Court Opinion

ID: 9428325
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:23:25.867648+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:12.847560
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice Burger,
concurring in the judgment.
I concur only in the judgment because I do not agree that either any constitutional standard or the holding of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966) — as distinguished from its dicta — calls for a special rule as to how an accused in custody may waive the right to be free from interrogation. The extraordinary protections afforded a person in custody suspected of criminal conduct are not without a valid basis, but *488as with all “good” things they can be carried too far. The notion that any “prompting” of a person in custody is somehow evil per se has been rejected. Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U. S. 291 (1980). For me, the inquiry in this setting is whether resumption of interrogation is a result of a, voluntary waiver, and that inquiry should be resolved under the traditional standards established in Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 464 (1938):
“A waiver is ordinarily an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege. The determination of whether there has been an intelligent waiver . . . must depend, in each case, upon the particular facts and circumstances surrounding that case, including the background, experience, and conduct of the accused.”
Accord, e. g., Fare v. Michael C., 442 U. S. 707 (1979); North Carolina v. Butler, 441 U. S. 369 (1979). In this case, the Supreme Court of Arizona described the situation as follows:
“When the detention officer told Edwards that the detectives were there to see him, he told the officer that he did not wish to speak to anyone. The officer told him that he had to.” 122 Ariz. 206, 209, 594 P. 2d 72, 75 (1979) (emphasis added).
This is enough for me, and on this record the Supreme Court of Arizona erred in holding that the resumption of interrogation was the product of a voluntary waiver, such as I found to be the situation in both Innis, supra, at 304 (concurring opinion), and Brewer v. Williams, 430 U. S. 387, 417-418 (1977) (dissenting opinion).