Court Opinion

ID: 9479525
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:20:52.865452+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:06.055609
License: Public Domain

STAPLETON, Circuit Judge,
concurring and dissenting:
I join the court’s opinion with one exception. Although I agree with the court’s discussion of Oregon v. Bradshaw, 462 U.S. 1039, 103 S.Ct. 2830, 77 L.Ed.2d 405 (1983), I remain unpersuaded by its conclusion that the Supreme Court’s and this court’s decisions in Miller v. Fenton, 474 U.S. 104, 106 S.Ct. 445, 88 L.Ed.2d 405 (1985), on remand, 796 F.2d 598 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 989, 107 S.Ct. 585, 93 L.Ed.2d 587 (1986), mandate the conclusion that a remand is unwarranted here because voluntariness is entirely a “legal” issue and as such subject to plenary review. Although I assume that a trial court’s determination on the issue of the voluntariness of a waiver of a constitutional right is subject to plenary review, I conclude that we should remand to the district court so that a decision on the voluntariness of Ms. Velasquez’s waiver can be made in the first instance by one who has had direct exposure to the relevant evidence.
Because Chief Judge Schwartz found that Velasquez had knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily waived her rights to counsel and to remain silent about the subject matter of the investigation before Agent Glanz lied to her, he did not consider the effect those lies had on the voluntariness of that waiver. Indeed, his opinion expressly declines to express a view on that issue. The court holds, and I agree, that Bradshaw’s second prong could not be fulfilled on this record at any point before Agent Glanz lied to Velasquez. Having concluded that the district court did not apply Bradshaw correctly to the issue of the voluntariness of Ms. Velasquez’s waiver, the court nonetheless decides that remand on the issue of voluntariness is unnecessary because Miller v. Fenton, 474 U.S. 104, 106 S.Ct. 445, 88 L.Ed.2d 405 (1985), on remand, 796 F.2d 598 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 989, 107 S.Ct. 585, 93 L.Ed.2d 587 (1986) determined that that issue is one of law, subject to plenary review, and that a district court resolution of that issue would be entitled to “no deference.” Typescript at 24 n. 8. I disagree and would remand to the district court so that Chief Judge Schwartz could make a finding on whether Velasquez’s waiver was voluntary.
In Miller, the Supreme Court held that the voluntariness of a confession was not a “factual” issue the resolution of which by a state court must be “presumed correct” by a federal court in a collateral attack proceeding under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). The Court specifically reserved the issue of whether the same is true with respect to the voluntariness of a waiver of constitutional rights. For present purposes, I will assume there is no difference between the two. I will also assume that we should conduct our review in this direct appeal in the same manner as we would were we reviewing a state trial court’s determination of a voluntariness issue.
I assume, without deciding, that if Chief Judge Schwartz, after considering the to*1093tality of the circumstances following Agent Glanz’s deceit, had determined that Velasquez’s waiver was or was not voluntary, our review of that decision would have been plenary.1 It does not follow, however, that there is no value in having a trial court resolve the issue in the first instance. Review of a determination of voluntariness is plenary because such a determination includes components that an appellate court is as competent as a trial court to address. However, there are other components of such a determination with respect to which the insight of the trial judge should not be forgone.
The Miller court observed that “the admissibility of a confession turns as much on whether the techniques for extracting the statements, as applied to this suspect, are compatible with a system that presumes innocence and assures that a conviction would not be secured by inquisitorial means as on whether the defendant’s will was in fact overborne.” 474 U.S. at 116, 106 S.Ct. at 452-53 (emphasis in original). As this statement indicates, the voluntariness inquiry has a “hybrid quality”; one component of that inquiry requires the court to focus on the conduct of the law enforcement officers while another requires that attention be paid to the state of mind of the person confessing. To be voluntary, a confession must meet two criteria: it must not be the product of an unacceptably coercive stratagem on the part of the police and it must be the product of a rational decisionmaking process, i.e., of a mind not “in fact overborne.”
The issue of whether a particular interrogation technique is beyond the bounds of tolerable conduct in a civilized society is not one of historic fact. Nevertheless, as the above-quoted statement suggests, even this issue must be addressed with “this [particular] suspect” in mind. What may be tolerable in the context of a person of considerable intellect may not be so in the context of one who the police should know possesses marginal mental capabilities. Thus, even with respect to this component of voluntariness, to the extent the personal characteristics of the suspect are a part of the inquiry, the process loses something when there is no input from a decisionmaker who has personally observed him or her.
The issue of whether a decision to confess or to waive a constitutional right is the product of rational choice or an overborne will has a substantial factual aspect; the state of mind of a particular individual at a particular time is a historic fact. Even this component of voluntariness, however, is not purely factual. Inevitably, engaging in this analysis requires the injection of normative values both in deciding what is meant by a “free and rational will” and what subsidiary factual determinations imply the presence or absence of such a will. See Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U.S. 568 at 604-605, 81 S.Ct. 1860 at 1880-81, 6 L.Ed.2d 1037 (1961) (opinion of Frankfurter, J.); Joseph D. Grano, Voluntariness, Free Will, and the Law of Confessions, 65 Va.L.Rev. 859, 880-890 (1979). See also Stephen J. Schulhofer, Confessions and the Court, 79 Mich.L.Rev. 865, 870 (1981) (voluntariness-due process test is a subtle mixture of factual and legal elements). Nevertheless, I think it apparent that a trial judge who has been personally exposed to the defendant and to all of the other relevant evidence is in a position to be of material assistance in deciding whether a particular individual’s state of mind was such that he or she should be held bound by the confession or waiver.
In short, I do not think the remand issue in this case should be answered by characterizing the issue as one of “law,” “fact,” or “mixed law and fact,” or by labeling the appropriate standard of review “plenary.” Rather, we should ask whether there is reason to believe the trial judge could be of *1094material assistance to us in deciding the relevant issues. If the question is thus posed, I believe there can be only one answer.
The record in this case contains expert psychiatric testimony indicating that Velasquez had an abnormal propensity for emotional imbalance and depression. The startling “news” that her lover had turned on her in exchange for his freedom may conceivably have deprived her of the ability to make a rational decision regarding whether she should give self-incriminating statements without a lawyer present. Given Chief Judge Schwartz’s personal exposure to Velasquez and other relevant evidence, I, as a reviewing judge, would like to have his views regarding the impact on Velasquez of Agent Glanz’s deceit. If he were to determine that her decision was not the product of rational will, I would find this case materially different than it is in the absence of any determination by the trial judge. For me, plenary review in this context means that we are free to reverse if our judgment on voluntariness differs from that of the trial judge; it does not mean that we are foreclosed from giving any deference to any assessment he might make regarding the effect of the deception on Velasquez.2
Accordingly, I would remand to the district court for a determination of the volun-tariness of Velasquez’s waiver of her right to have counsel present and to remain silent.

. In Patterson v. Cuyler, 729 F.2d 925, 931-22 (3d Cir.1984), this court held that, for the purposes of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), a state court’s finding on the question of the voluntariness of a waiver of Miranda rights is "factual” and thus considered presumptively correct. The court’s reasoning, however, was based on its conclusion that Supreme Court precedent had consistently viewed mixed questions of law and fact as "factual” for the purposes of § 2254(d). That conclusion may be undermined by the Supreme Court's holding in Miller that the mixed question of the voluntariness of a confession is not treated as a "factual” one under § 2254(d).

. While holding in Miller that its review was plenary, the Court nevertheless indicated that "a federal habeas court should give great weight to the considered conclusions" of the trial court. 474 U.S. at 112, 106 S.Ct. at 450.