Court Opinion

ID: 9452798
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:52:27.160224+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:21.820585
License: Public Domain

FREEDMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring
Since the judgment is being vacated and the cause remanded for further proceedings, I would on remand require additionally a preliminary hearing before the district judge to determine whether appellant’s statement was given *437voluntarily on an intelligent and knowing waiver of his constitutional rights.
It may be conceded that appellant is a man of adequate intelligence and that he apparently comprehended what he was doing when he answered the questions put to him by the United States Attorney. But the question to which I address myself is not appellant’s intelligence or comprehension. The issue that remains is whether he was a free agent or was so in fear that the trial judge should have ruled that despite the caution of the United States Attorney the statement was inadmissible because the government did not carry its burden of proving that appellant had voluntarily waived his constitutional rights to remain silent and to consult counsel.
Appellant was a native of Barbados who had been informed by the immigration authorities that he must leave the Virgin Islands because he had violated the terms of his visitor’s permit. As a result of the police investigation of the murder he was taken into the custody of the immigration officials on October 8,1965, for not having departed voluntarily as he was supposed to have done. But he was not questioned by the United States Attorney with regard to the murder until forty-two days later, on November 19, 1965, after he had been given a hearing the day before on his deportation.
I find it difficult to believe that a man situated as was appellant, in custody for approximately a month and a half under the threat of deportation, voluntarily waived his constitutional rights to remain silent and to consult counsel when he was questioned shortly after the immigration officers had held a hearing and ordered him deported. One in the position of the appellant could hardly have drawn nice distinctions between the immigration officers who controlled the dreaded deportation threat and the prosecutor. For the prosecutor to embark immediately *438upon questioning regarding the murder after only a preliminary statement of the right to refuse to answer questions and to obtain counsel does not seem to me to be enough. I believe the circumstances required the United States Attorney to indicate squarely and clearly to the appellant that his waiver of his right to remain silent would not suspend or in any way relieve him from the pending deportation.1 Absent such a statement deportation hung as a threat which he might escape if he did not offend the prosecutor by refusing to answer his questions. Even though he had already been ordered deported, so long as he was in the Virgin Islands, his hope of remaining cannot be said to have been finally extinguished. To be deported has such grave personal consequences that we may not assume that one would not cling to hope even if to a sophisticated mind acquainted with law it was already without reasonable basis.
Of course, if the district judge had passed this problem in review and decided that the government had carried its burden of proof the case would, for me, be different. I do not believe that this element was considered by the district judge, and absent a finding which included the element of the intimidation of fear as well as the incomprehension of ignorance, I am not prepared to say that the conclusion that appellant waived his constitutional rights to remain silent and to consult counsel is established by the evidence.

 Instead the United States Attorney undermined the caution on the rights to remain silent and consult counsel by immediately following it with questions which related to and emphasized the pendency of deportation.