Court Opinion

ID: 9641543
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:34:04.860713+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:38.234458
License: Public Domain

Lowe,«/.,

dissenting:

I respectfully dissent. When appellant cut short his interrogation in the “interview room” because “he didn’t want to answer any questions” he explained that he was “going to get a lawyer” although he did not want one at that moment. Appellant was then taken to the “roll call” room where the incriminating evidence taken from his apartment was spread out on a table. Upon being told that the evidence had been taken from the address where appellant presumably lived, he admitted ownership of the proscribed drugs. Some of the testimony of the officer who testified as to the “spontaneity” of appellant’s “blurt” is necessary to set the stage for my concern with the majority opinion:
“Q. [Defense counsel]: Is it not a fact that the purpose you would bring him into the second room for, specifically the roll call room where the narcotics were laid out on the table, was that you attempted-let’s be honest if you can — to get a statement?
MR. GREENBERG: Objection.
THE COURT: Overruled.
MR. GREENBERG: It’s on the phraseology, Your Honor.
MR. SNYDER: I will strike that phraseology on that. Was the purpose for bringing the Defendant into the roll call room an attempt to get an incriminating statement from him?
THE WITNESS: That was not the sole purpose.
BY MR. SNYDER:
Q, What was one of the purposes?
*668A. The sole purpose was to obtain his help in getting information relative to who was over top of them.
THE COURT: How was that going to result from his seeing all of that stuff to give a statement as to who was on top of him?
THE WITNESS: Well, it works in strange ways. Usually that’s our policy.
THE COURT: What do you mean by that?
THE WITNESS: Well, to let the person know what we have laid out and just so we can obtain his information to help us.
THE COURT: How do you get that information by showing him ?
THE WITNESS: We say this is what we have.
THE COURT: And then what?
THE WITNESS: We get a copy of the return and are there any questions about what was recovered. It was just an attempt to get him to help us.
THE COURT: What do you mean by help you?
. THE WITNESS: In heroin traffic in the neighborhood of the 437 Club.
THE COURT: By getting him to cooperate and telling the people who are dealing in the narcotic traffic?
THE WITNESS: Yes, if he has any knowledge.
BY MR. SNYDER:
Q. Once again, Detective Snipes, you are saying your purpose is two-fold, one to get a statement that he was involved and two you could get him to turn informant or State’s evidence, is that correct?
A. The main object was to get him to turn State’s evidence.
Q. Did you get him to admit any involvement before turning State’s evidence?
A. I don’t think so.
*669Q. How can a man turn State’s evidence if he hasn’t told you it’s his stuff?
MR. GREENBERG: Objection.
THE COURT: Overruled.
THE WITNESS: I don’t think he admitted anything if that’s what you are asking.
MR. SNYDER: If we analyze what was said prior, wehaveaman who doesn’t want a lawyer, not at that time, but eventually; you stop questioning him and you take him to the roll call room and the purpose of that is to get him to become an informant or turn State’s Evidence?
MR. GREENBERG: Objection.
THE COURT: Overruled.
THE WITNESS: Yes.
MR. SNYDER: Yet he never told you that it was his stuff to begin with?
THE WITNESS: Right.
MR. SNYDER: We understand you, the purpose of that was mainly to get him to turn State’s Evidence?
MR. GREENBERG: Objection.
THE COURT: Overruled.
THE WITNESS: Yes.
MR. SNYDER: Another purpose was to get him to make an incriminating statement?
MR. GREENBERG: Objection.
THE COURT: Overruled.
THE WITNESS: I would say that was a thought, but that was not the main purpose. (Tb.36-39) (Emphasis added)
THE COURT: The statement to you, this is my stuff, did that statement immediately follow what you said, this is what we recovered from your house?
THE WITNESS: Yes.
*670THE COURT: It was his immediate response to that?
THE WITNESS: Yes. (Tb.42)
MR. SNYDER: You are testifying then that it wasn’t his expressing that it was his stuff that you then informed him how or he may help, is that correct?
THE WITNESS: Yes.
MR. SNYDER: Let me ask you this, Detective Snipes, let me ask you this, in the interview room the Defendant told you that he did not want to answer any questions and he told you that?
THE WITNESS: Yes.
MR. SNYDER: You testified that one of the purposes for taking him into the roll call room was to show him the narcotics, to show him it was his?
THE WITNESS: Yes.
MR. SNYDER: Why did you do that if you did not intend to ask him questions”?
MR. GREENBERG: Objection.
THE COURT: Overruled.
THE WITNESS: Why did I do that?
MR. SNYDER: Yes.
THE WITNESS: To get him to help us. (Tb.44-45) (Emphasis added)”.
It is perfectly ridiculous to permit this admission (which amounts to a confession) to be introduced upon the lame excuse that no actual question was asked. The question was implicit, however punctuated, and in whatever room it was propounded. The Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, 473-474 (1966), stated unequivocally that:
“If the individual indicates in any manner, at any time prior to or during questioning, that he wishes to remain silent, the interrogation must cease. At *671this point he has shown that he intends to exercise his Fifth Amendment privilege; any statement taken after the person invokes his privilege cannot be other than the product of compulsion, subtle or otherwise. Without the right to cut off questioning, the setting of in-custody interrogation operates on the individual to overcome free choice in producing a statement after the privilege has been once invoked.” (Footnote omitted and emphasis added).
In light of Miranda’s unequivocal directive it should be unnecessary to state the obvious. The procedure that followed in the roll call room, which was admittedly intended to elicit from appellant information relating to other persons in the narcotics world, presupposed appellant’s participation therein. Accordingly, it was a denial of appellant’s fifth amendment rights, and hardly a subtle one at that. If Miranda’s clear meaning has so little viability as to permit so embarrassingly apparent a subterfuge as this, Miranda should be reversed by the Supreme Court outright, rather than circumvented in this manner. We are wont to point with pride at our judicial platitudes prescribing constitutional protections of individual rights, but we view them with alarm when we are called to apply them in a hard case. Allowing semantic subterfuge to frustrate clearly stated constitutional protections cause the public to look askance at our system, and with good reason.
The continued interrogation by the “show and tell” method was admittedly intended by the police to elicit information; primarily, to find out from appellant the names of his superiors and associates in the drug business, and secondarily, to obtain an incriminating statement. Obviously, if the primary purpose was accomplished, as I have noted, it presupposed a self-incrimination by appellant. This deliberate intent as expressed by the police distinguishes this case from Humphrey v. State, 39 Md. App. 484, 490-492 (1978). There Judge Morton was careful to point out that appellant’s confession was tantamount to a spontaneous statement because it was “ ... not prompted by any questioning on the *672part of the police. In fact, Detective Bateman specifically stated that it was not necessary for appellant to say anything.” Id at 492. Notwithstanding this distinction, had I been on the Humphrey panel, there, too, I would have dissented. Here I am even more disturbed, because we are condoning a standard procedure of interrogation which is a shamefully obvious method of circumventing Miranda.
The admittedly deliberate conduct by the police is also most significant in light of appellant’s custodial condition and his express declaration that he was going to get a lawyer. Assuming, however, that we concede that the Supreme Court is moving away from Miranda, it should be pointed out that appellant’s sixth amendment rights were also directly violated (unless the Court is moving away from these protections too).
Despite the fact that appellant was not formally indicted, he was certainly at a stage in the preliminary proceedings when he obviously needed effective representation of counsel. Upon his arrest, appellant was no longer a mere suspect and the officers weren’t simply making inquiries into an unsolved crime. He was an accused, and the interrogation was a form of pretrial preparation. Indeed, the nature and effect of that which the police deliberately elicited from him indicates that this was perhaps the only stage when legal advice would help him.
In Massiah v. United States, 377 U. S. 201 (1964), a police investigation continued against Massiah — after his indictment — and an incriminating conversation was surreptitiously obtained by the police. The Court held that Massiah was denied his sixth amendment right to counsel.
“In Spano v. New. York, 360 U. S. 315, 3 L.Ed.2d 1265, 79 S. Ct. 1202, this Court reversed a state criminal conviction because a confession had been wrongly admitted into evidence against the defendant at his trial. In that case the defendant had already been indicted for first-degree murder at the time he confessed. The Court held that the defendant’s conviction could not stand under the *673Fourteenth Amendment. While the Court’s opinion relied upon the totality of the circumstances under which the confession had been obtained, four concurring Justices pointed out that the Constitution required reversal of the conviction upon the sole and specific ground that the confession had been deliberately elicited by the police after the defendant had been indicted, and therefore at a time when he was clearly entitled to a lawyer’s help. It was pointed out that under our system of justice the most elemental concepts of due process of law contemplate that an indictment be followed by 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.’ 360 U. S., at 327 (Stewart, J., concurring). It was said that a Constitution which guarantees a defendant the aid of counsel at such a trial could surely vouchsafe no less to an indicted defendant under interrogation by the police in a completely extrajudicial proceeding. Anything less, it was said, might deny a defendant ‘effective representation by counsel at the only stage when legal aid and advice would help him. ’360 U. S., at 326 (Douglas, J., concurring).
Ever since this Court’s decision in the Spano case, the New York courts have unequivocally followed this constitutional rule. ‘Any secret interrogation of the defendant, from and after the finding of the indictment, without the protection afforded by the presence of counsel, contravenes the basic dictates of fairness in the conduct of criminal causes and the fundamental rights of persons charged with crime.’ People v. Waterman, 9 N. Y. 2d 561, 565, 175 N. E. 2d 445, 448.
This view no more than reflects a constitutional principle established as long ago as Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, 77 L. Ed. 158, 53 S. Ct. 55, 84 ALR 527, where the Court noted that ‘... during perhaps the most critical period of the proceedings *674... that is to say, from the time of their arraignment until the beginning of their trial, when consultation, thoroughgoing investigation and preparation [are] vitally important, the defendants ... [are] as much entitled to such aid [of counsel] during that period as at the trial itself.’ Id. at 57, 77 L. Ed. 164. And since the Spano decision the same basic constitutional principle has been broady reaffirmed by this Court. Hamilton v. Alabama, 368, U. S. 52, 7 L.Ed.2d 114, 82 S. Ct. 157; White v. Maryland, 878 U. S. 59, 10 L.Ed.2d 193, 83 S. Ct. 1050. See Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335, 9 L.Ed.2d 799, 88 S. Ct. 792.
Here we deal not with a state court conviction, but with a federal case, where the specific guarantee of the Sixth Amendment directly applies. Johnson v. Zerbst, 804 U. S. 458, 82 L. Ed. 1461, 58 S. Ct. 1019, 146 ALR 357. We hold that the petitioner was denied the basic protections of that guarantee when there was used against him at his trial evidence of his own incriminating words, which federal agents had deliberately elicited from him after he had been indicted and in the absence of his counsel. It is true that in the Spano ease the defendant was interrogated in a police station, while here the .damaging testimony was elicited from the defendant without his knowledge while he was free on bail. But, as Judge Hays pointed out in his dissent in the Court of Appeals, ‘if such a rule is to have any efficacy it must apply to indirect and surreptitious interrogations as well as those conducted in the jailhouse. In this case, Massiah was more seriously imposed upon ... because he did not even know that he was under interrogation by a government agent.’ 307 F. 2d at 72-73.” (footnotes omitted and emphasis added). 377 U. S. at 204-206.
I find no distinction in the underlying reasoning here that appellant was not yet indicted. He was obviously under arrest (when his speedy trial rights commence), in custody, and was *675entitled to counsel at this crucial stage of his proceeding. Massiah v. United States, 377 U. S. at 204-205. A custodial interrogation, unlike a simple lineup for identification purposes (See Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U. S. 682 (1972)), is a stage of the proceedings wherein counsel’s assistance is extremely important, else why require a recitation of rights to include that of counsel. (“You have a right to counsel — but not yet.”). To paraphrase Mr. Justice Douglas in Spano, supra, (as repeated by the Court in Massiah, supra} a constitution which guarantees counsel to a defendant under interrogation, after indictment, could hardly justify denying counsel to an arrested accused not yet indicted, saying on the one hand such interrogation is a crucial stage of the proceeding and on the other that it is not. In either case:
“Anything less... might deny a defendant ‘effective representation by counsel at the only stage when legal aid and advice would help him.’ ” Massiah v. United States, 377 U. S. at 204.
It is implicit in the warnings prescribed by Miranda that before appellant can waive his fifth amendment self-incrimination right he must be informed of — and waive — a right to counsel at any further interrogation. Obviously then, the sixth amendment right to counsel is inseparably interwoven by Miranda into the fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. If the latter is violated, the former is necessarily so as well. It is most apparent in this case where appellant articulately exercised both rights. For the police to bring in deliberately through the back door that which they could not take through the front, denies appellant his rights under both the fifth and the sixth amendments. I would reverse and remand for retrial without the use of the damning admission of ownership of the hard evidence.