Court Opinion

ID: 9693035
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:16:59.648372+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:02:29.315936
License: Public Domain

SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, J.
(dissenting). This case presents the following fact situation: Your adult son is injured, hospitalized and under arrest for allegedly committing a serious crime. You hire a lawyer who has previously represented your son. The lawyer goes to the police and advises them that she is your son’s attorney, that she wants to consult with your son and that your son is not to be questioned unless she is present.
In Wisconsin your son has a right to be taken promptly before a judge after arrest; he gets additional rights once the judicial process is initiated. Your son, however, is not taken before a judge as promptly as possible. Instead, the police use the day to question your son and get a confession.
*220In Wisconsin your son has a right — protected by the federal and state constitutions and the Wisconsin statutes — to be represented by counsel during police questioning. The police carefully and correctly advise your son that he has the right to a lawyer and that if he wants a lawyer one will be appointed for him at public expense to represent him before or during questioning. But the police do not tell your son that a lawyer whom you have hired is immediately available to speak with him. Your son is given no opportunity to accept or reject assistance from counsel hired for him. Indeed, the police deliberately keep the lawyer away from your son and question him, even after assuring the lawyer that they will not question him. Your son makes a statement.
The action the police take to prevent your son from knowing that his parents had hired a lawyer for him had only one possible motivation: to dissuade your son from exercising his constitutional right to speak with a lawyer.
The United States Supreme Court has said it will not intrude into the criminal processes of the state to condemn this kind of police conduct as a matter of federal law. The Court has declared that each state may adopt its own requirements for the conduct of its employees and officials as a matter of state law. Moran v. Burbine, 106 S. Ct. 1135, 1145 (1986). By not imposing a federal constitutional requirement on the states and by encouraging the states to adopt their own rules governing police conduct, the United States Supreme Court recognizes the importance of the state courts in protecting individual rights and societal interests in our federal system. Id. at 1148.
The majority struggles to show that the police conduct in this case fits within the letter of the law *221which entitles an accused to be represented during police questioning. But it is clear that the police conduct violates the spirit of the law. It is with good reason that the Wisconsin Constitution exhorts us that "the blessings of a free government can only be maintained by a firm adherence to justice ... and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.” Art. I, sec. 22.
While I am aware of and give due weight to the needs of law enforcement officers and the weighty social objectives of crime investigation, I conclude that this court demeans the defendant’s statutory and constitutional rights to consult with an attorney by giving its seal of approval to conduct that kept an accused from seeing a lawyer his family retained for him. I would suppress the confession.