 924 S.W.2d 666, 675 (Tenn.1996) (discussing ongoing nature of McLaughlin violation). Thus, the passage of time in a McLaughlin case exacerbates the Fourth Amendment violation; the longer the unreasonable detention, the greater the detention’s inherent coercive effect on the confession. See, e.g., Miranda, 384 U.S. at 457, 86 S.Ct. 1602 (describing the custodial environment as intimidating and destructive of dignity). Anderson’s detention presumptively began to violate McLaughlin approximately eight hours before he confessed to the Utah killings, and fifteen hours before he was *1103interviewed by Dr. Flanagan. Because the McLaughlin violation, the confession, and the interview were contemporaneous, this factor weighs strongly in favor of suppression.
The third factor is whether intervening circumstances purged the taint of the McLaughlin violation. We have held that (1) a subsequent release from custody, (2) an appearance before a magistrate, (3) discussions with a lawyer, and (4) subsequent convictions on unrelated charges are examples of intervening circumstances that are sufficient to break the causal connection between the Fourth Amendment violation and the statement. See United States v. Delgadillo-Velasquez, 856 F.2d 1292, 1300 (9th Cir.1988). In this case, no circumstance intervened to cure the unreasonableness of the detention in the way that a release, appearance, or subsequent conviction would under Delgadillo-Velasquez.4 Nor did Anderson speak to a lawyer — or anyone else — during his confinement. And although Anderson received Miranda warnings, it is well settled that fresh warnings cannot purge the taint of a prior — let alone an ongoing — Fourth Amendment violation. See Brown, 422 U.S. at 601-02, 95 S.Ct. 2254; Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 202-03 & n. 2, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979) (Miranda warnings and waiver did not constitute intervening act, even for second confession with new warnings). See also, e.g., United States v. King, 990 F.2d 1552, 1564 (10th Cir.1993) (defendant’s voluntary confession inadmissible where given during illegal detention and no intervening circumstances to dissipate taint). If Miranda warnings were considered an intervening cause, this third factor would be redundant, as the threshold determination of voluntariness was predicated in large part on the Miranda warnings and Anderson’s response. Here, the Fourth Amendment violation continued through and beyond Mr. Anderson’s confession and interview. This factor too weighs in favor of suppression.
The final factor centers on whether the police misconduct in this case was purposeful and flagrant, and thus requires deterrence. This factor “is ‘particularly important’ because it comes closest to satisfying ‘the deterrence rationale for application of the exclusionary rule.’ ” United States v. George, 883 F.2d 1407, 1416 (9th Cir.1989) (quoting United States v. Perez Esparza, 609 F.2d 1284, 1289 (9th Cir.1979)). The relevant conduct is not the police behavior surrounding the confession, but the detention without determination of probable cause. The record demonstrates that the police intentionally detained Anderson while awaiting the arrival of police from Utah who would interview Anderson about the Utah killings. As noted above, the state was unable to provide any valid reason for the delay.
The question, then, is whether this situation meets the purposes of the exclusionary rule. It seems clear that it does. As the Tennessee Supreme Court explained in a case very similar to this one,
Ignoring the requirements of McLaughlin is functionally the same as making warrantless searches or arrests when a warrant is required. In both situations, law enforcement officials act without necessary judicial guidance or objective good faith. The cost of applying the exclusionary sanction to a violation of McLaughlin is that evidence obtained as a result of the illegal detention will be suppressed ... It will deter law enforcement officials from ignoring the Fourth Amendment mandate of a judicial determination of probable cause.
Huddleston, 924 S.W.2d at 673. Likewise, suppression of Anderson’s confession and interview would deter law enforcement officers in future cases from delaying arraignment without a bona fide emergency or other extraordinary circumstance. Delay solely for investigative purposes has been held to be altogether illegitimate. *1104Indeed, in the analogous context of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 5(a), which requires an initial appearance without unreasonable delay, it has been held that the “desire of the officers to complete the investigation is, perhaps, the most unreasonable excuse possible.... ” United States v. Wilson, 838 F.2d 1081, 1085 (9th Cir. 1988). Cf. United States v. Van Poyck, 77 F.3d 285 (9th Cir.1996) (holding, in a Rule 5 case, that the absence of intentional postponement for interrogation means no public policy issue). McLaughlin itself specifically characterized as “unreasonable” a delay “for the purpose of gathering additional evidence to justify the arrest.” 500 U.S. at 56, 111 S.Ct. 1661.
Now that the Supreme Court has laid down a bright-line 48-hour rule under McLaughlin, law enforcement officials need not split hairs to determine the deadline for arraignment. And while I am sympathetic to certain circumstances that might warrant a delay in arraignment, such as geographic or judicial logistics, this is not such a case. This is not a situation involving “unavoidable delay[ ] in transporting arrested persons from one facility to another, handling late-night bookings where no magistrate is readily available, obtaining the presence of an arresting officer who may be busy ... or securing the premises of an arrest, and other practical realities.” Id. Here, no such legitimate explanation excuses the officers’ conduct. The flagraney of the violation, and the unreasonableness of the feeble justification, tip this factor strongly in favor of suppression. Precisely this situation has been recognized by the Seventh Circuit to support suppression. See Kyle v. Patterson, 196 F.3d 695, 696-97 (7th Cir.1999) (“There are certain exceptions to [the 48 hour] rule, but none are applicable here ... [T]he remedy for a violation of the failure to provide a prompt hearing is usually the suppression of any statements the accused gives to police after the time expires and before the first appearance in couri.”) (emphasis added) (addressing McLaughlin violation in § 1983 case).
In sum, police unreasonably detained Mr. Anderson for the most objectionable of reasons — to await a confession without being interrupted by a lawyer or a judge. They did so in order to enhance the case for the penalty phase and because Mr. Anderson chose to be silent. In the end, Anderson’s invocation of the “silence is a virtue” maxim triggered his unreasonable detention. If Gerstein and McLaughlin have practical meaning with respect to the Fourth Amendment, this violation of Mr. Anderson’s rights requires a remedy. Under McLaughlin and Brown, the statements must be suppressed.
II. THE MAJORITY SIDESTEPS BROWN
The majority arrives at a different conclusion. Although it rejects a pure volun-tariness test in favor of Brown’s “fruit of the poisonous tree” inquiry, it unfortunately allows the voluntariness issue to permeate nearly every part of its analysis. The majority concedes that the second Brown prong, temporal proximity, is met. But it holds that a single element — that Anderson willingly confessed to the Utah murders — resolves the threshold voluntariness question, demonstrates Miranda compliance, suffices as an intervening circumstance, and shows that suppression will not deter. In so doing, the majority falls prey to what the Supreme Court called “a lingering confusion between vol-untariness for purposes of the Fifth Amendment and the ‘causal connection’ test established in Brown.” Dunaway, 442 U.S. at 219, 99 S.Ct. 2248. Voluntariness under the Fifth Amendment is simply not cognizable as one of the four Brown factors under the Fourth Amendment: “Satisfying the Fifth Amendment is only the threshold condition of the Fourth Amendment analysis required by Brown. No intervening events broke the connection between petitioner’s unreasonable detention and his confession. To admit petitioner’s confession in such a case would allow law enforcement officers to violate the Fourth Amendment with impunity, *1105safe in the knowledge that they could wash their hands in the procedural safeguards of the Fifth.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
The majority is able to leverage Anderson’s willing confession this way by focusing on a purported “decision to confess,” ignoring this court’s jurisprudence on intervening circumstances, and by attributing the McLaughlin violation to the actions of the prisoner.
First, the majority concludes that when Anderson halted the interview, he had actually decided to confess at some later date. According to the majority, such a decision, if it occurs (presumably in the mind of the detainee?) before the constitutional violation, is an “intervening circumstance” under the third Brown prong. This hopscotch logic has no factual or legal support. The majority draws its inference from a hopeful reading of Anderson’s words during the 7:04 interview,5 and from a description of a purported jailhouse deal by which Anderson would confess to the Utah crimes if he were ever caught. But even if he decided to confess years before while in Utah prison, so what? The majority does not — and can not — point to any authority to support the proposition that a “decision to confess” intervenes to insulate .a McLaughlin violation from review.6 Tellingly, the majority does not cite to a single case stating that a volunteered confession suffices as an “intervening circumstance” under Brown. As noted above, this court has held that release from custody, appearance before a magistrate, discussions with a lawyer, and subsequent convictions on unrelated charges are examples of intervening circumstances. A decision to confess is not. In fact, when presented with cases in which a confession intervened, courts have failed to find this an adequate “intervening circumstance” under Brown. See Dunaway, 442 U.S. at 203 n. 2 & 219, 99 S.Ct. 2248 (suppressing second statement where police arrested without probable cause, Mirandized, questioned defendant, Mirandized, and questioned again); King, 990 F.2d at 1564.
The majority discusses at length its belief that suppression in this case would not deter future McLaughlin violations. In particular, the majority concludes that the officers did not intend to violate Gerstein7 or McLaughlin, but that Anderson made them do so by waiting so long to confess. Somehow, the majority has blamed Anderson for his own, clearly unconstitutional, 76-hour detention. The majority concludes that “[tjhis delay was attributable to Anderson’s behavior and desires, not to any misconduct on the part of any law enforcement officials. Anderson was the one who wanted to wait, not the deputies; and it was his request for delay that caused the confessions to occur during his extended detention.” (emphasis in original). It is not immediately clear what this is intended to prove. If the contention is that Anderson’s unwillingness to confess promptly caused the Fourth Amendment violation, this conclusion is surely untenable; it cannot seriously be argued that a *1106defendant is to blame for the state’s failure to ensure a prompt determination of probable cause, nor, worse still, that the failure to waive one’s Fifth Amendment rights justifies a breach of Fourth Amendment rights. However the majority chooses to characterize the situation, the fact remains that Anderson did not confess until after the police had held him in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The majority concludes that there was nothing here to deter, because McLaughlin was decided only after the detention had taken place, but was not “a specific rule on the books at the time.” But long .before McLaughlin established a bright-line rule, Gerstein was “on the books” and held that an unreasonable delay in arraignment was unconstitutional. The delay here was more than unreasonable, particularly because it was motivated by an improper investigatory purpose. To suggest now that the passage of time should shield law enforcement officers from a remedy that invokes deterrence simply compounds the error. The deterrence factor speaks not just to the individual officers in this case, but to the integrity of the system as a whole.
The majority further reasons that it makes little sense to consider deterrence twenty years after the fact of the detention. This analysis misunderstands the purpose of the deterrence factor. The proper question is not whether these particular officers will be deterred after the fact — which, of course, they will not — but whether suppression will deter future misconduct. Considered in this light, the deterrence factor applies here with great force. The illegal detention led directly to the confession. Moreover, the illegal detention was based on the most impermissible of motives — the police unreasonably kept Anderson because they hoped that he would confess to the Utah police, despite the fact that he had stopped speaking about Utah during the initial, legal portion of his detention. This improper motive, combined with the coercive effect of incarceration — and its resulting isolation from lawyers and judges' — suggests that there is plenty here to deter.
The record shows that Mr. Anderson said he would not speak, at least until the Utah officials appeared. The police were willing to illegally detain Anderson at least until then, and longer, if it would guarantee his confession, regardless whether a probable cause determination had been made. This the Constitution forbids.
III. THE ERROR WAS NOT HARMLESS
Constitutional error at trial is harmless on habeas review unless it had a substantial and injurious effect or influence on the verdict. See Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 113 S.Ct. 1710, 123 L.Ed.2d 353 (1993); Sassounian v. Roe, 230 F.3d 1097 (9th Cir.2000). If the issue is evenly balanced, and the court has grave doubts about whether the error sufficiently affected the verdict, then the court must rule for the petitioner. See O’Neal v. McAninch, 513 U.S. 432, 115 S.Ct. 992, 130 L.Ed.2d 947 (1995). Without Anderson’s confession of May 28, and the psychiatrist’s testimony derived from the interview, the penalty case against him would have been gutted. And even with the damning evidence (which should have been suppressed), the' jury deliberated for 21 days. Indeed, the prosecutor stated that without the confession, the possibility that Anderson would have been charged with a capital offense at all would be dramatically lower. Other than Anderson’s confession on May 28, the prosecution offered little evidence to link Anderson to the Utah killings. He was never charged with these offenses, and the state’s evidence on those killings was highly problematic at best. Recognizing the jury’s obligation to consider an unadjudicated offense as an aggravating circumstance only if the offense is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, State v. Robertson, 33 Cal.3d 21, 53-55, 188 Cal.Rptr. 77, 655 P.2d 279 (1982), it requires no leap of logic to conclude that the error was far from harmless. The prosecution’s reliance on *1107the Utah killings as aggravating factors is evident from the record. It is impossible to conclude that the admission of the confession did not have a substantial and injurious effect on the penalty phase.
In addition to the confession, the state presented at the penalty phase Dr. Flanagan’s testimony about Anderson’s behavior and personality, based on his interview with Anderson during the illegal detention. The majority concludes that, because Anderson did not present a defense of diminished capacity or mental illness, Dr. Flanagan’s testimony was insignificant. The absence of a defense, however, only renders more prejudicial the unrebutted testimony depicting Anderson as a sociopath who could not likely be rehabilitated. How the unreasonable detention affected Anderson’s statements in the interview cannot be known, but by the time Dr. Flanagan interviewed Anderson, he had been detained for approximately 63 hours, kept in isolation, fed a restricted diet, and deprived jail privileges. Dr. Flanagan’s testimony was the only evidence presented on Anderson’s psychological make-up.
Taken together, the confession and the interview with Dr. Flanagan constitute evidence that may have had a substantial and injurious effect on the penalty phase. The state has not demonstrated that the Fourth Amendment violations were harmless under the Brecht standard. Therefore, I would reverse the penalty phase of Anderson’s trial.

. This interview was never listed in the sheriff’s log of interviews and Anderson’s attorney did not know about the interview during the time he represented Anderson. Although I conclude that Anderson invoked his right to silence, I believe that the invocation was not so unequivocal that further questioning violated Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 457, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). Therefore, I join in the majority’s analysis of Anderson’s Brady claim with respect to this statement.

. I believe that Mr. Anderson’s statement that "silence is [a] virtue” effectively invoked his right to silence — even temporary silence. This does not call into question the voluntariness of the statements he ultimately did make. It does, however, suggest a causal link between his invocation of silence and the police decision to unreasonably detain him.

. The majority implicitly recognizes the connection between the request for silence and the delay in arraignment and later confession, although it uses that connection to blame Anderson for the violation of his McLaughlin rights. Blaming Anderson is off the mark. Anderson never invited the police to hold him without a timely arraignment. He never said he wanted to talk with Utah authorities. He bears no blame for the delay occasioned by the officer’s desire to hold him pending a further investigation that was unnecessary to charging and arraigning him. Other than a series of "uh-huh’s” and "ah,” Anderson said only that he had "better wait and see what they got — ,” and "I think right now ... silence is [a] virtue because . .. well, it's just better right now for me to wait.” Waiting to see "what they got” is a far cry from professing a desire to talk.

. A volunteered confession cannot constitute a sufficient intervening circumstance. The kinds of circumstances noted in Delgadillo-Velasquez cure the illegality of the detention under the Fourth Amendment. A volunteered confession does no such thing.

.The majority concludes that, when Anderson stopped the 7:04 interview, he had actually bound himself to confess at a future time. But as the majority's narrative of the facts sets out, Anderson could well have been invoking his rights. Mentioning "what you told me” and "somethin' clicked when you was talkin’ " — which appear to refer to the rights the police officers had just read him— Mr. Anderson finally said "silence is [a] virtue because ... well, it's just better right now for me to wait.” Although he did not use the language of a lawyer, it is no stretch to conclude that Mr. Anderson invoked his right to silence — even if temporary silence — at the time of that interview.

. The majority focuses on the decision to confess, rather than the confession itself. This distinction is not merely semantic; only by focusing on the decision to confess can the majority truthfully say that the purportedly intervening conduct occurred before Anderson’s detention or "while his detention was legal,” because the actual confession came 56 hours after arrest, long after the detention without probable cause determination had matured into a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

. Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 95 S.Ct. 854, 43 L.Ed.2d 54 (1975).