Court Opinion

ID: 9741889
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:03:37.382035+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:27.033033
License: Public Domain

*491NETTESHEIM, J.
(dissenting). Because I conclude that Glenn S. Lale’s right to counsel on the attempted murder charge attached at his initial appearance on September 16, 1985, I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion. In the same breath, I must add that my disagreement lies as much with the supreme court’s choice of language in Jones v. State, 63 Wis. 2d 97, 216 N.W.2d 224 (1974), as it does with the majority opinion.
The language from Jones upon which the majority feels compelled to rest its conclusion that Lale’s right to counsel did not attach when the police questioned him on September 20 is the following:
If the line of demarcation is to be definite, the complaint or the warrant must be issued. Anything prior to that time falls on the wrong side of the line. Consequently, no constitutional right of Jones was violated because of absence of his counsel at the informal confrontation outside the district attorney’s office.
Id. at 105, 216 N.W.2d at 228.
Earlier decisions of the United States Supreme Court had mandated that counsel be provided to defendants subjected to lineup proceedings. See United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218 (1967); Gilbert v. California, 388 U.S. 263 (1967). Such a proceeding was deemed a "critical stage” of the prosecution. The per se exclusionary rule of these cases was not specifically limited to post-indictment identifications.
Subsequent Wisconsin cases concluded that the critical stage triggering the right to counsel was that point when the proceeding had "moved from a purely investigatory to an accusatorial stage.” See Hayes v. State, 46 Wis. 2d 93, 97, 175 N.W.2d 625, 627 (1970).
*492Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U.S. 682 (1972), substantially modified the Wade/Gilbert rule by limiting the right to counsel under the federal constitution to those lineups conducted after the commencement of an adversary judicial criminal proceeding. Wisconsin followed with State v. Taylor, 60 Wis. 2d 506, 210 N.W.2d 873 (1973), which withdrew the Hayes language requiring the presence of counsel or an explicit waiver of counsel at a lineup prior to the institution of formal charges. Taylor at 523, 210 N.W.2d at 882. Jones then followed with its statement that formal charges are equated with the issuance of the warrant or complaint — language which lies at the crux of this appeal.
While I agree with the supreme court’s result in Jones, the reach of its language was unnecessarily broad. The factual scenarios in Taylor and Jones were, for all practical and constitutional purposes, similar. In Taylor, the defendant had been arrested and was subjected to a lineup; in Jones, the defendant had been arrested and was subjected to' an interview in the district attorney’s office. When, in Taylor, the court found it sufficient to state that the right to counsel attached with commencement of formal proceedings, one wonders why, in Jones, it was necessary to further narrow that concept to the actual filing of the warrant or complaint.
Here, Lale was arrested on the attempted murder charge on September 15. On September 16, he was produced in the trial court as a result of this arrest and in response to the weapons charges contained in the written complaint then filed. The state advised Lale and the trial court that the attempted murder charge was to be filed and the court was requested to bear this fact in mind in setting bail. The critical *493distinguishing factor from Jones and Taylor is that here the state had invoked the judicial process against Lale and had committed itself on the record to its prosecution of the attempted murder charge against him.1
It is commonplace for defendants to be produced in court for purposes of a bail hearing after the district attorney has committed the state to prosecution but before the district attorney’s office has been able to generate the written complaint. This is a wise and desirable policy employed by trial courts and district attorneys throughout this state. This policy is commendable because it seeks to admit defendants to bail at the earliest possible moment, while also recognizing that district attorneys’ offices are, in many jurisdictions, overworked and understaffed and are not able to generate a complaint immediately upon the heels of an arrest.2
1 But the right to the presence of counsel should not be conditioned upon the convenience of the state and its ability to generate a criminal complaint in a timely fashion. Rather, this right should be measured from the standard fixed by Taylor — the commencement of formal proceedings. The later qualifying language of Jones failed to anticipate the very situation we have here — the commencement of judicial proceedings on an, as yet, unfiled charge coupled with the unequivo*494cal statement of the district attorney committing the state to prosecution on such a charge. Until the supreme court holds that the right to the presence of counsel does not apply in such a setting, we should not read the Jones holding in such an expansive manner.

The fact that some search warrants were still unexecuted and that certain reports had not been filed does not detract from the district attorney’s statement that the attempted murder charge would be forthcoming. Crimes are routinely the subject of continuing investigations, even after they are formally charged.

Moreover, this policy minimizes potential problems with sec. 970.01(2), Stats., requiring that a complaint be filed forthwith after a person is arrested without a warrant.