Court Opinion

ID: 9422276
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:01:56.877575+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:35.558046
License: Public Domain

*637Mr. Justice Douglas,
with whom Mr. Justice Black agrees, concurring.
I find this case a simple one. As my Brother Brennan states, it is controlled by many of our decisions concerning confessions unlawfully obtained. It is also controlled by the principle some of us have urged upon the Court in several prior cases, including Crooker v. California, 357 U. S. 433, 441 (dissenting opinion); Ashdown v. Utah, 357 U. S. 426, 431 (dissenting opinion); Cicenia v. Lagay, 357 U. S. 504, 511 (dissenting opinion); Spano v. New York, 360 U. S. 315, 324 (concurring opinion).1 That principle is that any accused — whether rich or poor — has the right to consult a lawyer before talking with the police; and if he makes the request for a lawyer and it is refused, he is denied “the Assistance of Counsel for his defence” guaranteed by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments.
The police first descended on petitioner on a Saturday afternoon. By ten that night — at the latest — he was in “custody.” He asked to see an attorney. That request was callously turned aside. The testimony of Officer Rome exposes the critical issue in the case:
“Q. Up until Monday night Culombe hadn't seen a lawyer, had he? A. No, sir.
“Q. He had asked to see a lawyer, hadn’t he?
“A. Yes, sir.
“Q. Didn’t you tell him that he could see a lawyer when you got good and ready to let him see him?
“A. No, sir.
“Q. Well, when he asked to see a lawyer did he see a lawyer? A. No, sir.
*638“Q. Did you allow him to go to a telephone to call a lawyer? A. There was a telephone right there. He didn’t have the name of an attorney to call.
“Q. Well, there are a large number of Hartford lawyers’ names in the Hartford telephone directory.
“A. Yes, sir.
“Q. Did you offer him the use of the directory to find out the name of a lawyer to call?
“A. We were told that he couldn’t read.
“Q. Oh, you were told that he couldn’t read?
“A. Yes, sir.
“Q. Who told you that? A. He did.
“Q. Well, then, before I asked the question here in the courtroom, you had information that he couldn’t read?
“A. After I talked with him.
“Q. So, therefore, a telephone directory would have been of no use to him? That is what you mean by the answer? A. If what he told me was the truth, yes, sir.
“Q. Did you tell him that he could have gotten in touch with Mr. Cosgrove, the Public Defender for this court?
“A. I make it my business never to mention any attorneys. It is up to them to mention their attorney.
“Q. This man was in the hands of the police on a serious investigation. He said that he wanted a lawyer and you did nothing to help him? A. I told him he could have a lawyer if he told me who he wanted me to call.
“Q. Did you tell him that? A. Yes, sir.
“Q. Didn’t Culombe tell you on Monday night, 'If that is the way you operate up here I want to get in touch with a lawyer,’ and you replied, ‘We will *639let you get in touch with one at the right time, not until then.’
“A. No, sir.
“Q. But there was talk about a lawyer? A. Yes, sir.”
Petitioner is illiterate and mentally defective — a moron or an imbecile. He spent six years in the third grade and left school at the age of sixteen. He has twice been in state institutions for the feeble-minded.
He did not see an attorney until six days after he was first arrested and after he had confessed to the police. During all this time the police questioned him until their questioning produced the confession on which his present conviction is based.
It is said that if we enforced the guarantee of counsel by allowing a person, who is arrested, to obtain legal advice before talking with the police, we “would effectively preclude police questioning” (Crooker v. California, supra, 441) and “would constrict state police activities in a manner that in many instances might impair their ability to solve difficult eases.” Cicenia v. Lagay, supra, 509. It is said that “any lawyer worth his salt will tell the suspect in no uncertain terms to make no statement to police under any circumstances.” Watts v. Indiana, 338 U. S. 49, 57, 59 (concurring opinion). In other words, an attorney is likely to inform his client, clearly and unequivocally, that “No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” as provided in the Fifth Amendment. This is the “evil” to be feared from contact between a police suspect and his lawyer.
Interrogation of people by the police is an indispensable aspect of criminal investigations. But there is no right to interrogate — by the police any more than by the courts — when the privilege against self-incrimination is invoked. Knowing this, the police have set up in its place a system of administrative detention that has no consti*640tutional justification. It is detention incommunicado, a system which breeds oppression. See Haley v. Ohio, 332 U. S. 596. In the present case this illiterate petitioner was not given the modicum of protection afforded in England where a prisoner is warned that statements made may be used against him2 and where the police are enjoined not to hammer away at a prisoner nor even to cross-examine him when he makes a voluntary statement except to clear up ambiguities. See Devlin, The Criminal Prosecution in England (1958), pp. 137-141. The flow of cases coming here shows that detention incommunicado is often accompanied by illegality and brutality. The arrival of an attorney is a specific against these proscribed practices.
If this accused were a son of a wealthy or prominent person, and demanded a lawyer, can there be any doubt that his request would have been heeded? But petitioner has no social status. He comes from a lowly environment. No class or family is his ally. His helplessness before the police when he is without “the guiding hand of counsel” (Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, 69) emphasizes the lack *641of equal protection inherent in the dwarfed and twisted construction we have given the constitutional guarantee of the assistance of counsel. Cf. McNeal v. Culver, 365 U. S. 109, 117 (concurring opinion).
The system of police interrogation under secret detention falls heaviest on the weak and illiterate — the least articulate segments of our society. See American Civil Liberties Union Report, Secret Detention by the Chicago Police (1959), pp. 19-21. The indigent who languishes in jail for want of bail, cf. Bandy v. United States, 81 S. Ct. 197 (memorandum opinion), or the member of a minority group without status or power 3 is the one who suffers most when we leave the constitutional right to counsel to the discretion of the police. That right can only be protected by a broad guarantee of counsel that applies across the board to rich and poor alike. See Reck v. Pate, ante, p. 444 (concurring opinion).
I believe that the denial of petitioner’s request that he be given the right of counsel was a violation of his constitutional rights. I therefore concur in the judgment of the Court reversing the conviction.

 Cf. In re Oliver, 333 U. S. 257; In re Groban, 352 U. S. 330, 337 (dissenting opinion); Anonymous v. Baker, 360 U. S. 287, 298 (dissenting opinion).

 “The form of caution expresses two things. First, there is the reminder that the accused is not obliged to talk: secondly, there is the warning that, if he does talk, what he says will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence. From the lawyer’s point of view both are statements of the obvious. Just as an accused or suspect is never obliged to talk, so the police are always at liberty to take down what an accused or suspect says and give it in evidence. The real significance of the caution is that it is, so to speak, a declaration of war. By it the police announce that they are no longer representing themselves to the man they are questioning as the neutral inquirer whom the good citizen ought to assist; they are the prosecution and are without right, legal or moral, to further help from the accused; no man, innocent or guilty, need thereafter reproach' himself for keeping silent, for that is what they have just told him he may do. The caution, the charge, the arrest — any of these three things show that hostilities have begun and that the suspect has formally become the accused.” Devlin, The Criminal Prosecution in England (1958), pp. 36-37.

 “Police officers are charged with the fair and impartial administration of the law. Yet, in many localities, there are sharp and shocking contrasts in the kind of ‘law’ administered to different groups of citizens. . . . [P]eople lacking special status or ‘pull’ may be pushed around, roughed up, arrested on vague and even false charges, and treated generally as second-class citizens. This is especially true of dwellers in slum areas with high crime rates — and even more especially of poverty-ridden Negroes and other minority groups— where police raids on tenement homes are sometimes made on slight suspicion without the benefit of search warrants.” Deutsch, The Trouble with Cops (1955), p. 63.