Court Opinion

ID: 9482921
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:05:03.07529+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:17.430706
License: Public Domain

CONTIE, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree with the majority that the opinion of the district court should be reversed. However, I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that McNeil v. Wisconsin, — U.S. —, 111 S.Ct. 2204, 115 L.Ed.2d 158 (1991) does not constitute a new rule of law under Teague v. Lane. Although the Supreme Court stated in McNeil that it would not further extend Miranda, 111 S.Ct. at 2211, this statement does not indicate whether McNeil constitutes a new rule of law for purposes of a Teague v. Lane analysis. The test for a new rule of law as defined by Teague is stated in Butler v. McKellar, 494 U.S. 407, 110 S.Ct. 1212, 108 L.Ed.2d 347 (1990), in which the Supreme Court indicated that a legal ruling sought by a federal habeas petition will be deemed “new” as long as the correctness of the rule is susceptible to debate among reasonable minds. Id. 110 S.Ct. at 1217-18. It is clear that the Supreme Court’s holding in McNeil was susceptible to debate among reasonable minds, because previously the appellate courts were split on the issue of whether the invocation of a Sixth Amendment right to counsel in one offense constituted the invocation of a Fifth Amendment right to counsel in an unrelated offense. The courts in United States v. Wolf, 879 *869F.2d 1320, 1322-23 (6th Cir.1989), Wilson v. Murray, 806 F.2d 1232, 1235 (4th Cir.1986), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 870, 108 S.Ct. 197, 98 L.Ed.2d 149 (1987), and United States ex rel. Espinoza v. Fairman, 813 F.2d 117, 122-24 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 483 U.S. 1010, 107 S.Ct. 3240, 97 L.Ed.2d 745 (1987) extended the Miranda right to counsel to unrelated offenses once a Sixth Amendment right to counsel had been invoked, whereas the courts in Butler v. Aiken, 846 F.2d 255, 258-59 (4th Cir.1988) and Boles v. Foltz, 816 F.2d 1132, 1135 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 857, 108 S.Ct. 167, 98 L.Ed.2d 121 (1987) declined to extend Miranda. Thus, under the standard of Butler v. McKellar, McNeil announced a new rule of law because it was susceptible to debate among reasonable minds about how expansively the Miranda and Edwards line of cases should be interpreted.1
However, in the present case, petitioner's Teague v. Lane argument cannot prevail because McNeil is not being used retroactively in the way prohibited by the Teague rule. This court is not applying McNeil retroactively to overrule a decision of the Kentucky Supreme Court which is in conflict with McNeil. The Kentucky Supreme Court made a factual determination that petitioner Williamson never requested counsel. The state court did not reach the McNeil issue of what a request for counsel means (if it had occurred) in terms of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. In other words, the Kentucky Supreme Court never considered the issue decided in McNeil. This court’s use of McNeil to reverse a decision of the district court on an issue the state court never considered does not offend federal-state comity or finality concerns — the concerns which were the impetus behind the adoption of the Teague rule. The rationale for the Teague rule is that “[s]tate courts are understandably frustrated when they faithfully apply existing constitutional law only to have a federal court [later] discover ... new constitutional commands” invalidating their final decision. Butler v. McKellar, 110 S.Ct. at 1217, quoting Engle v. Isaac, 456 U.S. 107, 102 S.Ct. 1558, 71 L.Ed.2d 783 (1982). The Supreme Court decided that a prohibition against applying new rules of constitutional law on collateral review was necessary to “validate[ ] reasonable, good-faith interpretations of existing precedents made by state courts even though they are shown to be contrary to later decisions.” Id.
In the present case, this panel is not using McNeil retroactively in a way that offends federal-state comity concerns to invalidate the final decision of the Kentucky Supreme Court, which did not reach the issue presented in McNeil. This panel is using McNeil to invalidate the district court’s interpretation of existing precedent. Therefore, the rule of Teague v. Lane, which addresses a federal appellate court’s review of a state court’s conviction, does not apply in the present case, which concerns instead only a federal appellate court’s review of a federal district court’s decision. Because this court is using the Supreme Court’s decision in McNeil to overrule the district court’s decision on an issue never considered by the Kentucky state court, this court is not barred by the rule of Teague v. Lane from applying McNeil retroactively to the present case.2
*870In the alternative, even if this court were barred from using McNeil and could use only case law in existence at the time of the Kentucky Supreme Court’s decision in 1989, I believe that the district court’s decision can be reversed on the basis of this court’s decision in Boles v. Foltz, 816 F.2d 1132 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 857, 108 S.Ct. 167, 98 L.Ed.2d 121 (1987). In Boles, this court found that the defendant had invoked his Sixth Amendment right to counsel because the ordinary meaning of the petitioner’s statement about hiring an attorney was that he wished to have his attorney present at the preliminary hearing for a larceny offense. Id. at 1135. The Boles court held that this statement did not invoke his Fifth Amendment right to counsel for all purposes and did not invoke his right to have counsel present during interrogation about an unrelated offense. Id. The facts of the present case are similar to that of Boles.3 Even if petitioner Williamson’s statement about hiring an attorney meant that he wished to have counsel present for the traffic offenses, this statement did not constitute a Fifth Amendment request for counsel for unrelated offenses. Therefore, the district court can be reversed by applying the relevant Sixth Circuit precedent articulated in Boles v. Foltz.
To conclude, I believe that the Supreme Court’s decision in McNeil constitutes a new rule of law under Teague v. Lane. However, the rule of Teague v. Lane does not bar application of the Supreme Court’s decision in McNeil to the facts of the present case, because McNeil is not being used retroactively to reverse the decision of the state court, which never considered the issue presented in McNeil. Even if Teague were to preclude the use of McNeil, the district court can be reversed on the basis of Boles v. Foltz, which was in existence at the time of the Kentucky Supreme Court’s final decision and is not being applied retroactively. Even if petitioner Williamson invoked his Sixth Amendment right to counsel for the traffic offenses, he did not invoke his Fifth Amendment right to counsel for the robbery offenses, but voluntarily waived them. Therefore, the results of the line-up and confession were admissible into evidence, and petitioner’s habeas petition should be denied.

. I disagree with the majority that I am suggesting that every time a dissent occurs, an issue "would be susceptible to debate among reasonable minds." I believe that McNeil is the type of case contemplated by the statement made by the Supreme Court in Butler v. McKellar, because of the wide divergence in opinion on this issue among the appellate courts.

. I do not mean to suggest that a new law can be applied retroactively without offending the principle of Teague if it is used to uphold a state court’s decision to benefit the government. I agree with the majority that such a rule would create an unfair double-standard. I instead suggest that if a new rule of law involves an issue not decided by the state court, but involves an issue used by a federal district court to grant or deny habeas, the appellate court may apply the new rule to reverse or affirm the decision of the district court on an issue the state court never considered. I disagree with the majority that this case presents the issue of whether a new rule may be used retroactively to uphold a state court’s decision. In the present case, McNeil is not being used retroactively to uphold the state court’s decision that no request for counsel was made; It is being used retroactively to reverse the district court, which found that a request for counsel was made, which barred further inquiry *870on unrelated offenses. This is an issue never reached by the state court.

. In United States v. Wolf, 879 F.2d 1320 (6th Cir.1989), this court held that when defendant Wolf requested an attorney after she had been read the charges against her at the arraignment hearing on theft charges, she could not be interrogated concerning unrelated murder charges. Id. at 1322-23. The Wolf court distinguished Boles, because Boles merely concerned an exchange setting up a hearing. Id. at 1323. The present case is closer in its facts to Boles than to Wolf, because petitioner Williamson's statement was made as part of an exchange setting up a formal arraignment, which was postponed for ten days. Therefore, Boles, not Wolf, is the controlling precedent. Moreover, Wolf has now been overruled by the Supreme Court’s decision in McNeil.