Court Opinion

ID: 9450315
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:41:40.010826+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:14.650488
License: Public Domain

Fahy, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Appellant was convicted of housebreaking, second degree murder and on two *142counts of first degree murder, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. His principal defense, supported by considerable evidence, was insanity.
It appears that on September 5, 1961, appellant broke into a laundry in Northwest Washington and there assaulted and caused the death of Tony Philip Lee. In a confession appellant admitted the charges and explained in detail the events leading up to and following the homicide. Over his objection the confession was used extensively by the prosecution in cross-examination of defense psychiatrists for the purpose of rebutting the defense of insanity.
Appellant does not contend that the confession was inadmissible as involuntary or coerced, or under the Mallory rule. His position is that the confession was inadmissible because obtained by the police in a manner which was inconsistent with his right to the assistance of counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment.
The evidence of the prosecution is that the confession was obtained in the circumstances now stated. On September 8, 1961, pursuant to a police complaint showing probable cause to believe appellant was guilty of first degree murder, the United States Commissioner in the District of Columbia issued a warrant for appellant’s arrest. At 3:20 A.M. on September 15, 1961, he was arrested in New York City by an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There is testimony, though no contemporaneous record, that he was advised that he did not have to make any statement, that any statement he made could be used against him, and that he was entitled to an attorney. He was later taken to the nearby Federal Detention Headquarters.
At 11:00 A.M. on September 15 appellant was taken before a United States Commissioner in New York City for removal proceedings in accordance with Rule 40(b), Fed.R.Crim.P.1 The removal complaint alleged that a complaint and arrest warrant charging appellant with first degree murder had been issued in the District of Columbia and that appellant had fled the jurisdiction to avoid prosecution for murder. After the proceedings before the Commissioner appellant was returned to the Detention Headquarters.
On the following day, September 16, at approximately 1:30 P.M. two officers of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia arrived in New York for the purpose of bringing appellant back to this District.
Upon their arrival at the Detention Headquarters they asked if they could speak to appellant, and were taken to a small room off the prisoners’ corridor. A few minutes later appellant was brought to this room. We have no record of what occurred, but the officers testified that they identified themselves, told appellant they were investigating the death of Tony Philip Lee with which he was charged, and that he did not have to talk to them if he did not wish to do so. According to their further testimony appellant “sat there for a few moments and then he said he would like to tell *143us about it,” and made his detailed confession.
Bearing on another aspect of the case additional facts are now noted. Prior to trial appellant through his counsel moved for a mental examination. Pursuant to a ruling by the trial court that an affidavit in support of the motion was necessary, appellant’s wife filed an affidavit stating that for the past three and one-half years appellant had been a rational and devoted person until about one month before the date of the crime alleged, when he began acting in an irrational, unreasonable and violent manner. Over defense objection that it violated the privilege of one spouse not to be compelled to testify against another the prosecution recited the substance of the affidavit during the cross-examination of defense psychiatrists and also during the prosecution’s examination of its own rebuttal psychiatrists.
I. Appellant was being proceeded against on a capital charge when the confession was obtained by the police. He was twenty years of age, of limited mental capacity, in a strange city, and at no time had the assistance of counsel or a reasonable opportunity to consult counsel as required by Eule 40(b) (2), supra note 1. He was under the control of the officers, who confronted him with a capital charge. He was a person accused and his confession was the result of police activity which was clearly designed to elicit the statements which were obtained.
In my view it was error to permit the use of the confession at his trial, for I think it was obtained in a manner which was inconsistent with appellant’s rights guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment, particularly “to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense,” which he had not waived.
It has now been held in cases involving a variety of circumstances that self-incriminating statements of one accused of crime, elicited prior to trial and when the accused is without the assistance of counsel, are inadmissible at his trial because in derogation of the right to such assistance guaranteed by the Constitution. White v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 59, 83 S.Ct. 1050, 10 L.Ed.2d 193 (1963); Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201, 84 S.Ct. 1199, 12 L.Ed.2d 246 (1964); Escobedo v. Illinois, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977 (1964); Queen v. United States, 118 U.S.App.D.C. —, 335 F.2d 297 (1964). And see the concurring opinions in Spano v. New York, 360 U.S. 315, 324, 326, 79 S.Ct. 1202, 3 L.Ed.2d 1265 (1959), which involved a state prosecution, so that the constitutional basis for exclusion of the confession was the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Mr. Justice Stewart, joined by Mr. Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Brennan, stated that not only was the confession inadmissible because coerced, as held in the majority opinion authored by the Chief Justice, but “th< absence of counsel when this confession was elicited was alone enough to render it inadmissible.” He pointed out that due process contemplates a trial “in an orderly courtroom, presided over by a judge, open to the public, and protected by all the procedural safeguards of the law.” To like effect is Mr Justice Douglas’ opinion in the same case, concurred in by Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Brennan. And I think it is clear that these views have the adherence of a majority of the Court.
In Massiah it was deemed important that the self-incriminating statements held inadmissible were secured after indictment; but in Escobedo they preceded indictment. The Court reached the same result, however; for other circumstances in Escobedo were as persuasive against admissibility as the fact of an indictment in Massiah. These circumstances were that the case had reached an accusatory stage, the police had refused to permit the accused to consult with his lawyer, and they had failed to advise him of his absolute right to remain silent.
Our case has its own factual setting; but it seems to me the Supreme Court has established a principle to be applied in the future to cases which are not of *144an exact factual likeness to those it has decided in the past. No two cases are alike. The value of constitutional precedents is not merely to guide to a decision on like facts. Their value is also in the exposition of legal principles to be applied to facts which, though different, rationally call for application of the principles which have been exposited. The exclusionary rules are not prisoners of the particular factual situations where the rules have been applied. See Queen v. United States, supra.
In the case at bar the circumstances we have outlined bring it within the exclusionary rule illustrated by the decisions cited. To have had a reasonable opportunity to adopt a course of conduct which would not prejudice his defense appellant needed utterly the assistance of counsel when called upon by the officers to respond to the charge of responsibility for the death of Mr. Lee. If his ensuing confession is used at his trial appellant loses the benefit of counsel for so much of his trial as brings before the jury the self-incriminating statements elicited at the Detention Headquarters when he was without counsel or the advice of counsel. To admit such statements throws the trial back, as it were, to the room where the statements were made, whereas the Constitution calls for the trial in a “courtroom presided over by a judge, open to the public, and protected by all the procedural safeguards of the law.”
It is of no great consequence that appellant may have been advised he need make no statement. Aside from the fact that he could hardly have remained silent when accusesd, advice from the police or even a United States Commisssioner that he may remain silent is quite different from being told by counsel that he should or should not do so.2
And it is of no significance that appellant had not requested counsel before making his confession. In Lee v. United States, 322 F.2d 770 (5th Cir. 1963), in which the use at trial of a confession obtained from the accused before he had had opportunity to consult with counsel was held violative of due process, the court stated: “The record does not show whether Lee requested counsel or not at the time his interrogators appeared or before they opened his cell door. * * * ‘But it is settled that where the assistance of counsel is a constitutional requisite, the right to be furnished counsel does not depend on a request.’ Carnley v. Cochran, 1962, 369 U.S. 506, 513, 82 S.Ct. 884, 889, 8 L.Ed.2d 70. Nor can there be a presumption of waiver of counsel. Johnson v. Zerbst, 1938, 304 U.S. 458, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 82 L.Ed. 1461.” 322 F.2d at 777.3 It should also be noted that the New York Court of Appeals on two occasions has held that an accused’s right to counsel has been denied by the evidentiary use of confessions obtained in circumstances substantially similar to those now before this court. See People v. Rodriguez, 11 N.Y.2d 279, 183 N.E.2d 651, 229 N.Y.S.2d 353 (1962); People v. Meyer, 11 N.Y.2d 162, 182 N.E.2d 103, 227 N.Y.S. 427 (1962). These cases were cited with approval by the Supreme Court *145in its decision in Massiah. See 377 U.S. at 205, 84 S.Ct. at 1202; and in the same connection see Escobedo, supra at 84 S.Ct. 1758.4
That the use of the confession was prejudicial is clear. All else aside it was effectively used by the prosecution to convince the jury that appellant was criminally responsible and therefore should not be acquitted on the ground of insanity. Indeed, the recital by appellant in the confession of the details of the brutal homicide may well have so affected the jury as to have been decisive in causing them to reject his defense of insanity. Doubts as to this defense may have been resolved against him by the prejudice evoked by the nature of the homicide, as recited in his confession.
It seems to me that the issue whether under the law the perpetrator of this terrible homicide should be executed, imprisoned for life, or placed in an institution for the mentally ill, ought not to turn upon self-accusatory words attributed to him at the secret interrogation in New York, when neither he nor society had the professional assistance, or the opportunity to obtain it, the need for which is made plain by the guarantee of the right to it contained in the supreme law of the land.
II. A second ground for reversal is urged, namely, the use made of the wife’s affidavit executed to support appellant’s motion for a mental examination. 14 D.C.Code § 306(a) (1964 Supp.) provides :
“In civil and criminal proceedings, a husband or his wife is competent but not compellable to testify for or against the other.”
The affidavit, executed for the limited purpose stated, was used to support testimony of government psychiatrists called to rebut' the testimony of defense psychiatrists whose opinions were based in part upon knowledge obtained in conversations with the wife. It was also used to rebut the testimony of a defense psychologist whose testimony was in no part based upon such knowledge. The defense objected to this use of the affidavit as a violation of the privilege.
That the privilege applies to such out-of-court statements, as well as to testimony given during a trial, seems well established. 8 Wigmore, Evidence § 2232 at 225-26 (McNaughton Rev. 1961); Olender v. United States, 210 F.2d 795, 800 (9th Cir. 1954); Peek v. United States, 321 F.2d 934, 943 (9th Cir. 1963), cert. denied, 376 U.S. 954, 84 S.Ct. 973, 11 L.Ed.2d 973 (1964). Our decision in Smith v. United States, 114 U.S.App.D.C. 140, 312 F.2d 867 (1962), is not apposite, for there, as the opinion points out, the affidavit was that of the accused, and was used not to prove the truth of what was contained therein but for the limited purpose of impeaching his credibility when he took the stand in his own defense.
Were the present conviction reversed and the case remanded for a new trial I would wish to decide definitively whether the privilege was here violated, as a guide to the trial court on a retrial. Since, however, the conviction is affirmed I do not resolve the question, though I could appropriately do so for myself notwithstanding affirmance. I add that it appears to me the privilege probably was violated by the use made of the wife’s affidavit during the trial itself.
I would reverse and remand.

. Rule 40(b) provides in part:
“(1) Appearance before Commissioner or Judge. If a person is arrested upon a warrant issued in another state at a place 100 miles or more from the place of arrest, or without a warrant for an offense committed in another state at a place 100 miles or more from the place of arrest, he shall be taken without unnecessary delay before the nearest available commissioner or a nearby judge of the United States in the district in which the arrest was made.
“(2) Statement by Commissioner or Judge. The commissioner or judge shall inform the defendant of the charge against him, of his right to retain counsel and of his right to have a hearing or to waive a hearing by signing a waiver before the commissioner or judge. The commissioner or judge shall also inform the defendant that he is not required to make a statement and that any statement made by him may be used against him, shall allow him reasonable opportunity to consult counsel and shall admit him to bail as provided in these rules. * * * ”

. In Ricks v. United States, 118 U.S.App.D.C. —, 334 F.2d 964 (1964), this court lield that certain statements made by the accused were inadmissible at his trial because obtained before he had had the assistance of counsel, notwithstanding the fact that prior to making the statements the accused had been presented before a magistrate who had advised him of his right to remain silent. See also Queen v. United States, supra.

. As one court has pointed out, a failure to request counsel has significance only if it amounts to a waiver of that right; but the courts will indulge every reasonable presumption against such a waiver and one wifi not be found unless it is made in clear and unequivocal terms by an accused fully aware of its consequences. Griffith v. Rhay, 282 F.2d 711, 717 (9th Cir. 1960), cert. denied, 364 U.S. 941, 81 S.Ct. 460, 5 L.Ed.2d 373 (1961).
“Further, the mere failure to request the presence of a retained or an appointed counsel should not be deemed an intelligent waiver, since a particular defendant who does not request aid probably has as much or more need of effective assistance than one who does so request.” Note, 61 Colum.L.Rev. 744, 748 (1961).

. In addition to the cases which rest upon the Constitution, above cited, the use made of the confession in this case I think is inconsistent with the maintenance of the fair administration of justice in a federal court required under the supervisory power referred to in Cicenia v. Lagay, 357 U.S. 504, 508-509, 78 S.Ct. 1297, 2 L.Ed.2d 1523 (1958).