Court Opinion

ID: 9488315
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:41:50.640233+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:49.085858
License: Public Domain

FAIRCHILD, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in affirmance. Applying the de novo standard, I have no difficulty in concluding that Baldwin’s decision to make a statement was not unconstitutionally induced.
Looking at the issue of voluntariness as a question of a mental state, I can agree that it is anomalous not to treat it as an issue of fact. Issues as to intent, knowledge, willfulness and the like, are treated as issues of fact. On review of a trial court finding on those issues, the appellate court is deferential, rejecting the finding only if clearly erroneous.
In the light of Miller v. Fenton, 474 U.S. 104, 106 S.Ct. 445, 88 L.Ed.2d 405 (1985), however, I do not think we are free to hold that the constitutional issue of voluntariness is an issue of fact. Miller, of course, was a habeas proceeding, challenging a state conviction, and not a federal criminal case. The analysis, said the Court, is whether “tactics for eliciting inculpatory statements must fall within the broad constitutional boundaries imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of fundamental fairness.” Id. at p. 110, 106 S.Ct. at p. 449. Is the issue different when the accused relies on the due process guaranteed to a federal defendant by the Fifth Amendment?
It is true that in the Miller context, the ultimate holding was that the issue of “volun-tariness” requires “independent federal determination.” Id. at pp. 110, 112, 113, 115, 106 S.Ct. at pp. 449, 450, 451, 452. The predicate of the holding, however, appears to be the character of the issue. Thus, “the ultimate issue of ‘voluntariness’ is a legal question requiring independent federal determination,” id. at p. 110, 106 S.Ct. at p. 449, “was a ‘mixed questio[n] of fact and law ’ subject to plenary federal review,” id. at p. 112, 106 S.Ct. at p. 450, “a legal inquiry requiring plenary federal review,” id. at p. 115, 106 S.Ct. at p. 452 (emphasis supplied).
The Court said:
In addition to considerations of stare decisis and congressional intent, the nature of the inquiry itself lends support to the conclusion that “voluntariness” is a legal question meriting independent consideration in a federal habeas corpus proceeding. Although sometimes framed as an issue of “psychological fact,” Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U.S. [568], at 603 [81 S.Ct. 1860, 1879, 6 L.Ed.2d 1037 (1961) ], the dispositive question of the voluntariness of a confession has always had a uniquely legal dimension.
Id. at pp. 115-16, 106 S.Ct. at p. 452.
It has been suggested that the issue might be classified as one of law for the purpose of requiring federal review in a habeas proceeding, but one of fact for the purpose of appellate review. Weidner v. Thieret, 866 F.2d 958, 961 (7th Cir.1989); Wilson v. O’Leary, 895 F.2d 378, 383 (7th Cir.1990); United States v. Wildes, 910 F.2d 1484, 1485 (7th Cir.1990).
The constitutional right of a defendant in a state criminal ease not to have a statement used against him unless it is voluntary must be virtually the same as that of a defendant in a criminal case in a federal court. I have seen no analysis which justifies treating vol-untariness as an issue of law when a habeas proceeding is before a district court, but an issue of fact when a court of appeals reviews a judgment of a federal district court.