Court Opinion

ID: 9611256
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:54:16.22389+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:11.569375
License: Public Domain

Hunstein, Justice,
concurring specially.
The record in this case reveals that prior to reading Lucas his Miranda rights, a police officer engaged Lucas in a conversation regarding the crime for which Lucas had already been arrested. At one point, Lucas told the officer: “my lawyer told me, the one I talked to, not to say nothing.” The majority treats this statement as an invocation of Lucas’s right to counsel. While I can appreciate why the majority feels that this ambiguous statement implicated the right to counsel, I find that the statement should more appropriately be analyzed as an invocation of Lucas’s right to remain silent. In the statement, Lucas informed the officer that he had an attorney (or at least had already talked to an attorney) and nothing in the statement intimates that Lucas was asking to have that attorney or other counsel present. Rather, Lucas was telling the officer that Lucas had been advised by counsel not to say anything. The officer knew Lucas had talked with counsel; the question for the officer was whether Lucas was following counsel’s advice and exercising his right to remain silent.
The United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Miranda v. Ari*92zona, 384 U. S. 436 (86 SC 1602, 16 LE2d 694) (1966) protects not only the right to counsel but also the right to remain silent. Miranda provides that
If the [person in custody] indicates in any manner, at any time prior to or during questioning, that he wishes to remain silent, the interrogation must cease. At this 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.
(Footnote omitted.) Id., 384 U. S. at 473-474. The admissibility of statements obtained after the person in custody has decided to remain silent depends under Miranda on whether his “right to cut off questioning” was “scrupulously honored.” Michigan v. Mosley, 423 U. S. 96, 103 (96 SC 321, 46 LE2d 313) (1975). See also Hatcher v. State, 259 Ga. 274 (2) (379 SE2d 775) (1989).
Unlike the defendant in Hatcher, supra, Lucas did not unambiguously tell the officer that he (Lucas) personally did not want to talk anymore. Telling the officer that Lucas’s attorney told him not to talk created an ambiguity in the invocation of this constitutional right. See Underwood v. State, 218 Ga. App. 530, 533 (2) (462 SE2d 434) (1995) (accused handed officer “a business card of his attorney which contained on the back a preprinted statement purporting to assert ... a claim of exercise of the right to remain silent,” among other rights). Although the Court of Appeals in Underwood did not have to reach the issue “whether such an ambiguous act place [d] a burden on law enforcement officers to inquire whether any of the rights addressed on the preprinted business card [were], in fact, being asserted,” id., this Court has discussed this issue, albeit in dicta. In Hatcher, supra, the accused gave three statements to the police, two of which were equivocal. The Hatcher Court quoted with approval language from an 11th Circuit case which required clarification of equivocal invocations of the right to remain silent. In Christopher v. Florida, 824 F2d 836 (D) (11th Cir. 1987), the court reiterated that under Miranda and its progeny, police are required to terminate an interrogation if the suspect “ ‘indicates, in any manner, at any time . . . during questioning that he wishes to remain silent.’ [Cit.]” Following an equivocal indication of the desire to remain silent,
officers may ask questions designed to clarify whether the suspect intended to invoke his right to remain silent. [Cits.] The rule, however, permits “clarification,” not questions that *93. . . are designed to, or operate to, delay, confuse, or burden the suspect in his assertion of his rights.
Decided October 30, 2000.
John B. Sumner, for appellant.
Garry T. Moss, District Attorney, Thurbert E. Baker, Attorney General, Paula K. Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Adam M. Hames, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
(Footnotes omitted.) Id. at 842. This Court in Hatcher noted that under Christopher v. Florida, the equivocal attempts by Hatcher to invoke his right to remain silent “should have limited further questioning to clarifying Hatcher’s intentions.” Id. at 277, fn. 2. See also Tankersley v. State, 261 Ga. 318 (2) (b) (404 SE2d 564) (1993).
Like this Court in Hatcher, I would apply the holding in Christopher v. Florida here and hold that an equivocal invocation of the right to remain silent must be treated comparably to an equivocal invocation of the right to counsel, requiring clarification by police before further questioning is appropriate. Thus, in response to Lucas’s statement that “my lawyer told me, the one I talked to, not to say nothing,” the officer should only have sought clarification of Lucas’s statement, even if it amounted to nothing moré than the simple question “whether [Lucas] wanted to stop talking.” Id. at 842. Applying the principle in Christopher v. Florida, I conclude that the officer’s continued questioning of Lucas without clarification of his equivocal request “constituted an unlawful continuation of the interrogation, and not permissible interrogation.” Id. Therefore, because all subsequent questioning of Lucas by the police officers should have been suppressed, I concur with the majority’s judgment.
I am authorized to state that Justice Sears joins this special concurrence.