Court Opinion

ID: 9428323
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:23:25.622892+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:12.840580
License: Public Domain

Justice Marshall,
concurring in part.
I join in all but Part II-C of the opinion of the Court. I adhere to my consistent view that the death penalty is under all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment forbidden by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. I therefore am unable to join the suggestion in Part II-C that the penalty may ever be constitutionally imposed.
Justice Stewart,
with whom Justice Powell joins, concurring in the judgment.
The respondent had been indicted for murder and a lawyer had been appointed to represent him before he was examined by Dr. Grigson at the behest of the State. Yet that examination took place without previous notice to the respondent’s counsel. The Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments as applied in such cases as Massiah v. United States, 377 U. S. 201, and Brewer v. Williams, 430 U. S. 387, made impermissible the introduction of Dr. Grigson’s testimony against the respondent at any stage of his trial.
I would for this reason affirm the judgment before us without reaching the other issues discussed by the Court.
Justice Rehnquist,
concurring in the judgment.
I concur in the judgment because, under Massiah v. United States, 377 U. S. 201 (1964), respondent’s counsel should have been notified prior to Dr. Grigson’s examination of respondent. As the Court notes, ante, at 469, respondent had been indicted and an attorney had been appointed to represent *475him. Counsel was entitled to be made aware of Dr. Grigson’s activities involving his client and to advise and prepare his client accordingly. This is by no means to say that respondent had any right to have his counsel present at any examination. In this regard I join the Court’s careful delimiting of the Sixth Amendment issue, ante, at 470, n. 14.
Since this is enough to decide the case, I would not go on to consider the Fifth Amendment issues and cannot subscribe to the Court’s resolution of them. I am not convinced that any Fifth Amendment rights were implicated by Dr. Grigson’s examination of respondent. Although the psychiatrist examined respondent prior to trial, he only testified concerning the examination after respondent stood convicted. As the court in Hollis v. Smith, 571 F. 2d 685, 690-691 (CA2 1978), analyzed the issue: “The psychiatrist’s interrogation of [defendant] on subjects presenting no threat of disclosure of prosecutable crimes, in the belief that the substance of [defendant’s] responses or the way in which he gave them might cast light on what manner of man he was, involved no 'compelled testimonial self-incrimination’ even though the consequence might be more severe punishment.”
Even if there are Fifth Amendment rights involved in this case, respondent never invoked these rights when confronted with Dr. Grigson’s questions. The Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination is not self-executing. “Although Miranda’s requirement of specific warnings creates a limited exception to the rule that the privilege must be claimed, the exception does not apply outside the context of the inherently coercive custodial interrogations for which it was designed.” Roberts v. United States, 445 U. S. 552, 560 (1980). The Miranda requirements were certainly not designed by this Court with psychiatric examinations in mind. Respondent was simply not in the inherently coercive situation considered in Miranda. He had already been indicted, and counsel had been appointed to represent him. No claim is raised that respondent’s answers to Dr. Grigson’s questions *476were “involuntary” in the normal sense of the word. Unlike the police officers in Miranda, Dr. Grigson was not questioning respondent in order to ascertain his guilt or innocence. Particularly since it is not necessary to decide this case, I would not extend the Miranda requirements to cover psychiatric examinations such as the one involved here.