Court Opinion

ID: 9430256
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:21.381211+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:23.934501
License: Public Domain

*296Justice Rehnquist,
with whom The Chief Justice joins, concurring in the result.
I agree with the Court that our opinion in Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U. S. 610 (1976), shields from comment by a prosecutor a defendant’s silence after receiving Miranda warnings, even though the comment be addressed to the defendant’s claim of insanity. I write separately, however, to point out that it does not follow from this that the Court of Appeals, which took the same position, reached the correct result. That court expanded Doyle to cover not merely silence, but requests for counsel, and ignored the fact that the evidence upon which the prosecutor commented had been admitted without objection. Analyzed in these terms, the Court of Appeals’ conclusion that the “error” was not harmless is suspect: The portion of the prosecutor’s closing statement that the Court of Appeals held amounted to constitutional error was in large part unobjectionable from a constitutional point of view, and the officer’s testimony relating to silence was already before the jury, without objection. I concur in the result reached today because one of the prosecutor’s comments, however brief, was an improper comment on respondent’s silence, and the State does not argue here that any error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
In Doyle, the Court said:
“The warnings mandated by [Miranda] . . . require that a person taken into custody be advised immediately that he has the right to remain silent, that anything he says may be used against him, and that he has a right to retained or appointed counsel before submitting to interrogation. Silence in the wake of these warnings may be nothing more than the arrestee’s exercise of these Miranda rights. Thus, every post-arrest silence is insolubly ambiguous because of what the State is required to advise the person arrested. . . . Moreover, while it is true that the Miranda warnings contain no express assurance that silence will carry no penalty, such assur-*297anee is implicit to any person who receives the warnings. In such circumstances, it would be fundamentally unfair and a deprivation of due process to allow the arrested person’s silence to be used to impeach an explanation subsequently offered at trial.” 426 U. S., at 617-618 (footnotes omitted).
Doyle addressed the propriety of cross-examining defendants about their silence following Miranda warnings. Here the Court of Appeals assumed, without analysis, that respondent’s conduct and statements following the warnings, such as his requests for a lawyer, should be treated the same as silence. I disagree. Doyle deemed silence “insolubly ambiguous” — the defendant may be indicating he has nothing to say in his defense, or he may be relying on the assurance that he has a right to remain silent. Similarly, a request for a lawyer has essentially no probative value where the question is one of guilt or innocence: No sensible person would draw an inference of guilt from a defendant’s request for a lawyer after he had been told he had a right to consult one; it is simply not true that only a guilty person would want to have a lawyer present when being questioned by the police.
But a request for a lawyer may be highly relevant where the plea is based on insanity. There is no “insoluble ambiguity” in the request; it is a perfectly straightforward statement tending to show that an individual is able to understand his rights and is not incoherent or obviously confused or unbalanced. While plainly not conclusive proof of sanity, the request for a lawyer, like other coherent and responsive statements made near the time of the crime, is certainly relevant. *
*298Nor does the “unfairness” prong of Doyle, based on the implicit assurance in the Miranda warnings that “silence will carry no penalty,” bar prosecutorial comment on respondent’s requests for a lawyer. Officer Pilifant told respondent: “You have a right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” App. 73. The logical corollary of this warning — that what respondent does say can be used against him — is that what he does not say cannot.
Officer Pilifant’s description of respondent’s right to counsel was framed differently:
“You have the right to talk to a lawyer and have him present with you while you are being questioned. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer one will be appointed to represent you before any questioning if you wish.” Ibid.
I do not read the foregoing statement as containing any promise, express or implied, that the words used in responding to notice of the right to a lawyer will not be used by the State to rebut a claim of insanity. ' In the absence of such a promise, respondent surely was not “tricked” into asking for a lawyer, and the prosecutor’s reference to respondent’s request was in no way “fundamentally unfair.”
Nor do I believe that relevant comment about the invocation of the right to an attorney, made in an effort to defeat a claim of insanity, works the sort of “penalty” condemned in Doyle. Inviting the jury to draw an inference of guilt, which separates a defendant from the mass of society, is one thing; inviting it to draw an inference of sanity or rationality, which merely places a defendant together with the mass of society, is quite another. A suspect’s right to an attorney during *299questioning, which is derivative of his right to remain silent, see Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, 469-470 (1966), is not unconstitutionally burdened by use of his request as evidence of his ability to distinguish right from wrong.
Turning to the prosecutor’s closing argument in this case, I believe that far less of what the Court of Appeals described as the “challenged portion” violated Doyle than did the Court of Appeals. That “challenged portion” consists of the following statement:
“Let’s go on to Officer Pilifant who took the stand, who the psychiatrists, both defense psychiatrists, never even heard about, never even talked to. He states that he saw this fellow [respondent] on the beach and that he went up to him, talked to him, and then arrested him for the offense. The fellow voluntarily put his arms behind his back and said he would go to the car. This is supposedly an insane person under the throws [sic] of an acute condition of schizophrenic paranoia at the time. He goes to the car and the officer reads him his Miranda rights. Does he say he doesn’t understand them? Does he say ‘What’s going on?’ No. He says ‘I understand my rights. I do not want to speak to you. I want to speak to an attorney.’ Again an occasion of a person who knows what’s going on around his surroundings, and knows the consequences of his act. Even down — as going down [to] the car as you recollect Officer Pil[i]fant said he explained what Miranda rights meant and the guy said — and Mr. Greenfield said T appreciate that, thanks a lot for telling me that.’ And here we are to believe that this person didn’t know what he was doing at the time of the act, and then even down at the station, according to Detective Jolley — He’s down there. He says, ‘Have you been read your Miranda rights?’ ‘Yes, I have.’ ‘Do you want to talk?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you want to talk to an attorney?’ ‘Yes.’ And after he talked to the *300attorney again he will not speak. Again another physical overt indication by the defendant....
“So here again we must take this in consideration as to his guilt or innocence, in regards to sanity or insanity.” App. 96-98.
The first part of the statement describes, in the words of the arresting officer, prearrest conduct of the defendant. Doyle does not bar this sort of testimony. Fletcher v. Weir, 455 U. S. 603 (1982). When the defendant was read his Miranda rights, he did not remain silent; he said:
“I understand my rights. I do not want to speak to you. I want to speak to an attorney. . . . [And then] I appreciate that, thanks a lot for telling me that.”
Thus Doyle does not cover this portion of the closing argument either. While a defendant’s invocation of his right to an attorney, or his statement that he understands (and appreciates being informed about) his rights, would be largely irrelevant in the case of most defenses, it is surely relevant in the context of a claim of insanity.
The only portion of the summation that can, in my opinion, be said to violate Doyle is the following:
“[E]ven down at the station, according to Detective Jolley — He’s down there. He says, ‘Have you been read your Miranda rights?’ ‘Yes, I have.’ ‘Do you want to talk?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you want to talk to an attorney?’ ‘Yes.’ And after he talked to the attorney again he will not speak.”
This is a comment on respondent’s silence, and as such it constitutes a breach of the Miranda warning’s “implied assurance” that his silence would not be used against him.
The Court of Appeals’ determination that the prosecutor’s error was not harmless was based on its apparent conclusion that all of the “challenged portion” of the prosecutor’s state*301ment violated the constitutional rights of the defendant. The court stated:
“The prosecutor relied strongly on [respondent’s] conduct as evidence of sanity; his closing argument was not lengthy and the portion challenged here was not minor. We cannot say that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” 741 F. 2d 329, 336 (1984) (emphasis added).
But as noted above, actually a much smaller portion of this statement was constitutionally objectionable. And in evaluating whether or not this minute extract from the prosecutor’s closing argument can be deemed harmless, I think an important factor apparently not considered by the Court of Appeals was that the testimony on which the summation was based had already come in without objection. It was there for the jury to consider on its own regardless of whether the prosecutor ever mentioned it. This fact, together with the brevity of the prosecutor’s improper comment, at least suggests that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. See Cupp v. Naughten, 414 U. S. 141 (1973); Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U. S. 637 (1974). As the Court points out, however, ante, at 295, n. 13, the Attorney General has not contested the Court of Appeals’ conclusion that any error was not harmless. Accordingly, I concur in the result.

It may be, as the Court suggests, that the prosecution could have served its legitimate purposes “by carefully framed questions that avoided any mention of the defendant’s exercise of his constitutional righ[t]... to consult counsel,” ante, at 295. That the prosecutor might have done things differently, however, does not render unconstitutional his express reference to respondent’s invocation of his right to counsel. Indeed, I *298would think that quotation of a defendant’s precise words is a far more effective means of disproving insanity than are general references to his “rationality” or “responsiveness.”