Court Opinion

ID: 9724790
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:14:08.233753+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:06.029784
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
At appellant's trial Officer Douglas testified under direct questioning by the trial prosecutor in the following manner:
Q Did you advise him what he was under arrest for?
A Yes.
Q Did you advise him of his Miranda rights?
A Yes.
# * # u * #
Q Did he ever indicate to you that he didn't understand them?
A No.
Q Did he ask for any medical assistance at this time?
A No.
Q Did he ask to contact an attorney?
A Yes.
Defense counsel had, moments before the above testimony, objected to evidence that Mr. Sulie had asked for an attorney, on the basis that it was a response to an advice of Miranda rights. The trial prosecutor agreed that it was such a response, and revealed that it had been among additional statements by Sulie about his exercise of Fifth Amendment rights which the progecution did not intend to offer. The trial court overruled the objection and permitted the question on the express basis that it was relevant on the issue of insanity.
This court held in its opinion resolving appellant's direct appeal that the request for counsel in response to Miranda warnings is unlike silence in response to Miranda warnings, and did not fall under the exclusionary rule of Doyle v. Ohio (1976), 426 U.S. 610, 96 S.Ct. 2240, 49 L.Ed.2d 91, which holds that an exercise of the right to remain silent after warnings cannot be used to impeach the defendant. Sulie v. State (1978), 269 Ind. 204, 379 N.E.2d 455. It was my opinion in dissenting in Sulte, id., that it was as fundamentally unfair to use ones exercise of the right to counsel against him at trial as it was to use his exercise of the right to remain silent against him at trial, where that exercise *386was called for by the Miranda advise-ments. The majority in Swlie, id., expressly held:
"When the defendant has the presence of mind to request an attorney, this is evidence of his sanity and is admissible as such."
In Wainwright v. Greenfield (1986), 474 U.S. 284, 106 S.Ct. 634, 88 L.Ed.2d 623, the Supreme Court has declared the exercise of the right to counsel the equivalent of the exercise of the right to remain silent for the purpose of the exclusionary rule of Doyle. Wainwright was decided after our opinions in Swlte v. State, supra, and in my view is now available to Sulie in this post-conviction appeal. Seven Justices behind the majority opinion in Wainwright have now clearly condemned the trial court's ruling at Sulie's first trial that his exercise of the right to counsel was admissible as relevant upon the issue of insanity.
Appellant Sulie is entitled to post-convietion relief in the form of the right to a new trial unless the constitutional error in the admission of his exercise of the right to counsel against him is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. I am unable to say that the jury did not use Sulie's response to the warnings as an appreciable part of that basis upon which it concluded that Sulie was sane beyond a reasonable doubt, and I am therefore unable to say that its admission was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. I am deemed to vote that post conviction relief be granted.
DICKSON, J., concurs.