Court Opinion

ID: 9647547
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:39:45.054274+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:23:49.728826
License: Public Domain

WELLIVER, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. The dispositive issue in this case is whether, in ligjit of the totality of circumstances, appellant knowingly and intelligently waived his Fifth Amendment right to counsel before making certain incriminating statements that were admitted into evidence at trial. Chief among the pertinent circumstances affecting the purported waiver is the conscious failure of the sheriff and the prosecutor and their subordinates to inform appellant that his retained counsel had requested to consult with him prior to police interrogation. The principal opinion obfuscates the seriousness of this omission, I submit, by ignoring both relevant evidence in the record and the weight of legal precedent on this issue. I am convinced that the statements in question are the fruit of a conspiracy of deception and evasion orchestrated by the prosecutor and the sheriff in order to create a situation likely to induce appellant into making incriminating statements without the assistance of counsel. For this reason, I believe the circuit court erred in admitting the statements.
The principal opinion casually dismisses the factual premises underlying appellant’s Fifth Amendment claims by portraying Hendrix, the assistant public defender, as a meddling interloper and denying any misconduct on the part of the sheriff or the prosecutor. The record belies the Court’s characterization of these crucial issues. Under the law as it existed at the time of *161appellant’s arrest, Hendrix must be viewed as appellant’s attorney at all relevant times in this proceeding. A statute then in effect provided.
A person, or someone on the person’s behalf, who is charged or detained in connection with a felony or a misdemean- or for which the punishment of a jail sentence is provided by law, in a circuit having a public defender, may request that the public defender represent him, and if the public defender is satisfied that such a person is indigent, the defender shall furnish appropriate representation.
§ 600.061, RSMo 1978 (repealed 1982 Mo. Laws 697). It is beyond dispute that Hendrix, having been approached by appellant’s mother at his direction, was entitled to represent appellant in view of the fact that he had been declared indigent in connection with other criminal charges then pending. So incontrovertible is this fact that the State has never challenged the matter. It is troubling indeed that the principal opinion omits any mention of this most relevant statute since it figured so prominently in the briefs.
The principal opinion also ignores record evidence relied on by appellant to establish police and prosecutorial misconduct. The opinion mentions only the telephone conversation between Hendrix and Sheriff Ue-binger on September 1, 1981 in which the sheriff assured Hendrix he would notify her when appellant was arrested. Following that conversation, on September 3, 1981, Hendrix encountered Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Kohl in a judge’s chambers and repeated her request that she be informed when appellant was arrested and before any questioning. Kohl did not disclose that he had advised the sheriff not to honor her request. On September 8, after learning of appellant’s arrest from newspaper reports, Hendrix again telephoned Sheriff Uebinger. The tape of the conversation demonstrates that the sheriff agreed to notify her when appellant arrived at the jail:
Ms. Hendrix: Okay, and you will notify me so I can go down and speak with him when you get him there?
Sheriff Uebinger: Right.
Later that day, however, Hendrix learned from another source that appellant had been brought to the St. Charles County jail. She immediately went to the jail, arriving at approximately 9:30 p.m., and requested but was denied permission to see appellant. Hendrix telephoned Kohl, and in the recorded conversation Kohl indicated that she was being denied access to appellant at his orders because he believed she had no right to see him. Hendrix then located an associate circuit judge who called the jail and directed that Hendrix be permitted to see appellant. Hendrix finally saw appellant at approximately 11 p.m. on September 8. However, during the span of time Hendrix waited to see appellant, deputies had again questioned appellant and he had prepared and signed a third statement, this one identical in substance to the one obtained on the plane. The circuit court later sustained appellant’s motion to suppress this statement.
After reviewing the evidence in this case, the Eastern District held that appellant could not have intelligently waived his right to counsel because he was never informed of his attorney’s efforts to consult with him. I agree. Courts in a number of jurisdictions have held that a criminal suspect cannot be held to have knowingly and intelligently waived his right to counsel when he was not informed that his attorney had requested, but had been denied an opportunity to consult with him prior to police interrogation. See Weber v. State, 467 A.2d 674 (Del.1983); People v. Smith, 93 Ill.2d 179, 66 Ill.Dec. 412, 442 N.E.2d 1325 (1982), cert. denied, 461 U.S. 937, 103 S.Ct. 2107, 77 L.Ed.2d 312 (1983); State v. Matthews, 408 So.2d 1274 (La.1982); Commonwealth v. McKenna, 355 Mass. 313, 244 N.E.2d 560 (1969); State v. Haynes, 288 Or. 59, 602 P.2d 272 (1979), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 945, 100 S.Ct. 2175, 64 L.Ed.2d 802 (1980); State v. Jones, 19 Wash.App. 850, 578 P.2d 71 (1978). These decisions do not go so far as to say that Miranda rights can only be waived in the *162presence of counsel, a proposition this Court has rejected previously. State v. Richter, 647 S.W.2d 513, 518-19 (Mo. banc 1983); State v. Buckles, 636 S.W.2d 914, 923-24 (Mo. banc 1982); State v. McConnell, 529 S.W.2d 185 (Mo.App.1975). Nor do they stand for the proposition that an attorney can invoke his client’s Fifth Amendment rights, as such rights are personal to the holder. See United States v. Nobles, 422 U.S. 225, 233, 95 S.Ct. 2160, 2167, 45 L.Ed.2d 141 (1975). Rather, they reflect the sound judgment that in certain cases information regarding an attorney’s request to see his client is likely to have such a material bearing on the client’s decision to waive his counsel rights as to require its affirmative disclosure:
To pass up an abstract offer to call some unknown lawyer is very different from refusing to talk with an identified attorney actually available to provide at least initial assistance and advice, whatever might be arranged in the long run. A suspect indifferent to the first offer may well react quite differently to the second. If the attorney appears on request of one’s family, the fact may inspire additional confidence.
State v. Haynes, supra, 602 P.2d at 278 (footnote omitted).
Considering the totality of circumstances surrounding appellant’s purported waiver, I am convinced that he could not act knowingly and intelligently without being advised of his counsel’s requests. The record in this case leaves no doubt that the prosecutor and the sheriff conspired to induce appellant into making incriminating statements without the assistance of counsel. Through their omissions and deceptions, Kohl and Sheriff Uebinger led appellant to believe that he did not have counsel. The circuit court’s finding that the deputies who took the statements from appellant did not know that he had counsel is irrelevant. To permit evasion of constitutional rights merely by assigning uninformed deputies to carry out that which otherwise could not be done, is to promote unconscionable practices. See Weber v. State, supra, at 686.
Notwithstanding its disclaimer, the principal opinion today puts this Court’s imprimatur on a wholly unsavory example of official misconduct. “[Society’s interest in effective and meaningful criminal investigations,” supra, at-, does not require that we sanction police and prosecutorial practices that deny criminal suspects fundamental fairness. Retrial is a small price to pay for maintaining the integrity of our criminal justice system.
I would reverse and remand for retrial.