Court Opinion

ID: 9749373
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:40:44.844212+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:47.536455
License: Public Domain

STEADMAN, Associate Judge,
dissenting:
The bottom-line issue in this appeal is the degree to which the rule of Edwards and its progeny is to extend durationally beyond the paradigm situation involved in those cases: prearraignment continuous custody by arresting officers. See Minnick v. Mississippi, — U.S. -, 111 S.Ct. 486, 492, 112 L.Ed.2d 489 (1990) (“[w]e are invited by this formulation to adopt a regime in which Edwards’ protection could pass in and out of existence multiple times prior to arraignment, at which point the same protection might reattach by virtue of our Sixth Amendment jurisprudence”).
As reiterated in Minnick, the protection of Edwards is “designed to prevent police from badgering a defendant into waiving his previously asserted Miranda rights,” and “to ensure that any statement made in subsequent interrogation is not the result of coercive pressures.” Ill S.Ct. at 489 (citation omitted). It seems to me that the government is correct in its assertion that when an event occurs which represents a sea change in those circumstances which existed at the time the right to counsel was originally invoked, the irrebuttable presumption against a voluntary waiver of the Miranda right to counsel should likewise cease. I believe the Supreme Court would so rule.1 Cf. Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. *992298, 306, 105 S.Ct. 1285, 1291, 84 L.Ed.2d 222 (1985) (prosecution may show “a sufficient break in events to undermine the inference that [a] confession was caused by [a] Fourth Amendment violation”); Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 496, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1639, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966) (requirement of a break in the stream of events).
It is conceded that Minnick constitutes no bar to questioning about a crime occurring subsequent to the invocation of the right to counsel. Far short of that, a number of cases have recognized that where a suspect has been released from custody and subsequently again detained, even for the same crime, an invocation of the right to counsel during the original confinement does not prevent the police from seeking a waiver of such a right upon the new confinement. See, e.g., Dunkins v. Thigpen, 854 F.2d 394, 397 (11th Cir.1988), cert. denied, 489 U.S. 1059, 109 S.Ct. 1329, 103 L.Ed.2d 597 (1989); United States v. Skinner, 667 F.2d 1306, 1309 (9th Cir.1982), cert. denied, 463 U.S. 1229, 103 S.Ct. 3569, 77 L.Ed.2d 1410 (1983).2
Similarly, I believe that the government is correct in its assertion that when a defendant has pled guilty to the charge which prompted the invocation of the right to counsel, circumstances have so significantly changed that any coercive effect created by the original confinement must be deemed to have been dissipated, certainly with respect to questioning about an entirely separate and distinct crime. A suspect’s concern about self-incrimination that may exist during pre-trial detention must be dramatically affected once, with the advice and assistance of counsel and subject to the elaborate protections provided by Rule 11, he has appeared in court and been convicted from his own mouth. Such an event entailing a knowing, voluntary and intelligent waiver of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and its consequent concerns — the very right that Edwards seeks to protect — should undermine any irrebuttable presumption that a subsequent waiver directed toward an entirely unrelated crime is the product of continuing police coercion. I would so hold.

. I recognize that Justice Scalia in his dissent in Minnick characterizes the majority as announcing a “perpetuality of prohibition", 111 S.Ct. at *992496, but that interpretation does not, of course, speak for the full court.

. Here, for several months following his invocation of the right to counsel, appellant as a juvenile was apparently held not in any jail or prison as such but rather was in the custody of juvenile authorities. Nonetheless, the government for purposes of this appeal assumes that the appellant was in continuous custody for purposes of the Edwards prophylactic rule, and I deal with the appeal on that basis.