Court Opinion

ID: 9425755
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:15:45.411026+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:57.379619
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
dissenting.
In this case the respondent, incarcerated as a result of a conviction in a state court, was granted a writ of habeas corpus by the District Court. The basis for the writ was the introduction at respondent’s trial of testimony from a witness whose identity was learned solely as a result of in-custody police interrogation of the respondent preceded by warnings which were deficient under the standards enunciated in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966). The District Court concluded that “the introduction by the prosecution in its case in chief of testimony of a third *462person which is admittedly the fruit of an illegally obtained statement by the [accused violates the accused’s] Fifth Amendment rights.” 352 F. Supp. 266, 268 (ED Mich. 1972). The Court of Appeals affirmed. 480 F. 2d 927 (CA6 1973).
I
Prior to interrogation, respondent was told of his right to the presence of counsel but he was not told of his right to have an attorney appointed should he be unable to afford one. Respondent is an indigent who has been represented at all times in both state and federal courts by court-appointed counsel. In Miranda, supra, we said:
“The need for counsel in order to protect the privilege [against self-incrimination] exists for the indigent as well as the affluent. . . . While authorities are not required to relieve the accused of his poverty, they have the obligation not to take advantage of indigence in the administration of justice. . . .
“In order to fully apprise a person interrogated of the extent of his rights under this system then, it is necessary to warn him not only that he has the right to consult with an attorney, but also that if he is indigent a lawyer will be appointed to represent him.” 384 U. S., at 472-473.
I cannot agree when the Court says that the interrogation here “did not abridge respondent’s constitutional privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, but departed only from the prophylactic standards later laid down by this Court in Miranda to safeguard that privilege.” Ante, at 446. The Court is not free to prescribe preferred modes of interrogation absent a constitutional basis. We held the “requirement of warnings and waiver of rights [to be] fundamental with respect to the Fifth Amendment privilege,” 384 U. S., at 476, and without *463so holding we would have been powerless to reverse Miranda’s conviction. While Miranda recognized that police need not mouth the precise words contained in the Court’s opinion, such warnings were held necessary “unless other fully effective means are adopted to notify the person” of his rights. Id., at 479. There is no contention here that other means were adopted. The respondent’s statements were thus obtained “under circumstances that did not meet constitutional standards for protection of the privilege [against self-incrimination].” Id., at 491 (emphasis added).
II
With the premise that respondent was subjected to an unconstitutional interrogation, there remains the question whether not only the testimony elicited in the interrogation but also the fruits thereof must be suppressed. Mr. Justice Holmes first articulated the “fruits” doctrine in Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385 (1920). In that case the Government had illegally seized the petitioner’s corporate books and documents. The Government photographed the items before returning them and used the photographs as a basis to subpoena the petitioner to produce the originals before the grand jury. The petitioner refused to comply and was cited for contempt. In reversing, the Court noted that “[t]he essence of a provision forbidding the acquisition of evidence in a certain way is that not merely evidence so acquired shall not be used before the Court but that it shall not be used at all.” Id., at 392.
The principle received more recent recognition in Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471 (1963). There one Toy had made statements to federal agents and the statements were held inadmissible against him. The statements led the agents to one Yee and at Yee’s home *464the agents found narcotics which were introduced at trial against Toy. In reversing Toy’s conviction the Court held that the narcotics discovered at Yee’s home must be excluded just as Toy’s statements which led to that discovery.
The testimony of the witness in this case was no less a fruit of unconstitutional police action than the photographs in Silverthorne or the narcotics in Wong Sun. The petitioner has stipulated that the identity and the whereabouts of the witness and his connection with the case were learned about only through the unconstitutional interrogation of the respondent. His testimony must be excluded to comply with Miranda’s mandate that “no evidence obtained as a result of interrogation [not preceded by adequate warnings] can be used against” an accused. 384 U. S., at 479 (emphasis added).
Ill
In Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U. S. 719 (1966), the Court held that statements obtained in violation of Miranda standards must be excluded from all trials occurring after the date of the Miranda decision. Me. Justice BrenNAn suggests that Johnson be limited and that the fruits derived from unlawful pre-Miranda interrogations be admissible in trials subsequent to the Miranda decision. Though respondent’s trial occurred subsequent to the Miranda decision, his interrogation preceded it. I disagree, as I disagreed in Johnson, that any defendant can be deprived of the full protection of the Fifth Amendment, as the Court has construed it in Miranda, based upon an arbitrary reference to the date of his interrogation or his trial.
In Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U. S. 618 (1965), the Court held the exclusionary rule of Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961), inapplicable to convictions which had become “final” prior to the Mapp decision. As Mr. *465Justice Black, joined by me, noted, the result was as follows:
“Linkletter, convicted in the state court by use of ‘unconstitutional evidence,’ is today denied relief by the judgment of this Court because his conviction became ‘final’ before Mapp was decided. Link-letter must stay in jail; Miss Mapp, whose offense was committed before Linkletter’s, is free. This different treatment of Miss Mapp and Linkletter points up at once the arbitrary and discriminatory nature of the judicial contrivance utilized here to break the promise of Mapp by keeping all people in jail who are unfortunate enough to have had their unconstitutional convictions affirmed before June 19, 1961.” 381 U. S., at 641 (dissenting opinion).
I find any such reference to the calendar in determining the beneficiaries of constitutional pronouncements to be a grossly invidious discrimination. Miranda was interrogated on March 13, 1963; Tucker was interrogated more than three years later in April 1966. I can conceive of no principled way to deprive Tucker of the constitutional guarantees afforded Miranda. The reason put forward for refusing to apply the strictures of Miranda to interrogations which preceded the decision is that the purpose of Miranda’s rules is the deterrence of unconstitutional interrogation. “The inference I gather from these repeated statements is that the rule is not a right or privilege accorded to defendants charged with crime but is a sort of punishment against officers in order to keep them from depriving people of their constitutional rights. In passing I would say that if that is the sole purpose, reason, object and effect of the rule, the Court’s action in adopting it sounds more like lawmaking than construing the Constitution.” 381 U. S., at 649 (Black, J., dissenting). Miranda’s purpose was *466not promulgation of judicially preferred standards for police interrogation, a function we are quite powerless to perform; the decision enunciated “constitutional standards for protection of the privilege” against self-incrimination. 384 U. S., at 491. People who are in jail because of a State’s use of unconstitutionally derived-evidence are entitled to a new trial, with the safeguards the Constitution provides, without regard to when the constitutional violation occurred, when the trial occurred, or when the conviction became “final.”
As Mr. Justice Black said in Linkletter: “It certainly offends my sense of justice to say that a State holding in jail people who were convicted by unconstitutional methods has a vested interest in keeping them there that outweighs the right of persons adjudged guilty of crime to challenge their unconstitutional convictions at any time.” 381 U. S., at 653.
I would affirm the judgment below.