Court Opinion

ID: 9615297
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:33:50.524247+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:44.810015
License: Public Domain

THOMAS C. KLEINSCHMIDT,
Court of Appeals Judge, concurring.
I agree with the majority in all respects except one. I do not agree with the conclusion that the trial judge correctly ruled that the words, “I think I better talk to a lawyer first,” were not a clear request for an attorney. While I can imagine situations involving a police interrogation in which the statement, “I think I better talk to an attorney,” might be ambiguous in context, such is not the case here. The words, “I think,” are not, as used by most people, all that ambiguous. As Justice O’Connor, writing for the majority in Davis, said:
Although a suspect need not “speak with the discrimination of an Oxford don,” post at -, — U.S. at -, 114 S.Ct. at 2363-64, 129 L.Ed.2d at 382 (Souter, J., concurring in judgment), he must articulate his desire to have counsel present sufficiently clearly that a reasonable police officer in the circumstances would understand the statement to be a request for an attorney.
— U.S. at -, 114 S.Ct. at 2355, 129 L.Ed.2d at 371.
In Davis itself, when the defendant told the police, “I think I want a lawyer before I say anything else,” they ceased their questioning immediately. While the court was not called upon in Davis to consider whether these words were an unequivocal request for counsel, it is interesting that the police apparently understood them as such.
At least one court has expressly held that the words, “I think I want a lawyer,” are a clear and unequivocal invocation of the right to counsel. Jones v. State, 742 S.W.2d 398, 405-06 (Tex.1987); see also People v. Dingle, 174 Cal.App.3d 21, 219 Cal.Rptr. 707 (1985) (finding “I think now that you told me what you think, I better talk to a lawyer” was an unequivocal request).
I also think that it is unsafe to assume, as the majority does, that the trial judge found that the words, “I think I better talk to an attorney,” were not an invocation of the right to counsel. The judge, in ruling on the motion to suppress, found that the defendant did not make a clear request for counsel, but then said:
In fact, the following statements [referring to the dialogue between the defendant and the detective about whether the defendant wanted to go on talking] clearly show that he did want to talk and wasn’t making a clear request for an attorney.
Thus, the trial judge relied heavily on what the defendant said when the detective was trying to “clarify” the request for counsel. This is impermissible under Smith v. Illinois, 469 U.S. 91, 100, 105 S.Ct. 490, 495, 83 L.Ed.2d 488 (1984). Stripped of this imper*266missible consideration, I cannot say that the judge would have, indeed in ray opinion could not have, found the request ambiguous on this record.
In my opinion, the confession which followed the invocation of the right to counsel should have been suppressed. I would not reverse on this ground because I agree with the majority that the admission of the confession was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.