Court Opinion

ID: 9884194
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 02:46:41.142531+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:38:04.537222
License: Public Domain

ADKINS, Judge,
concurring and dissenting.
I concur in the majority’s decision to reverse Perez’s convictions, but write separately to disagree with its rationale and with its conclusion that the 12, 15, and 37 hour presentment delays preceding Perez’s statements might have been necessary.
Majority’s Rationale For Reversing
I cannot join in the majority’s conclusion that reversal is required only because “the Williams Court ... articulated a standard for how to assess a deliberate violation of the presentment rule[.]” In my view, that holding does not follow the Court of Appeals’ decision in Williams v. State, 375 Md. 404, 825 A.2d 1078 (2003). For the reasons set forth in this section, I disagree with the majority’s rationale for its decision. As set forth in the following section, I concur that Williams requires reversal, but for the same reason cited by the Williams Court — because the suppression court did not *46indicate that it was giving heavy weight to unnecessary delay that preceded Perez’s statements.
The holding in Williams cannot be reconciled with the majority’s decision to reverse so that the trial court can decide whether, in light of Williams, to admit Perez’s statements without giving them heavy weight. The Williams Court reversed three murder convictions, but significantly did not hold that the admissibility of the challenged confessions should be reconsidered on retrial. Instead, the Williams Court unanimously concluded that the suppression court erred by failing to give heavy weight to the unnecessary delay preceding Williams’ three statements; the Court then held that the challenged statements must be excluded. See id. at 416, 825 A.2d 1078 (when Court of Appeals gave unnecessary delay preceding murder statements heavy weight, “it becomes clear that those statements were involuntary and therefore inadmissible”). This holding is inconsistent with the majority’s view that Williams necessitates only a new suppression hearing at which the trial court could find the delay preceding Perez’s statements was necessary and need not be given heavy weight. The Williams Court rejected, as a matter of law, the possibility that this delay could be found necessary. In my view, we must do the same in this case.
The majority’s rationale rests on its concern that the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County needs an opportunity to decide whether, under Williams, the prompt presentment rule was violated by Perez’s lengthy presentment delay. Yet the Williams Court emphasized that Maryland courts, like “nearly all courts[,]” have long held that delaying presentment to obtain a confession is a violation of the prompt presentment rule that weighs against a finding of voluntariness. See Williams, 375 Md. at 424, 825 A.2d 1078 (citing federal and Court of Special Appeals cases); Young v. State, 68 Md.App. 121, 134, 510 A.2d 599 (1986); Meyer v. State, 43 Md.App. 427, 434, 406 A.2d 427 (1979). The majority, curiously, does not mention this precedent, or the Court of Appeals’ rationale for giving this species of presentment delay heavy weight. The Williams Court stated that prompt presentment is “designed *47to provide the defendant with a clear explanation of more basic Constitutional and statutory rights.” Williams, 375 Md. at 430, 825 A.2d 1078. The reason that a violation of that right “must be given special weight in determining voluntariness is that, when the right it is designed to protect is transgressed, there may be no practical way of calculating the actual effect of the transgression.” Id.
That rationale reflects the longstanding judicial recognition that, when a person accused of a crime is not afforded the constitutional and statutory protections given during presentment before a district court commissioner, it may never be possible to determine whether that suspect, “had he been presented timely to a Commissioner, ... would have acquiesced in ... [subsequent] interrogations and confessed to ... murders[.]” Id. at 431, 825 A.2d 1078. When an arrestee confesses as a result of police interrogation conducted without counsel and before the initial appearance, any “judicial caution” regarding the value of defense counsel in avoiding self-incrimination has “lost its purposed]” See Mallory v. United States, 354 U.S. 449, 455, 77 S.Ct. 1356, 1360, 1 L.Ed.2d 1479 (1957); see also Williams, 375 Md. at 424, 825 A.2d 1078 (citing Mallory for the proposition that “nearly all courts agree” that the purpose of obtaining incriminating statements is “not a proper basis upon which to delay presentment”); Johnson v. State, 282 Md. 314, 321-22, 384 A.2d 709 (1978) (“In Maryland, as elsewhere,” two of the important functions of the prompt presentment rule are to ensure that the accused will be promptly advised of right to counsel and of “due process right to be free from coercive investigatory methods”).
The Williams Court recognized that presentment delays for the sole purpose of obtaining incriminating statements are, by their very nature, both deliberate and unnecessary, and reviewed why such delays are given heavy weight in the voluntariness calculus. When the Court of Appeals has held specifically that a new suppression hearing was not necessary to determine that a presentment delay for the sole purpose of interrogation should be weighed heavily against a finding of voluntariness, see id. at 433, 825 A.2d 1078, we cannot disre*48gard that holding. As the Williams Court pointed out in its conclusion, “the notion that [such] a confession ... is under a cloud of suspicion contravenes neither logic[,] nor practical human experience,” nor existing jurisprudence. See id. at 434, 825 A.2d 1078. I would hold, for the reasons discussed below, that the delay preceding all of Perez’s confessions was unnecessary because it was solely for the purpose of obtaining incriminating statements, and that reversal is required because the suppression court failed to indicate that it was giving this unnecessary delay the heavy weight that it merits in this case.
Unnecessary Delay Rationale For Reversing
The majority directs “[t]he suppression court, on remand, [to] conduct a new hearing and make a determination regarding whether there was unnecessary delay for the deliberate and sole purpose of obtaining a confession[.]” Implicit in that holding is the prospect that the delay preceding all three of the challenged statements might have been necessary. As noted above, I believe that this conclusion fails to apply the holdings of Williams and Hiligh.
I submit that, to be consistent with Williams and Hiligh, we must hold as a matter of law that the patent reason that the police did not take Perez “down the hall” to the available commissioner was that they wanted to obtain incriminating statements from him before doing so. What the majority opinion omits is that detectives who testified for the State during the three day suppression hearing admitted that they continued to interview Perez despite his initial denials of involvement, and even after he admitted some knowledge and involvement, because they were not satisfied with his previous statements:
• Detectives Hoffman and Turner testified that they accused Perez of being involved in the murder during the first forty minute interview that began less than an hour after Perez’s arrest, at 1:00 a.m. on August 9. Perez denied any knowledge or involvement.
*49• They left Perez alone from 1:40 to 2:20 a.m., then returned and, in Turner’s words, “fished for information” by telling Perez that Gordon said he was the shooter. That second interview lasted 80 minutes, until approximately 3:45 a.m. But Perez continued to deny any knowledge or involvement.
• During the next hour, detectives left Perez alone while they conferred with each other in an adjacent room “about what was going on in the interview.”
• Detective Turner explained that he returned alone to interview Perez from 4:40 to 5:50 a.m. because he thought Perez was being evasive in his comments regarding the murders. Although Perez continued to deny any knowledge or involvement, Turner “didn’t take it” as an indication “that he did not want to answer any questions about that,” but rather, as an indication “that he didn’t want to implicate himself any more than he already had.”
• At 7:25 a.m. on August 9, because Perez was still denying any knowledge or involvement, Detective Rhone was “assigned to go in and talk to Mr. Perez about any information he had ... about the murder[s].” Although he did not know when Perez had arrived at CID, Rhone continued to interview Perez “one on one” over the next seven hours, with only bathroom breaks. Rhone began by getting biographical information in order to build “rapport with him and so he would understand who I was and what I needed out of the interview.” Perez continued to deny any knowledge or involvement. It was 10:15 a.m., nearly three hours after Rhone began to interview Perez and 10 hours after his arrest, before Perez even admitted having seen Gordon with a gun. It was approximately two hours later — 12 hours after Perez’s arrest — that he began his first written statement.
• After Perez completed that statement at 2:00 p.m., there was a break in the interview, during which detectives discussed the new information. Not satisfied with Perez’s first statement, Rhone reentered at 2:58 p.m. and obtained another Miranda waiver and a second statement.
*50• After Perez completed his second written statement at 5:01 p.m., Hoffman asked Detective Canales to conduct a voice stress test. That was complete at 8:10 p.m.
• Rhone returned again sometime during the morning of August 10 because the detectives wanted to talk to Perez about their theory, based on the autopsy, that “it could not have been ... one person that committed this incident, because one weapon was a knife and one weapon was a gun.” He again asked Perez about his involvement in the murders, based on the autopsy, what had been learned from Gordon, and the results of Perez’s voice stress test.
Williams and Hiligh dictate that we hold as a matter of law that this evidence from the detectives who interviewed Perez conclusively established that the sole reason for delaying Perez’s presentment was to obtain incriminating statements from him. Like Williams, Perez initially denied participating in the murders, but Prince George’s County detectives refused to accept his exculpatory statements and continued their questioning while consulting with each other regarding the results of the interviews as they continued in progress. Both cases feature “in and out” sequential interviews by different officers over a lengthy period of time, during which the suspect was confined, except for bathroom breaks, to an 8 or 9 foot square room with a single locked door with a peephole and no windows. Indeed, while Williams denied involvement in the murders for only two hours after the police began to question him about those crimes, Perez denied any involvement in the Tharpar murders for more than ten hours.
Although the majority correctly observes that determining why the police delayed presentment of Perez involves first level factual findings, it notably does not suggest that there is any evidence in this suppression record to support a finding that the police had some “necessary” reason for delaying Perez’s presentment. Appellate courts routinely review suppression records to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to support the suppression court’s factual findings and whether, in light of that evidence, the court’s legal conclu*51sion was correct. See, e.g., Scott v. State, 366 Md. 121, 147, 782 A.2d 862 (2001), cert. denied, 535 U.S. 940, 122 S.Ct. 1324, 152 L.Ed.2d 231 (2002)(“We review the [suppression] court’s factual findings in the light most favorable to the State, pursuant to a clear error standard, but we review the legal conclusions de novo”)-, Ferris v. State, 355 Md. 356, 374-75, 377-79, 735 A.2d 491 (1999)(relying on suppression record to hold that suppression court erred in finding that police had articulable suspicion for continuing detention of motorist after purpose for traffic stop was accomplished). Thus, even if we were to rely on the presumption that courts properly apply the law to fill in the blank created by the suppression court’s silence about why the police delayed Perez’s presentment for more than two days after his arrest, and, thus, to conclude that the court found that there was some other reason than to obtain inculpatory statements from him, we still must review the evidence adduced at the suppression hearing to determine whether it could have supported such a finding. I respectfully submit that there is no evidence in this suppression record upon which any court could conclude that there was some other reason for delaying Perez’s presentment.
It is especially significant that the State has not disputed that the purpose for this presentment delay was to question Perez. The State has never advanced, in the trial court or on appeal, any administrative reason for delaying Perez’s presentment. Nor has it argued that the questioning was necessary to preserve evanescent evidence, to protect lives or property, or to apprehend Perez’s alleged accomplice, who was already jailed. Although it initially argued that delay for this type of questioning was necessary and, in any event, of no discernable effect on the voluntariness of Perez’s statements, after Williams and Hiligh, the State did not suggest that the delay was for some reason other than to interrogate Perez. Nor did it specifically argue that the delay was necessary.
In my view, the suppression record created by the State makes it clear that Perez’s presentment delay was more “unnecessary” than the delays preceding the statements in *52Williams.18 Cf. Williams, 375 Md. at 424-25, 825 A.2d 1078 (immediate availability of commissioner made “[t]he entire delay” after police obtained defendant’s statements about robberies unnecessary); cf. also Hiligh, 375 Md. at 473, 825 A.2d 1108 (delay after police obtained all information and completed all administrative work necessary to charge defendant, “as a matter of both law and fact, was unnecessary”). In particular, I note the following, which the majority does not consider in its opinion:
• Williams was 19 years old when he arrested and interrogated. 17 year old Perez was two years younger, still living as a minor in his parents’ care.
• In contrast to Williams, in which part of the delay was attributable to uncertainty about Williams’ possible involvement in the murders, no part of the delay here can be attributed to uncertainty about Perez’s possible involvement in the murders. Williams was arrested without a warrant on suspicion of an unrelated robbery that occurred only hours earlier, without any suspicion that he might be involved in the murders to which he eventually confessed. But Perez was arrested on a warrant for possible involvement in the nine month old murders to which he confessed. Cf. also Hiligh v. State, 375 Md. 456, 461, 825 A.2d 1108 (2003) (police obtained photo identification before deciding to charge).
• Similarly, while some of the delay in Williams and Hiligh might be attributed to uncertainty about the identity of the person arrested, none of the delay here can be attributed to uncertainty about Perez’s identity. *53Williams’ true identity was not confirmed for nearly seven hours after his arrest. In contrast, Perez’s identity was confirmed before his arrest.
• In further contrast to Williams, none of the delay here is attributable to investigation of other crimes. Williams was questioned about the robberies that precipitated his arrest, during the first nine hours after his arrest; he quickly confessed to those crimes when the police legitimately questioned him in an effort to ascertain “basic information about their suspect and ... about his involvement in the two robberies, so that he could be identified and charged.” Williams, 375 Md. at 423, 825 A.2d 1078. In contrast, detectives testified that they had enough information against Perez to obtain an arrest warrant and that they accused Perez of involvement in the Tharpar murders during their first interview, which began only an hour after his arrest.
• To an even greater degree than in Williams, the effect of Perez’s presentment delay was exacerbated by overnight confinement in a small interview room. While Williams was left to sleep in the interrogation room during a single “midnight to morning” period; Perez was questioned during two consecutive “overnighters.” Perez was left to sleep only intermittently between questioning sessions; he gave his first and second statements after the first overnighter and his third statement after the second.
Perez’s case presents an even clearer instance than Williams of deliberate and unnecessary delay for the purpose of obtaining confessions. This is the specific type of presentment delay that, according to the Court of Appeals, Rule 4-212 “absolutely forbids.” See Hiligh, 375 Md. at 473, 825 A.2d 1108. Williams and Hiligh, like this case, address only this particular “species” of presentment delay, not the broader “genus” of delays that occur for other reasons, with which the majority appears to be concerned. Once the Court of Appeals decides a question of Maryland law, we must follow and apply *54its ruling. The least that Williams and Hiligh require us to conclude is that the 12, 15, and 37 hour presentment delays before Perez made his statements were unnecessary and, thus, were entitled to heavy weight.19
The court did not decide that these delays were unnecessary, nor did it indicate that it was giving any weight to such delays. The court’s terse reference to “the totality of the circumstances,” in its single-sentence bench ruling at the end of the three day suppression hearing, makes no mention of delay. Given the significant presentment delay established by this record, and defense counsel’s emphasis on it as grounds for suppression,201 cannot conclude from mere silence that the court properly weighed this delay when it decided that all of *55Perez’s statements were voluntary. See Williams, 375 Md. at 434, 825 A.2d 1078.
It is especially significant that the suppression court did not discuss each of Perez’s three statements separately. In Lodowski v. State, 307 Md. 233, 253, 256-58, 513 A.2d 299, the Court of Appeals held that the suppression court was obligated to determine whether each of three challenged statements was voluntary by considering the circumstances in which each one was made, and that its failure to do so required a new trial. On a record such as this, the suppression court should have scrutinized the evolving circumstances in which Perez made each statement to determine if each met the test of voluntariness. See Williams, 375 Md. at 431-32, 825 A.2d 1078; Hiligh, 375 Md. at 474-75, 825 A.2d 1108. Unlike the majority, which rests its decision to reverse on a rationale that is inconsistent with the holding in Williams, I would reverse, under the precedent established by Williams, Hiligh, Facón, and Lodowski, because the suppression court failed to indicate that it had considered the circumstances surrounding each challenged statement, including the heavy weight of the unnecessary presentment delay.
Waiver
With respect to the effect of the two “commissioner’s waivers” that Perez signed, I cannot join in the majority’s suggestion that a Miranda waiver that does not include any reference to a suspect’s right to prompt presentment might operate as a waiver of that right. Again, I believe that would not be consistent with Williams.
The Williams Court cited the effective use of Miranda rights waivers as precedent for the police to advise suspects in an analogous manner of their right to prompt presentment and to obtain a written waiver of that right.
The same approach can easily and effectively be used with respect to the right to prompt presentment for an accused detained pursuant to an arrest. It would be a simple matter for the police to advise the accused as well of his or her right to prompt presentment before a *56District Court Commissioner, that the Commissioner is a judicial officer not connected with the police, and that the Commissioner, among other things, will inform the accused of each offense with which he or she is charged, including the allowable penalties attached to those charges, furnish the accused with a written copy of the charges, advise the accused of his or her right to counsel, make a pre-trial release determination, and if ... the accused has been charged with a felony beyond the jurisdiction of the District Court, of his or her right to a preliminary hearing before a judge. The police could inform the defendant that he or she may waive that right of prompt presentment and agree to submit to interrogation, subject to the right to end the interrogation at any time and demand to be taken promptly before a Commissioner.
Williams, 375 Md. at 432, 825 A.2d 1078 (emphasis added).
The Williams Court recognized, however, that prompt presentment waivers, like Miranda waivers, can be effective only if given before an unnecessary delay yields an inculpatory statement. See id. at 432-33, 825 A.2d 1078 (suggesting that presentment waiver practice could be modeled on established practice of obtaining a Miranda waiver “[t]hat helps to establish that any statement made thereafter is voluntary”)(emphasis added). Here, the State asserted that Perez’s first two statements were made 12 and 15 hours after arrest. Prince George’s County detectives testified, however, that Perez was not advised of his right to prompt presentment or presented with these waiver forms until after he had been at the station for approximately 24 hours.21 For that reason, the waivers here did not provide post hoc “coverage” for Perez’s first two statements. A confession obtained during an unnecessary *57presentment delay for interrogation cannot be “cured” after the fact by either a subsequent presentment or a subsequent waiver of the right to presentment. The waivers executed by Perez carry no weight in determining the admissibility of the first two statements by Perez.
Perez’s third statement, begun after 37 hours of custodial interrogation, followed not one, but two, waivers. But the Williams Court caveated that any
delay in presentment, even with a waiver, must be reasonable. The Rule already sets 24 hours as an outside limit for presentment, and, absent some truly extraordinary circumstance, we would not expect any delay incurred for purposes of interrogation to extend beyond that time period.
Id. at 433 n. 4, 825 A.2d 1078 (emphasis added).
The suppression court did not address whether it found “truly extraordinary circumstances” justifying the 37 hour delay preceding the third statement. I see none argued by the State and none contemplated by the majority. In the absence of any evidence of extraordinary circumstances explaining why Perez was not taken to the commissioner during those 37 hours, I would hold, in accordance with Williams, that the two waivers, by themselves, cannot excuse the delay preceding the third statement.
Jury Instructions
Although I agree with the majority’s concern that courts should refrain from giving any instruction that may suggest to the jury that the State has a 24 hour “safe harbor” to question suspects, I see little risk in telling the jury about the 24 hour guideline, even in cases in which the presentment delay was less than 24 hours. It would be a simple matter to instruct the jury, as the majority recognizes, that “the State is not automatically entitled to 24 hours.”
As for this case, which does involve a presentment delay in excess of 24 hours, I read both Williams and Hiligh as implicitly recognizing that, when asked, the trial court must instruct the jury that the law requires police to present an *58accused to a judicial officer without unnecessary delay, which, except in unusual circumstances, is generally within 24 hours after arrest. That request was made by Perez’s counsel. In my view, it was error for the trial court to deny defense counsel’s request.
Just as an instruction about the special weight of deliberate and unnecessary delays supplies the jury with an important yardstick for determining whether a challenged statement was voluntary, so too, does an instruction regarding the 24 hour guideline. I agree with Perez that, with no guidance as to the meaning of “unnecessary delay,” the jury may mistakenly fail to weigh such delays heavily against a voluntariness finding. Cf Hof v. State, 337 Md. 581, 602, 655 A.2d 370 (1995)(instruc-tion that failed to provide guidance as to how voluntariness determination is to be made was “wholly inadequate”).
I am not persuaded by the State’s contention that such an instruction would mislead the jury into believing that presentment within 24 hours is a “hard and fast rule.” The State overstates that risk. The trial court can ensure that the jury understands that 24 hours is merely a guideline for evaluating whether a particular delay was necessary. Rather than telling the jury that presentment may “in no event” be delayed more than 24 hours, the court can say that presentment may not be unnecessarily delayed, and that delays in excess of 24 hours must be considered unnecessary unless there are extraordinary circumstances justifying that delay. I see no good reason to keep the jury in the dark about the 24 hour guideline. It exists for a good and simple reason — because the length of any deliberate delay in presentment should be justified by legitimate reasons for that delay.
The State’s argument that cross-examination and argument by defense counsel adequately advised the jury of the requirements imposed under Rule 4-212 is not persuasive. The jury was instructed that counsel’s argument and comments were not evidence. Moreover, the police detectives’ testimony regarding the 24 hour guideline for presentment was equivocal at best. In fact, the detective who created, and got Perez to *59sign, the so-called “Commissioner’s waiver” forms notably told the jury that, in his five years as a homicide detective, he was not aware of any law requiring that Perez be taken to the district court commissioner within 24 hours.
Given that testimony, and the court’s subsequent failure to tell the jury that police are required by law to take an accused to a district court commissioner without unnecessary delay, or to otherwise explain the 24 hour guideline, the jury might have concluded that there was no presentment requirement or no guideline. Perez had a legal right to have the court, rather than defense counsel, instruct the jury on law that was relevant to the voluntariness issues that were critical to his defense.
Finally, I also agree with Perez that, in his particular case, the jury might have considered such instructions in resolving the conflicting accounts of what happened during Perez’s interrogation. For example, jurors might have found it significant that the police were aware of the prompt presentment obligation and of the 24 hour benchmark, in deciding whether Perez voluntarily made the statements 12, 15, and 37 hours after his arrest, as the police claimed, or whether he made those statements much later, in the hours just before he was taken to the commissioner, as Perez claimed.22

. Williams was arrested at 4:10 a.m., and placed into an interview room at 9:25 a.m. His three written statements regarding the murders were made at 7:40 p.m. on July 30 (15.5 hours after arrest, 10.25 hours after interrogation began, and 6.5 hours after Williams completed his statements about the robbery); 9:58 p.m. on July 30 (17.75 hours after arrest, 12.5 hours after interrogation began, and 8.75 hours after the robbery statements were complete); and 4:08 p.m. on July 31 (more than 34 hours after arrest, 28 hours after interrogation began, and 25 hours after the robbery statements were complete). See Williams v. State, 375 Md. 404, 408, 423-24, 825 A.2d 1078 (2003).

. I do not view Facon v. State, 375 Md. 435, 825 A.2d 1096 (2003), as authority to send Perez’s statements back to circuit court without addressing whether there was unnecessary delay in presentment. Fa-con involved a materially different presentment delay scenario and reason for reversal than presented by the Williams case or this case. The presentment delay in Facón included the time between Facon's arrest in the District of Columbia and his arrival in Prince George’s County. The Court of Appeals reversed because, although the 24 hour "clock” in Rule 4-212 did not start during this time period, the circuit court was obligated to consider how the entire delay between arrest and presentment affected Facón, and to consider more than just the time spent in actual interrogation, in deciding whether his statement was voluntary. See id. at 453-54, 825 A.2d 1096. Here, there is no analogous delay due to jurisdictional transfer, and thus, no need to consider how such delay affected the voluntariness of the challenged statements.

. At the suppression hearing, defense counsel argued that the circumstances of Perez's 48 hours of pre-charging detention and interrogation raised "red flagfsj” indicating that all three of his statements were involuntary. Counsel reviewed in detail the course of events at CID, then asked rhetorically,
Why don't you take him to the commissioner? ... [Tjhey are not satisfied with anything. So, we are going to keep pounding away, and we are going to get past this 24 hour requirement by having him sign a waiver....
I would submit to the Court that on the issue of voluntariness that these statements became involuntary because of the way that things were conducted. The police knew that they had problems. This [forty-eight] hour time is a red flag. The two Johnson waivers are a red flag that you can't get around.

. The record does not support the majority’s uncertainty about "whether Perez was orally advised of his right to prompt presentment other than when he executed written waiversfj” Detective Hoffman's testimony makes it clear that, when he prepared and presented the "commissioner's waiver” form approximately 24 hours after Perez's arrest, Perez had not yet been advised of his right to prompt presentment.

. Perez's account of his two days of interrogation differed dramatically from the detectives' account. Perez testified that he wrote no statements until he had been in custody for two nights, and that he wrote all three over a period of several hours. His statements reflected what Detective Rhone told him to write. He signed all of the Miranda and commissioner waivers less than an hour before he was taken to the commissioner. He did so because the detectives told him to, even though he was not aware of their significance.
According to Perez, Detective Hoffman screamed at him, punched him, grabbed him by his shirt, and “yoked” him around to the point that his body hit the walls of the room. Hoffman also threatened him with the death penalty and promised that, if he confessed, he would be released and his charges would be reduced to burglary.
Perez also claimed that he repeatedly asked for an attorney, to no avail. He explained that he had been arrested before, and his previous requests for counsel had been honored. But “this time they assaulted me."