Court Opinion

ID: 9477583
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:26:39.486076+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:56.959945
License: Public Domain

RYAN, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part, dissenting in part).
While I agree that the receipt in evidence of defendant Calloway’s confession violated his constitutional rights under both the fifth and fourteenth amendments, I do not agree that the receipt of defendant Cooper’s confession violated his constitutional rights under either provision. After a careful review of the record under the standards announced in Miller v. Fenton, 474 U.S. 104, 106 S.Ct. 445, 88 L.Ed.2d 405 (1985), I am not persuaded that Cooper’s confession was the product of any physical or psychological coercion or any combination thereof, and it has not been shown to my satisfaction to have been involuntary either as compelled self-incrimination or a statement taken in a fashion offensive to the guarantees of the due process provision of the fourteenth amendment. Cooper testified both that Calloway’s statement was made before Cooper’s confession and that it was made afterwards. Cooper’s statement that he witnessed Braden’s “fire your head up” threat to Calloway is entirely uncorroborated, and the mere fact that “Cooper’s co-arrestee Calloway was physically abused” does not, to me, justify the quantum leap to the conclusion that the abuse of Calloway “created a coercive environment in which Cooper reasonably feared that he too was threatened with physical abuse.”
Although I think the majority’s conclusion that Cooper’s confession was coerced is entirely unjustified, I agree that his constitutional rights under the sixth amendment were violated when Calloway’s confession, which incriminated Cooper, was introduced against Cooper and over his objection. Indeed, I concur in part III of the majority opinion.
For the foregoing reasons, I concur in parts I and III of my brothers’ opinion, and in so much of part II as holds that the introduction of Calloway’s confession in evidence violated his constitutional rights under the fifth and fourteenth amendments. Thus, I concur in the judgment.