Court Opinion

ID: 9464702
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:40:19.162432+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:46.155885
License: Public Domain

HUFSTEDLER, Circuit Judge,
concurring and dissenting:
I would reverse this conviction and remand the case for a new trial because Schmidt’s confessions to the DEA agents were involuntary as a matter of law and their admission violated Schmidt’s right to due process of law and his privilege against self-incrimination. I would also direct the district court, on remand, to decide whether the discovery of the canister affixed to the Santa Mercedes after the vessel reached Seattle was the product of Schmidt’s confessions, rather than solely the product of searches and seizures conducted by Peruvian authorities. If the canister found in Seattle was the fruit of the illegal confessions, I would direct that the canister of cocaine be suppressed.
I
The first question is whether Schmidt’s inculpatory admissions to the DEA agents were involuntary under the totality of the circumstances. We must address that question following an independent examination of the whole record. (Clewis v. Texas (1967) 386 U.S. 707, 87 S.Ct. 1338, 18 L.Ed.2d 423; Culombe v. Connecticut (1961) 367 U.S. 568, 81 S.Ct. 1860, 6 L.Ed.2d 1037.) “When conceded facts exist which are irreconcilable with such mental freedom, regardless of the contrary conclusions of the triers of fact, whether judge or jury, this Court cannot avoid responsibility for such injustice by leaving the burden of adjudication solely in other hands.” (Lyons v. Oklahoma (1944) 322 U.S. 596, 602, 64 S.Ct. 1208, 1212, 88 L.Ed. 1481.)
Schmidt’s treatment by the Peruvian authorities was characterized throughout by physical brutality and incarceration under *1068appalling conditions. The district court found that Schmidt’s testimony about his treatment by Peruvian authorities was true. In briefest compass, Schmidt testified that he was arrested by Peruvian naval authorities while swimming in the harbor near Lima, Peru, on the night of January 6-7, 1976. The Peruvian naval authorities took Schmidt to a military compound, made him remove his skin diving suit, and interrogated him all night long. He was accused of being a spy. Peruvian authorities slapped him and hit him on the back of the head. His requests to see someone from the American Embassy were denied. However, after several hours of interrogation, the Peruvian authorities yielded to his request to see Commander Petrozzi, whom he knew. He told Petrozzi that his clothes were left on the beach, and he responded affirmatively when Petrozzi asked him if he could take “us” to his clothes. Schmidt went to the beach in the company of five Peruvian military people, armed with machine guns. He found his clothes, and Jim Hooker, who was lying on the ground moaning. Hooker and Schmidt were put back into the car and returned to the military compound.
The naval authorities continued to question Schmidt throughout the rest of the night and into the following morning. His renewed requests to see a representative of the American Embassy or to see a lawyer were again denied. At the end of the second day, Schmidt attempted to escape. He was recaptured the following morning, beaten again and returned to the military compound. He was incarcerated in a small room for several days, during which he was constantly awakened, slapped and kicked, and the interrogation continued.
About two days later, men rushed in at three o’clock in the morning and put a hood over his head. His hands were handcuffed behind his back and he was taken to a Jeep. He was delivered to a building and thrown upon a mattress. Peruvian authorities then put him in a chair. While his arms were held, his interrogators slapped him repeatedly. His captors then forced his head into a bucket of water and held him down, while the back of his head was beaten. After hours of this treatment and the promise of greater tortures, the Peruvian authorities compelled him to make a confession recorded on a tape recorder. Finally, they returned him to the military compound. Two days later, Schmidt became delirious, collapsed, and was taken to a hospital.
When he reached the hospital, Schmidt was transferred to the custody of the Peruvian narcotics section, called “PIP.” Shortly after he reached the hospital, Schmidt was interviewed by Rubio, an English-speaking PIP officer. Rubio had received information about Schmidt’s suspected involvement in a drug operation involving the ship Santa Mercedes. While interrogating Schmidt in the hospital, Rubio struck Schmidt and “slapped him around.” Schmidt’s vomiting interrupted the interrogation from time to time.
Schmidt was released from the hospital and taken to the narcotics prison. His detention cell was revolting. He shared the cell with eight people, most of them sick, one of them shot, and none of them receiving medical attention. “[P]eople were moaning, people were crying, there was one mattress for the eight of us, and we would stretch it out lengthwise at night, and we could lie sidewise on it so we could get our shoulders and part of our hips on the mattress, and we would like — well, cuddle together there for warmth, and people would be coughing and spitting up, then there was the whole terror of the situation because the guards would come for these people.” Rubio interrogated Schmidt day and night. Two days after his first confinement in the narcotics cell, Rubio typed up a confession and forced Schmidt to sign it.
Schmidt admitted that he was somewhat confused about the exact dates, but there is no doubt that the confession was signed after Schmidt met with DEA Agents Hamm and Boggs. According to the agents, Schmidt made damaging admissions to them on two separate occasions. The first interview took place on January 16, 1976, shortly before noon, and lasted about *1069twenty minutes. The meeting was in Ru-bio’s office, the same office where Rubio had beaten and interrogated Schmidt. The Peruvian written “confession” was dated January 16, 1976, 5:45 p. m. The agents testified that at the first meeting Schmidt told them that his role in the whole thing was that of an adventurer, that he had nothing to do with cocaine, and that he was simply there to attach the cocaine canister to the bottom of the Santa Mercedes. At the time of the first interview, Schmidt believed that the substance of his statements to Peruvian authorities had been relayed to the DEA agents. Rubio testified that he had talked to Agent Hamm before any American talked to Schmidt. Schmidt testified that during the course of the first interview, one of the DEA agents told him that they had all the information from PIP.
A second interview took place on February 2, with Agents Boggs and Hamm, and a third on Feburary 3, with Agent Garland also present. Agent Boggs testified that Schmidt made no incriminating admissions at the February 2 meeting. According to Agent Garland, Schmidt was more reticent on February 3 than he had been at the first meeting, but after he had been admonished that he had caused danger to the vessel by attaching the canister too close to the rudder, Schmidt told the agents that he had not meant to endanger anyone’s life.
As the majority opinion observes, Schmidt is both well educated and intelligent. He was not afraid of the DEA agents. The agents gave him a Miranda warning, and it is evident that he understood the warning. No contention is made that the statements to the DEA agents were taken in violation of the Miranda rule.
In my view, the conditions under which the statements were made to the DEA agents were inherently coercive and the making of the statements was directly attributable to the confession that the Peruvian authorities had extracted by torture. Schmidt was in a Peruvian prison, and was awaiting criminal process under Peruvian law. He knew that the Peruvian authorities had theretofore told the DEA agents about what they had learned during his incarceration and abuse.
From the earliest days of our Republic, confessions were not admissible unless “the confession is made freely, voluntarily and without compulsion or inducement of any sort.” (Wilson v. United States (1896) 162 U.S. 613, 623, 16 S.Ct. 895, 899, 40 L.Ed. 1090; Bram v. United States (1897) 168 U.S. 532, 548, 18 S.Ct. 183, 42 L.Ed. 568.) Even without the grueling treatment that he had received at the hands of Peruvian authorities, interrogation by the DEA agents was coercive. Schmidt’s situation with the DEA was far more coercive than that of the defendant in Bram, supra, in which the Supreme Court held that the inculpatory admissions made to a foreign police officer violated his privilege against self-incrimination.
Bram was the First Officer of an American vessel on a voyage during which the Captain of the vessel, the Captain’s wife, and the Second Mate were all brutally murdered. Suspicion first focused upon Seaman Brown, who said to some of his shipmates that he saw Bram kill the Captain as he was watching through a window in the cabin. While in custody in Halifax, first Brown and then Bram were questioned by a Halifax police officer. Bram was stripped of his clothing, but was not in any other way abused or intimidated. The examining officer testified that he offered nothing in the way of any inducements, nor did he attempt to exercise any influence to persuade Bram to respond to the interrogation. During the course of the interview, the officer told Bram that he had talked to Brown and that Brown had accused him of murder. He testified that Bram replied, “He could not have seen me; where was he?” The officer responded, “He states he was at the wheel.” Bram answered, “Well, he could not see me from there.” The officer said that he then told Bram that he did not think Bram could, have committed the crime alone, and sought to have Bram name his accomplice so that he would “not have the blame of this horrible crime on your own shoulders.” Bram answered that *1070he did not know anything about the crime, but that he thought Brown was the murderer.
The Court said that “the situation of the accused, and the nature of the communication made to him by the detective, necessarily overthrows any possible implication that his reply to the detective could have been the result of a purely voluntary mental action; that is to say, when all the surrounding circumstances are considered in their true relations, not only is the claim that the statement was voluntary overthrown, but the impression is irresistibly produced that it must necessarily have been the result of either hope of fear, or both, operating on the mind,” (168 U.S. at 562, 18 S.Ct. at 194.)
Schmidt’s confession to the DEA agents on January 16 was made during a twenty-minute interval between abusive interrogation rounds by the Peruvian officials. “[With] the state of mind of one situated as was the prisoner when the confession was made, how in reason can it be said that the answer that he gave and which was required by the situation was wholly voluntary and in no manner influenced by the force of hope or fear? To so conclude would be to deny the necessary relation of cause and effect.” (Bram v. United States, supra, 168 U.S. at 562-63, 18 S.Ct. at 194.)
Here, as in Clewis v. Texas (1967) 386 U.S. 707, 87 S.Ct. 1338, 18 L.Ed.2d 423, there was “no break in the stream of events” from the time Schmidt was taken into custody by the Peruvian authorities to the time he made the first statement on January 16 and his later statement on February 3 or 4, 1976, to the DEA agents. Upon the facts found by the district court, the combination of circumstances “ ‘is so inherently coercive that its very existence is irreconcilable with the possession of mental freedom by a lone suspect against whom its full coercive force is brought to bear.’ Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U.S. 143, 154, 64 S.Ct. 921, 88 L.Ed. 1192.” (Reck v. Pate (1961) 367 U.S. 433, 442, 81 S.Ct. 1541, 1547, 6 L.Ed.2d 948. Accord Leyra v. Denno (1954) 347 U.S. 556, 74 S.Ct. 716, 98 L.Ed. 948; Fikes v. Alabama (1957) 352 U.S. 191, 77 S.Ct. 281, 1 L.Ed.2d 246.)
The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that successive confessions by a defendant whose earlier confessions were involuntarily obtained are inadmissible under the due process clause where the coercive effect of the first confession was a significant factor influencing the later confessions. (E. g., Clewis v. Texas, supra, 386 U.S. 707, 87 S.Ct. 1338, 18 L.Ed.2d 423; Culombe v. Connecticut, supra, 367 U.S. 568, 81 S.Ct. 1860, 6 L.Ed.2d 1037; Malinski v. New York (1945) 324 U.S. 401, 65 S.Ct. 781, 89 L.Ed. 1029; Beecher v. Alabama (1972) 408 U.S. 234, 92 S.Ct. 2282, 33 L.Ed.2d 317; Brown v. Mississippi (1936) 297 U.S. 278, 56 S.Ct. 461, 80 L.Ed. 682.)
The majority correctly points out that the Supreme Court has never gone so far as to hold that the making of a confession under circumstances which preclude its use perpetually disables the confessor from making a usable confession. The question is whether there was continued influence of the earlier prior confession which vitiated the later one. That determination depends upon the totality of circumstances. “The effect of earlier abuse may be so clear as to forbid any other inference than that it dominated the mind of the accused to such an extent that the later confession is involuntary.” (Lyons v. Oklahoma (1944) 322 U.S. 596, 603, 64 S.Ct. 1208, 1213, 88 L.Ed. 1481.) When a first confession is not made under circumstances involving physical brutality, threats of physical brutality, terror-arousing tactics, and other such “obvious, crude devices” (Culombe v. Connecticut, supra, 367 U.S. at 622, 81 S.Ct. 1860) and where the second confession is taken under nonoppressive circumstances, substantially removed in time and place from the first confession, a later confession may be free from the taint of the first. (E. g., United States v. Bayer (1947) 331 U.S. 532, 67 S.Ct. 1394, 91 L.Ed. 1654 (first confession made after incommunicado military detention; second confession made six months later to FBI agent); Knott v. Howard (1st Cir. 1975) 511 F.2d 1060 (first confession with*1071out Miranda warnings; second confession substantially removed from first in both time and place); United States v. Thor (5th Cir. 1975) 512 F.2d 811 (confession given to California authorities after four-day delay in taking defendant before a magistrate followed by second confession a few weeks later to federal officers in Texas).)1
I assume that the DEA agents were not conducting a joint operation with the Peruvian authorities. Of course, if the DEA agents had been undertaking a cooperative venture in obtaining the statements of Schmidt, all of the confessions would have been patently illegal. The lack of some kind of joint venture between American and Peruvian authorities, however, in no way avoids the impact of the treatment of Schmidt by Peruvian authorities upon the responses by him to questioning of the DEA agents. Here, as in Westover v. United States, a companion case to Miranda v. State of Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 494-97, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, the two law enforcement authorities were legally distinct. “Despite the fact that the FBI agents gave warnings at the outset of their interview, from Westover’s point of view the warnings came at the end of the interrogation process. Under these circumstances, an intelligent waiver of constitutional rights cannot be assumed.” (384 U.S. at 496, 86 S.Ct. at 1639.) “We do not suggest that law enforcement authorities are precluded from questioning any individual who has been held for a period of time by other authorities and interrogated by them without appropriate warnings. A different case would be presented if an accused were taken into custody by the second authority, removed both in time and place from his original surroundings, and then adequately advised of his rights and given an opportunity to exercise them. But here the FBI interrogation was conducted immediately following the state interrogation in the same police station — in the same compelling surroundings. Thus, in obtaining a confession from Westover the federal authorities were the beneficiaries of the pressure applied by the local in-custody interrogation. In these circumstances the giving of warnings alone was not sufficient to protect the privilege.”2
Exclusion of confessions obtained as these were does not in any way depend upon a judicial attempt to regulate the conduct and practices of Peruvian law enforcement officials. Neither the privilege against self-incrimination nor the due process clause protected Schmidt from the conduct of the Peruvian authorities. Both due process and the Fifth Amendment prevent American authorities from taking advantage of information extracted from Schmidt by the Peruvians and from admission against him of the fruits of those confessions in a federal trial. The means used to obtain Schmidt’s confessions offend the principles of “justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental.” (Brown v. Mississippi, supra, 297 U.S. 278, 56 S.Ct. 461, 464, *107280 L.Ed. 682.) “It would be difficult to conceive of methods more revolting to the sense of justice than those taken to procure the confessions of [Schmidt], and the use of the confessions thus obtained as the basis for conviction and sentence was a clear denial of due process.” (Id. at 285-86, 56 S.Ct. at 465.)
II
I turn to the questions .raised by the objections to the admissibility of the physical evidence.
Solely under the compulsion of Stonehill v. United States (9th Cir. 1968) 405 F.2d 738, I concur in the majority’s conclusion that the physical evidence other than the metal canister containing cocaine found on the Santa Mercedes was admissible. That evidence was discovered by Peruvian authorities before Schmidt had made any confessions to anyone. The district court determined that this evidence was obtained by Peruvian authorities under circumstances which, if obtained by American authorities, would have violated the Fourth Amendment. Applying Stonehill, however, the district court held that the foreign “silver platter” doctrine applied, and the evidence was accordingly admissible. If the question were open in this Circuit, I would adopt the reasoning of Judge Browning, dissenting in Stonehill. (405 F.2d at 747, et seq.)3
The motion to suppress the canister attached to the Santa Mercedes presents very different issues from suppression of the other physical evidence. The district court never reached the question whether the finding of the canister was the product of confessions made to the DEA agents or to Peruvian authorities, because it held that the statements to the DEA agents were voluntary and the silver platter doctrine applied to insulate the search of the Santa Mercedes from illegal confessions obtained by the Peruvians as well as from the illegal searches conducted by the Peruvian authorities. For the same reasons, the district court did not consider the question whether the canister should have been suppressed as the fruit of the “poisoned tree” confessions.
The first issue which must be addressed is whether the physical evidence found as a result of a coerced confession must be excluded under the fruit of the poisoned tree doctrine. The precise question has not yet been definitively answered by the Supreme Court. However, the rationale of the cases applying the doctrine leads inevitably to the conclusion that physical evidence obtained as a result of a coerced confession is inadmissible.
The reasoning was expressed by Mr. Justice Holmes in Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States (1920) 251 U.S. 385, 40 S.Ct. 182, 64 L.Ed. 319, in explaining why the Government could not make use of information obtained during an unlawful search to subpoena from the victims the very documents illegally viewed: “The 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. ... If knowledge of them is gained from an independent source, they may be proved like any others, but the knowledge gained by the Government’s own wrong cannot be used by it in the way proposed.” (251 U.S. at 392, 40 S.Ct. at 183. ) The same rationale was used in Wong Sun v. United States (1963) 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441, holding that inculpatory statements obtained by an entry in violation of the Fourth Amendment must be excluded as the fruit of the illegal entry. “[Vjerbal evidence which derives so immediately from an unlawful entry and an unauthorized arrest as the officers’ action in the present case is no less the ‘fruit’ of official illegality than the more common tangible fruits of the unwarranted intrusion. . . . Nor do the policies underlying the exclusionary rule invite any logical *1073distinction between physical and verbal evidence. Either in terms of deterring lawless conduct by federal officers [citation omitted], or of closing the doors of the federal courts to any use of evidence unconstitutionally obtained [citation omitted], the danger in relaxing the exclusionary rules in the case of verbal evidence would seem too great to warrant introducing such a distinction.” (371 U.S. at 485-86, 83 S.Ct. at 416.)
The poisoned tree principle was extended in Harrison v. United States (1968) 392 U.S. 219, 88 S.Ct. 2008, 20 L.Ed.2d 1047, to foreclose reception of a defendant’s testimony at an earlier trial which was induced by the admission against him in the same trial of an illegally obtained confession.
No distinction either in logic or in principle exists between excluding inculpatory admissions obtained as the result of an illegal intrusion into a person’s home (Wong Sun) and excluding physical evidence that was obtained as a result of coerced confessions. That verbal admissions in Wong Sun were obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment and that the physical evidence in this case was obtained in violation of Schmidt’s Fifth Amendment and due process rights makes no constitutional difference in applying the exclusionary rule. (E. g., The Government of Virgin Islands v. Gereau (3d Cir. 1974) 502 F.2d 914; People v. Schader (1969) 71 Cal.2d 761, 80 Cal.Rptr. 1, 457 P.2d 841. See also Model Code of Evidence, Rule 505, Comment c (1942). Cf. Gladden v. Holland (9th Cir. 1966) 366 F.2d 580 (guilty plea induced by involuntary confession set aside; neither the confession, nor any incriminating statements made during interrogation, nor the fruits thereof, could be used on trial).)
The majority opinion correctly observes that the canister of cocaine would be admissible if it had been discovered by evidence developed from an untainted, independent source. However, the Government bears a heavy burden to show that the seizure of the canister was not the product of coerced confessions, but of such other independent and untainted sources. (E. g., Harrison v. United States, supra, 392 U.S. at 224-25, 88 S.Ct. 2008; Alderman v. United States (1969) 394 U.S. 165, 183, 89 S.Ct. 961, 22 L.Ed.2d 176.)
We need not and should not decide whether the Government carried its burden because that issue was never addressed by the district court. The majority’s gratuitous comment that the canister would have been discovered in any event is no more than conjecture. The district court should decide in the first instance whether the Government has met its burden of proving that the recovery of the canister was not the fruit of Schmidt’s confessions to the DEA agents.4 As the majority opinion acknowledges, the record established prima facie that the discovery of the canister was traceable to Schmidt’s confessions to the DEA agents. For this reason, it is unnecessary for the district court to reach the question, heretofore unresolved, whether the silver platter doctrine can be extended to permit the use by federal agents of illegal confessions obtained by foreign governments for the purpose of obtaining physical evidence.5 Even if it were assumed, ar*1074guendo, that any American use of Schmidt’s confessions to the Peruvians was not constitutionally forbidden, those confessions could not be considered a wholly independent and untainted source justifying search and seizure of the canister.
I would reverse the conviction for prejudicial error in the admission of the coerced confessions to the DEA agents. I would also vacate the order denying the motion to suppress the canister and direct the district court to make the initial determination whether the Government carried its heavy burden of proof to establish that the canister was found solely on the basis of information obtained by means independent of the coerced confessions.

. This case bears no resemblance to cases cited in the majority opinion such as United States v. Toral (9th Cir. 1976) 536 F.2d 893, and Tanner v. Vincent (2d Cir. 1976) 541 F.2d 932, in which the sole coercion was implied from the failure to give adequate Miranda warnings when the defendant first confessed, followed by a later confession after full Miranda warnings were given. To the same effect, United States v. Knight (2d Cir. 1968) 395 F.2d 971 (inculpatory statements made by defendant in his home to local police without Miranda warnings; later statements to FBI agents after Miranda warnings); United States v. Shea (9th Cir. 1970) 436 F.2d 740 (first statement made to Brazilian authorities without Miranda warnings; second statement made five days later after Miranda warnings to American authorities in New York). Cotton v. United States (9th Cir. 1967) 371 F.2d 385 is not in point. The sole question in Cotton was the admissibility of statements made without Miranda warnings prior to the effective date of Miranda.

. The majority’s statement that Schmidt’s legal training was more than adequate to impute to him knowledge that his prior confession to Peruvian naval authorities and his forced signature on the confession prepared by the PIP were inadmissible in any American prosecution cannot be a factor in insulating the confessions to the DEA agents from the effects of the Peruvian mistreatment. Indeed, the observation is ironic, in view of the fact that the government tried to obtain admission of the Peruvian confessions in Schmidt’s trial.

. I disagree with the majority’s characterization that Schmidt had “voluntarily” led the Peruvian police to the location of his clothing on the beach. I am unable to equate Schmidt’s trip to the beach in the company of five Peruvian guards armed with machine guns with a voluntary excursion.

. See Brewer v. Williams (1977) 430 U.S. 387, 406-07, n. 12, 97 S.Ct. 1232, 1243, 51 L.Ed.2d 424: “The District Court stated that its decision ‘does not touch upon the issue of what evidence, if any, beyond the incriminating statements themselves must be excluded as “fruit of the poisonous tree” ’ 375 F.Supp. 170, 185, D.C. We, too, have no occasion to address this issue . . . . While neither Wil liams’ incriminating statements themselves nor any testimony describing his having led the police to the victim’s body can constitutionally be admitted into evidence, evidence of where the body was found and of its condition might well be admissible on the theory that the body would have been discovered in any event, even had incriminating statements not been elicited from Williams. Cf. Kiliough v. United States, 119 U.S.App.D.C. 10, 336 F.2d 929. In the event that a retrial is instituted, it will be for the state courts in the first instance to determine whether particular items of evidence may be admitted.”

. Stonehill v. United States, supra, 405 F.2d 738, 9 Cir., upon which the district court relied, did not involve due process violations or the violation of the defendant’s privilege against self-incrimination. The decision revived the silver platter doctrine only in connection with *1074searches and seizures by foreign governments, which, if conducted in the United States, would have been a violation of the Fourth Amendment.