Court Opinion

ID: 9464114
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:25:18.47848+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:27.862745
License: Public Domain

*1133GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Before responding to custodial interrogation, seventeen-year-old Ben Chaney asked to contact his mother. Disregarding that request, the police interrogated Chaney and elicited incriminating statements. The question before us is whether the state may rely on statements thus obtained to secure Chaney’s criminal conviction. I would hold that it may not.
I.
Our nation has long abhorred involuntary confessions. We have refused to tolerate their use both because their inherent unreliability risks conviction of the innocent and because they flout the respect for individual human dignity manifested in the requirement that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”. U.S. Const. Amend. V. Neither the majority nor the state takes issue with the principie that a defendant’s involuntary confessions are not admissible in evidence.
Chaney marshals impressive support for his claim that his statements were involuntary. He was hundreds of miles from home, suffered severe psychological problems, and harbored extreme fear of southern law enforcement officials stemming partly from the fact that some among them had brutally murdered his brother.1 Ignoring Chaney’s request to call his mother, the police succeeded in eliciting incriminating statements.
Chaney’s involuntariness claim draws strength from Haynes v. Washington, 373 U.S. 503, 83 S.Ct. 1336, 10 L.Ed.2d 513 (1963). There the Supreme Court invalidated a conviction based upon a confession made after police had denied the suspect’s request to call his wife. The defendant made “no claim that he was physically abused, deprived of food or rest, or subjected to uninterrupted questioning for prolonged periods.” 373 U.S. at 504 n. 1, 83 S.Ct. at 1338. Nevertheless, the Court held that disregarding the request to call his wife rendered the statements involuntary.2
If, as Haynes indicates, conducting a sta-tionhouse interrogation after refusing an adult’s request to call his wife renders a subsequent confession involuntary, then surely refusing a psychologically disturbed minor’s request to call his mother goes far toward establishing the same result.3 Moreover, in the case at bar Chaney does not rely solely upon the inherent coerciveness of the situation, for he also adduced detailed and explicit medical testimony squarely supporting his claim that his statements could not have been voluntary.
II.
I would not, however, decide this case on the issue of voluntariness. There is a simpler and more reliable ground, one comprehended by the landmark decision in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602,16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). Miranda announced that police conducting custodial interrogation must scrupulously honor a suspect’s request to remain silent or to contact an attorney. Among the reasons for that requirement is that when police disregard such a request, the statements they subsequently elicit from the accused are unlikely to be voluntary. That is equally true of *1134requests by a minor to speak to his mother; indeed, it may be more true.4 As Justice Rehnquist has noted for the Supreme Court, “prolonged isolation from family or friends in a hostile setting . . might be sufficient to cause a defendant to accuse himself falsely.” Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U.S. 433, 448-49, 94 S.Ct. 2357, 2366, 41 L.Ed.2d 182 (1974). See also Haynes v. Washington, supra; Gallegos v. Colorado, 370 U.S. 49, 82 S.Ct. 1209, 8 L.Ed.2d 325 (1962); Blackburn v, Alabama, 361 U.S. 199, 206, 80 S.Ct. 274, 4 L.Ed.2d 242 (1960); Fikes v. Alabama, 352 U.S. 191, 197, 77 S.Ct. 281, 1 L.Ed.2d 246 (1957). I would apply Miranda’s salutary prophylactic rule and invalidate this conviction.
The case at bar provides an excellent illustration of- the value of this aspect of Miranda. As indicated above, Chaney’s displacement from home and his psychological makeup provided fertile ground for the application of subtle pressures. When confronted with numerous interrogating officials, Chaney’s one attempt to combat the inherently coercive environment of the South Carolina jail was his request to call his mother. It was predictable and, indeed, unavoidable that denying that request would significantly increase the likelihood that any statement would be involuntary.
Few, I hope, would take issue with the proposition that law enforcement officials should honor a seventeen-year-old’s request to call his mother before any interrogation. Long before the Miranda decision, the popular understanding was that every arrested person was entitled to one phone call. And the state readily concedes that the police would have been required to accede to a request for an attorney.5 The accused who requests his mother rather than his ever-available attorney is the less knowledgeable, more easily coerced person most in need of protection from police overreaching. It makes no sense to protect the knowledgeable accused from stationhouse coercion while abandoning the young person who knows no more than to ask for the one person he trusts, his mother.
In reaching its result, the majority simply ignores the substantial contrary authority. In People v. Burton, 6 Cal.3d 375, 99 Cal.Rptr. 1, 491 P.2d 793 (1971), the California Supreme Court provided a thoughtful discussion of the issue and forthrightly announced the appropriate standard:
[W]e hold that when, as in the instant case, a minor is taken into custody and is subjected to interrogation, without the presence of an attorney, his request to see one of his parents, made at any time prior to or during questioning, must, in the absence of evidence demanding a contrary conclusion, be construed to indicate that the minor suspect desires to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege. The police must cease custodial interrogation immediately
6 Cal.3d at 383-384, 99 Cal.Rptr. at 6, 491 P.2d at 798.
See also Commonwealth v. McCutchen, 463 Pa. 90, 343 A.2d 669 (1975), cert. denied, 424 U.S. 934, 96 S.Ct. 1147, 47 L.Ed.2d 341 (1976) (minor’s confession held inadmissible because he did not receive opportunity to contact parent; failure of minor to request parent held irrelevant); Lewis v. State, Ind., 288 N.E.2d 138 (1972) (same).6 But see State v. Young, 220 Kan. 541, 552 P.2d *1135905, 916 (1976) (honoring minor’s request to contact father, while the “better practice,” is not constitutionally required).
As an original matter, whether a police failure in this regard should require exclusion of the improperly adduced statements would present a controversial issue. I believe it should. No better method for encouraging police observance of reasonable standards has been suggested. Unless we are to return to the pre-Miranda days of futile, case-by-case inquiries into voluntariness — thus adding to our overcrowded dockets and removing much of the police incentive to act reasonably — we must adhere to the rule excluding statements made after the police have disregarded such a request for outside help. I remain convinced that steadfast enforcement of constitutional rights is the best way to achieve police observance of those rights and simultaneously to insure that justice is done. At any rate, Miranda remains the law of the land, and I know of no tenable reason for distinguishing between mother and lawyer in applying its mandate.

CONCLUSION

Ben Chaney presents a persuasive claim that his statements were involuntary. The majority rejects rather impressive medical testimony on this issue, labeling that testimony a manifestation of the “familiar semantic conflict” between the legal and medical professions. While I readily concede that translating medical judgments into legal conclusions is no easy task, I submit that if Ben Chaney has not established involuntariness on the basis of his extensive medical and circumstantial proof, few defendants will ever be able to do so. It is therefore critical that we disapprove needless police tactics substantially increasing the likelihood that a defendant will make involuntary statements. I cannot say with assurance that Chaney’s statements were involuntary; I do know that the need to speculate on this issue could have been significantly reduced had the police yielded to Chaney’s reasonable request to make a single phone call.
Miranda is under severe siege. T) may be battle lost, destined to become only a precious jurisprudential museum piece. But perhaps a few of its prophylactic strictures will survive, among them a liberal construction of the right to counsel or logical analogue before custodial interrogation ensues. I respectfully dissent.

. Chaney is black. His brother was one of three civil rights workers murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1964 in what remains an infamous event.

. Haynes contended that on the night of his arrest he requested both his wife and an attorney. 373 U.S. at 507, 83 S.Ct. 1336. The state disagreed. The Court found it unnecessary to determine which view of the record should be accepted, relying instead upon Haynes’s uncontradicted story that on the next day the police refused his request to call his wife. 373 U.S. at 508-09, 83 S.Ct. 1336. Thus the Court ignored the alleged request for an attorney, and its holding turns wholly on the denial of the request to call the wife.

. It is true that in Haynes the Court spoke of “incommunicado” detention, while in the case at bar the officials informed Chaney of his right to an attorney and presumably would have honored such a request. The crucial fact, however, is that here, as in Haynes, the police refused the request for outside help that the suspect did make. That they might have honored some alternative request provides little comfort.

. Miranda’s language supports application of its holding to our situation:
If the individual indicates in any manner, at any time prior to or during questioning, that he wishes to remain silent, the interrogation must cease.
384 U.S. at 473-74, 86 S.Ct. at 1627 (emphasis added, footnote omitted). Requesting a parent indicates in unmistakable manner the individual's desire to remain silent pending compliance with the request.

. The state has not questioned the continuing validity of Miranda and has not asserted that Miranda violations should not be cognizable on habeas.

. Burton held that the minor's request necessarily indicated a desire to remain silent pending compliance with the request, thus invoking Miranda’s ban on further questioning. McCutchen and Lewis found the absence of a parent inconsistent with a knowing and intelligent waiver of the minor’s constitutional rights. Under either formulation the result in our case would be the same.