Court Opinion

ID: 9582208
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:23:51.914696+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:32.359334
License: Public Domain

Justice Lake
dissenting:
In my view the defendant’s constitutional right to counsel has not been violated. At the time his lawyer was at the jail, no police interrogation of the defendant was in progress or contemplated. No such interrogation followed. This distinguishes the present case from Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L. Ed. 2d 977. No lineup for identification, no legal proceeding, such as a preliminary hearing, or other step in the prosecution was being conducted or in preparation. The attorney was not denied access to any such proceeding. I am aware of no previous decision of this Court or of the Supreme Court of the United States which extends the constitutional right of counsel to the right of unlimited jail visitation by counsel at 2 o’clock in the morning, irrespective of the desires of other inmates of the jail to sleep. The defendant was released some five or six hours later.
What this defendant lost by the act of the jailer was not the opportunity for legal advice or counselling but the opportunity to be inspected by a person, not part of the law enforcement personnel, during the 'period when his drunkenness or sobriety could most readily be determined. For this purpose, a doctor, minister, plumber or school teacher would have served as well as a lawyer. The jailer’s denial of such inspection has nothing to .do with the constitutional right to counsel. I am aware of no previous decision by this Court or by the Supreme Court *560of the United States extending the Fourteenth Amendment, or any other provision of the Federal or State Constitution, so far as to require a drunk driver to be set free, and rendered immune to prosecution for his offense, merely because a rude and unaccommodating jailer denied some friend or relative the right to visit his jail cell at 2 a.m. to smell his breath.
This defendant was permitted to telephone his lawyer and did so. Had the lawyer, as a result of that conversation, believed that the defendant was as sober as a judge ought to be and was being framed by the police and the other driver in an automobile accident, it is obvious that, when the jailer denied the lawyer the opportunity to see him, the telephones of the solicitor, the chief of police or sheriff and the mayor would have been immediately and insistently ringing. No such suggestion appears in this record! This record leaves no reasonable doubt but that the defendant was exceedingly drunk. It is clear that, as the opinion of Justice Huskins demonstrates, his defense at his trial was not prejudiced by the inability of his lawyer to confer with him in the jail.