Court Opinion

ID: 9755740
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:49:08.756606+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:10.593563
License: Public Domain

CLIFFORD, J.,
dissenting.
Defendant confessed to the murder of Susan Green, who died after suffering fifty-three stab wounds. The Court concludes that the trial court erred in admitting defendant’s confession into evidence because the failure of the police to inform defendant that an attorney was present and asking to speak with him violated defendant’s State privilege against self-incrimination. Ante at 261-262, 627 A.2d at 642-643. I disagree and therefore dissent.
The importance of the right to counsel in protecting suspects against compelled self-incrimination can hardly be overstated. This Court has traditionally been most solicitous of that right. We have determined that any indication of a suspect’s desire for counsel — even if not articulate, clear, or explicit — triggers the right. But today the Court extends that treasured right even farther, concluding that the right to counsel can attach even if a suspect expressly and voluntarily waives that right. That goes too far.
The majority neatly summarizes the import of the New Jersey common-law right against self-incrimination:
At its core, the privilege against self-incrimination means that “[i]n New Jersey, no person can be compelled to be a witness against himself.” A suspect has an absolute right to remain silent while under police interrogation, and at trial the State may draw no negative inference from that silence. Waiver of that right must be knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. In demonstrating that a defendant has waived his or her right against self-incrimination the government bears the burden of proof and that burden is a heavy one.
[Ante at 250, 627 A.2d at 637 (citations omitted).]
*278However, the law does not — and should not — require that police inform a suspect of the relative ease with which that right can be exercised in certain circumstances.
The majority concludes that because defendant, Reed; was unaware of the presence of an attorney seeking to communicate with him, he could not knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently waive the right to counsel, an ancillary right to the right against self-incrimination. However, the failure of the police to impart that information had absolutely no effect on the voluntariness of defendant’s waiver of his right to counsel. The right to counsel requires that a suspect be told that he or she has the right to an attorney, that an attorney will be provided if the suspect cannot afford one, that the suspect be clearly informed of the right to ask for counsel at any time during custodial interrogation, and that interrogation will cease at any time the suspect desires counsel. Ante at 253, 627 A.2d at 638.
Reed, a quality-control inspector whose work required the reading of complex manuals and engineering drawings, understood that he had the right to an attorney. He understood that an attorney would be provided if he could not afford one. He understood that he could ask for counsel at any time during the investigation and that the interrogation would cease at that point. Fully understanding all of the foregoing, defendant waived those rights — three times. Therefore, the failure to inform defendant of attorney Aitken’s desire to communicate cannot be viewed as a violation of defendant’s Miranda rights. And it should not be viewed as contrary to New Jersey’s equivalent common-law protections.
In Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412, 106 S.Ct. 1135, 89 L.Ed.2d 410 (1986), the United States Supreme Court set forth the reasons why failing to inform a suspect that an attorney seeks to communicate with him does not render the suspect’s waiver of the right to counsel involuntary:
Events occurring outside of the presence of the suspect and entirely unknown to him surely can have no bearing on the capacity to comprehend and knowingly relinquish a constitutional right. Under the analysis of the Court of Appeals, the *279same defendant, armed with the same information and confronted with precisely the same police conduct, would have knowingly waived his Miranda rights had a lawyer not telephoned the police station to inquire about his status. Nothing in any of our waiver decisions or in our understanding of the essential components of a valid waiver requires so incongruous a result. No doubt the additional information would have been useful to respondent; perhaps even it might have affected his decision to confess. But we have never read the Constitution to require that the police supply a suspect with a flow of information to help him calibrate his self-interest in deciding whether to speak or stand by his rights.
[Id. at 422, 106 S.Ct. at 1141, 89 L.Ed.2d at 421.]
I would adopt the Supreme Court’s reasoning.
Philosophical as well as practical concerns lead me to disagree with my colleagues’ conclusion. First, I agree with the state court in State v. Burbine, 451 A.2d 22, 28 (R.I.1982), that a mentally-competent person’s constitutional rights may be asserted only by that person. Therefore, I part company with the Court in its conclusion that a third party — in this case, the attorney in waiting — can assert a suspect’s right against self-incrimination. See ante at 261, 627 A.2d at 643.
Moreover, the Court’s rule creates an illogical or unfair advantage for some suspects. Those suspects who are taken into custody in the presence of others, or who have previously obtained a private attorney, or who have previously required the services of a public defender — and therefore are more likely to be the beneficiaries of someone’s call to an attorney on their behalf — will be found to have been coerced if not alerted should an attorney arrive at the station house. On the other hand, the indigent defendant with no previous experience with law enforcement who is arrested while alone — and hence “out of the loop” as far as legal assistance is concerned — although subjected to identical interrogation techniques will have knowingly and voluntarily waived the right to counsel. The rule therefore results in two, classes of suspects and favors those who are more likely to have access to counsel. Such intolerable incongruities result when the emphasis shifts to events entirely unrelated to the suspect’s knowledge rather than focusing on the sole person who matters in evaluating the validity of a suspect’s waiver — the suspect.
*280Furthermore, the rule the Court fashions today risks increasing the likelihood of police coercion. Police officers of flexible rectitude who know that the right to question a suspect may terminate once an attorney makes known his or her availability to assist a suspect may be tempted to “turn up the heat” to secure a confession in what the officers may perceive as a limited window of opportunity. The right the Court creates intensifies rather than diminishes the pressure on law-enforcement officers to cut corners in the effort to extract an incriminating statement.
Likewise, the duty of police to inform a suspect that an attorney seeks to communicate with the suspect raises a number of other issues that the Court will surely need to address before long. For example, how quickly must the police relay the information that an attorney is available? If an attorney calls the police station, is the officer receiving the call obliged immediately to put aside all other matters and race to inform the investigating officers? Does the right attach at the time of communication or at some reasonable time thereafter? If the suspect should blurt out a confession a moment before an officer seeking to impart the availability of counsel enters the room, does the statement become retroactively involuntary even though the police have made every effort to honor a defendant’s rights? The Court suggests precisely that when it holds that “[w]hen, to the knowledge of police, such an attorney is present or available, and the attorney has communicated a desire to confer with the suspect, the police must make that information known to the suspect before custodial interrogation can proceed or continue.” Ante at 262, 627 A.2d at 643. In that instance, the admissibility of a suspect’s confession may well turn on the time affixed to a telephone message.
Also, what duty do police officers have to provide full and accurate information concerning the attorney’s identity? A suspect may wish to see a private-practice attorney retained by his mother but have no enthusiasm for the advice of a public defender retained by a casual acquaintance. A hastily-dispatched associate in a law firm may not know who telephoned the associate’s law firm or be familiar with the caller’s relationship to the suspect. *281Resume-checking duties should not fall on the police department. And we will eventually have to wrestle with the nasty little issue of whether a negligent misstatement of the information concerning that attorney would have any effect on a subsequent waiver.
The possibilities multiply. An attorney seeking to delay interrogation of a suspect may assert immediate or almost-immediate availability. Is an attorney “immediately available” in any circumstance other than one in which the attorney can at that very moment proceed to the scene of the interrogation or speak with a defendant? What if an attorney calls to profess availability and thereafter does not appear for several hours? Must the attorney retained communicate with the police, or may another person at a firm or the person who has arranged for the attorney alert the police of the attorney’s availability?
This State has developed a coherent and easily-applied body of self-incrimination law that apprises suspects of their rights and police officers of their duties in respect of custodial interrogation. In departing from those well-established principles, the Court in this case sacrifices certainty to return to this defendant a right that he had expressly rejected. As one can tell from my hand-wringing above, I believe that the problems created by today’s rule far outweigh the societal benefits.
I need hardly add that my resolution of this case in no way constitutes an endorsement of the deplorable bumbling of the law-enforcement personnel who lied to Ms. Varga and Aitken and who scurried through the basement to hide defendant from the attorney who sought to confer -with him. I join the majority in its denouncement of such foolishness. However, I do not share the Court’s confidence that its requirement that the police inform a suspect of an attorney’s availability will “diminish the likelihood of unreasonable police conduct” similar to the actions of the police in this ease. Ante at 260, 627 A.2d at 642. If police have no duty to inform a suspect of an attorney’s presence if the suspect does not request counsel, we need not fear similar police conduct in the future because the defendant will have no right to see the waiting *282attorney absent a request for counsel. The police therefore would have no need to move the suspect. Because protecting against unreasonable police conduct is achieved by either rule, the majority’s decision therefore serves one purpose — “to enhance the reliability of confessions by reducing the inherent coercion of custodial interrogation.” Ante at 260, 627 A.2d at 642. In my view that purpose is adequately served by careful administering of the Miranda warnings, fully complied with in this case, and punctilious observance of the procedures laid out in our case law.
To trigger his right to counsel, defendant had to do no more than make some expression of a desire for a lawyer. He did not do so, and therefore the police had no duty to inform him of Aitken’s wish to communicate with him. On the retrial I would therefore permit defendant’s confession to be received in evidence.