Court Opinion

ID: 9460829
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:01:13.82148+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:47.971408
License: Public Domain

FEINBERG, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
Since I agree with much of the majority’s thinking, I dissent with regret. But I find it necessary to do so because *417the majority’s sound premises have unaccountably led to the wrong conclusion.
I turn first to those matters where happily we all agree. I concur in the finding that Sanney did not waive his constitutional claims. With respect to the merits, moreover, I have no quarrel with my brothers’ holdings on the fourth amendment and Miranda contentions. Furthermore, I heartily adopt the majority’s views on the existence of government action here. The “controlling factor” is not the state’s role as employer (absent in the present case) but rather “the fact that the state has involved itself in the use of a substantial economic threat to coerce” incriminating disclosures. Equally correct is the conclusion that the Government may not compel “a statement through economically coercive means, whether direct or indirect,” whether open or concealed.
We are all in accord that under the Garrity line of cases, the threatened economic sanctions must be “substantial,” Lefkowitz v. Turley, 414 U.S. 70, 82, 94 S.Ct. 316, 38 L.Ed.2d 274 (1973), but I part company with my brothers on the question whether this test has here been met. Unlike them, I cannot say that the loss of a driver’s assistant job is constitutionally insignificant. Our secure niche in. the professional world should not cause us, as judges, to ignore what most people know: Even a menial position might be coveted by a man like Sanney — of marginal intelligence, and seemingly emotionally troubled as well. But we need not speculate on this point because Bewick testified that even at the initial interview, Sanney “was worried about losing his job” and “kind of completely crushed or emotional.”
Moreover, the short term of employment should not make any difference. True, Sanney did not stand to lose pension rights or other benefits that sometimes accrue to senior workers; nor did he face deprivation of profitable government contracts or of a license to practice his chosen profession. See Lefkowitz v. Turley, supra; Spevack v. Klein, 385 U.S. 511, 87 S.Ct. 625, 17 L.Ed.2d 574 (1967). But many a man works the whole of his life without material advancement in status and with no “vested” rights except to his wages earned that week. Such positions are often “transient” or seasonal in nature, yet they are nonetheless crucial to those whose livelihood depends upon them. I reject both the notion that a menial job is somehow beneath constitutional notice and the not unrelated idea that discharge from recently begun employment must be an insubstantial loss. I also note that differentiation of jobs, and hence of economically coercive effects, on the basis of length of time at work would force the courts to make ad hoc decisions in every case — in the absence of any clear criteria — as to how long a tenure is “long enough” to invoke the protective rule of Garrity. Such expenditure of effort is not, to my mind, justified by any compensating benefit.
Finally, I do not understand the majority’s view that the “sense of relief,” which Sanney may have experiencd as a result of his admissions, weakens a finding of coercion. A man with a guilty conscience may feel even greater release upon yielding to coercive interrogation than upon spontaneously admitting the facts since, at the end, he will have freed himself not only from the buried secret but also from the relentless prob-er. The issue is not how a suspect feels after he “reveals” his guilt, but how he was made to do so. The Constitution prohibits certain means of obtaining information even from those apparently guilty, because we do not believe that the end justifies any means. That noble idea has not been followed here.
For these reasons, I would hold that Sanney was unconstitutionally coerced into incriminating himself and that his confession was improperly received in evidence. Accordingly, I would reverse.