Court Opinion

ID: 9773891
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:02:22.715138+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:58.732397
License: Public Domain

THOMPSON, Associate Judge,
concurring:
I join Judge Reid’s thoughtful and careful opinion. I write separately to explain why — having viewed in their entirety the over thirteen hours of DVDs of Mr. Dorsey in the interrogation room, and being fully mindful of our measure of review, see ante at 227 — I am satisfied with Judge Reid’s conclusion that Mr. Dorsey’s confession was voluntary.
I agree with Judge Reid that Mr. Dorsey demonstrated throughout his ordeal, from about 7:20 p.m. on May 7 until about 9:15 a.m. on May 8, that he could not be pressured into confession through the tactics that the detectives used. Mr. Dorsey, who acknowledged early in the interrogation that he had “been around the block a couple times” in the criminal justice system, held his own throughout the detectives’ questioning, appearing to be uninti-midated, observing detachedly at one point that Detective Ross was “trying everything in the book,” responding to Detective Ross’s description of evidence that would show that Mr. Dorsey was lying by telling the detective, “You’re playing with me,” and explaining that he wanted his case to go to court so that the detectives would “stop messing with me.”1 Mr. Dorsey repeatedly stated that he would go to court and that he didn’t really care if he lost at trial and went to jail. From the (eight) DVDs, it appears that what Mr. Dorsey found uncomfortable was not the question*235ing2 or the detectives’ claims about the evidence they were building against him, but his inability to lie down to sleep. During the several hours when he was left alone in the interrogation room, he sometimes maneuvered to the floor and lay there, arm raised and still handcuffed to the chair in which he had been sitting. His discomfort at those times, and as he tried to sleep while sitting up in the unforgiving chair, is palpable. But, notwithstanding the discomfort, throughout the night Mr. Dorsey showed no inclination at all to confess or to initiate a conversation with the detectives to end his ordeal. At no point on any of the eight DVDs does it appear that Mr. Dorsey was worn down, or that his will was overborne.
Mr. Dorsey unambiguously invoked his right to counsel when, alone in the interview room with Detective Thompson at nearly B a.m.,3 he told the detective, “I need to talk to a lawyer now” and “I don’t want to talk no more. I’m not saying nothing else.” Undeniably, the continued questioning that followed, and the continued coercion of sitting handcuffed or lying down on the floor while still shackled all night in the interrogation room,4 were a “flagrant breach of the prophylactic rules established by the Supreme Court in Miranda and its progeny....” Collazo v. Estelle, 940 F.2d 411, 419 (9th Cir.1991) (en banc). But, as Judge Reid notes, we have not recognized a categorical rule that a defendant cannot be said to have initiated contact with police if, previously, police have continued questioning him despite his invocation of his Miranda rights. Cf. Riley v. United States, 923 A.2d 868, 884, 885 n. 17 (D.C.2007). Rather, we have asked whether any taint from the detectives’ failure to honor scrupulously the defendant’s invocation of his rights “was dissipated by the lengthy break.” Id. at 885 n. 17. Ac-' cordingly, our task here is to determine whether Mr. Dorsey’s request to speak with detectives on the afternoon of May 8 and his subsequent confession were voluntary (and entailed an implicit waiver of his rights), or whether instead his actions were involuntary in the sense that they were tainted by the detectives’ failure to honor scrupulously Mr. Dorsey’s invocation of his right to counsel. The law requires “exclusion of evidence tainted by the violation” of Mr. Dorsey’s invocation of his right to have counsel present during the interrogation. Burno v. United States, 953 A.2d 1095, 1106 (D.C.2008) (Ruiz, J., concurring).
Thus, our analysis must focus on what interrogation followed Mr. Dorsey’s invocation of his right to counsel and whether the effects of that interrogation are reflected in his later actions toward and statements to police.5 And, here, it is *236important to describe the interrogation carefully. In terms of duration and effect on Mr. Dorsey’s demeanor, the major form of interrogation that followed Mr. Dorsey’s invocation of his right to counsel was the hours he spent alone in the interview room, handcuffed to his chair and thus unable to lie down to sleep comfortably, after Detective Thompson had departed the interrogation room (some time after 3:00 a.m.). But, by the time Mr. Dorsey initiated the discussion with the detectives on the afternoon of May 8, he had had an opportunity to sleep in lockup. He testified that he was not intimidated by being in a jail cell and that no one bothered him while he was in lockup. On DVD number 8, the recording of the confession he made after he asked to speak again with detectives, Mr. Dorsey looks refreshed and energetic. I am persuaded that the coercive impact of Mr. Dorsey’s silent overnight ordeal had dissipated by that time.6
What also transpired after Mr. Dorsey invoked his right to counsel were periods of questioning, immediately after he said he needed a lawyer and again hours later, just before he was taken to lockup. The first period of questioning spans ten transcript pages.7 Detective Thompson told Mr. Dorsey that “only a fool” would want a judge to see all the evidence against him, and that he ought to call his mother and ask her to pray for him to “set [his] conscience straight....” Seemingly unaffected, Mr. Dorsey responded repeatedly, “I’m going to go to court.” Detective Thompson next suggested that Mr. Dorsey should think about how, by confessing and going to jail, he could “get [his] medical stuff squared away” and get things off his chest. In response, Mr. Dorsey muttered something to the effect of “the hell with it.” Next, Detective Thompson asked Mr. Dorsey whether his mother had ever been robbed, and Mr. Dorsey said, “No.” Detective Thompson then told Mr. Dorsey that there were two sides to every story and that he wanted to give Mr. Dorsey a chance to tell his side. Mr. Dorsey said that he “want[ed] to lay down and go to sleep.”
There was no more questioning until Detective Ross returned at about 8 a.m. on May 8. This questioning, which spanned the time period just before Mr. Dorsey was taken to lockup, covers twelve transcript pages. Detective Ross showed Mr. Dorsey the return for a warrant to search Mr. Dorsey’s rented room and asked whether Mr. Dorsey “still want[ed] to stay with [his] story.” Detective Ross accused Mr. Dorsey of lying to the detectives about having stayed in a shelter, told him that his whole story was falling apart, told him that he needed to tell the truth and express remorse and say that he didn’t mean to hurt the victim, suggested that he could attribute his mistake to needing drug treatment, and urged that Mr. Dorsey didn’t want to “roll the dice on something like this.” Mr. Dorsey responded that he “didn’t do nothing.” Detective Ross told Mr. Dorsey that he had found the person *237who had driven by in a white car while the robbery was going on. An unidentified detective asked Mr. Dorsey whether he thought that police would fail to “put all this together” and asked him “what happened?” Mr. Dorsey responded that the detective would “hear it in the courtroom,” declining the detective’s request for “a small scenario” of what Mr. Dorsey’s “story[ ] was going to be. Just after Detective Ross stepped out of the room, Mr. Dorsey told the unidentified detective, “I don’t want to talk. I’m ready to go to sleep.” Detective Thompson told Mr. Dorsey that “[t]he sh*t is backing up” and said something about “trying tó help [Mr. Dorsey] out.”
It is on that record of interrogation that we must consider whether Mr. Dorsey’s initiation of further discussion and his confession on the afternoon of May 8 bore any taint from the detectives’ failure to honor scrupulously Mr. Dorsey’s invocation of his right to counsel. I begin by observing that the trial judge’s description of Mr. Dorsey is apt: during the interrogation shown on DVD number 8, Mr. Dorsey “was talking just as matter [of] factly and just as plain and just as undisturbed as anybody I have ever [seen].” 8 He gave a detailed and expansive account and repeatedly cooperated in dramatizing how he hit Mrs. Fotopoulous and took her money. He quoted the people whom he mentioned in his account of what happened, and he asked the detectives to clarify their questions.
Significantly, Mr. Dorsey did not merely parrot the detectives’ suggestions. To the contrary, he repeatedly disagreed with or declined to adopt detectives’ suggestions that he had a glove or sock or something else on his hands when he robbed Mrs. Fotopoulous, that Mrs. Fotopoulous had a “pouch,” that he could have done “something else in that alley that you don’t remember,” and that he sustained injuries during the robbery. He said that he did not know the color of a car that drove by just before the robbery even though the detectives had told him repeatedly about a white car that was in the area. Asked whether the man who showed him where Mrs. Fotopoulous lived had a beard or a moustache, Mr. Dorsey rejected those choices and responded that the man “had plaits in his hair.”9 Mr. Dorsey made no reference to the evidence that police had against him (saying, instead, that he knew that police did not have a case on him), and no reference to anything that police might have found in a search of his room, taking advantage of the medical care in jail, or being high on drugs, as the detectives had urged. Mr. Dorsey answered “Yeah” when detectives asked whether he felt remorseful, and he said he felt “bad” when detectives asked, “How do you feel about what happened?,” but he did not mention on his own the “remorse” and “conscience” clearing that detectives had suggested. Rather, he said repeatedly, that he didn’t know the lady was “that old,” that he had never before robbed a woman, and that he had not planned to hit the victim.10 And, although Mr. Dorsey did say that he had been drinking the day of the robbery, *238there is no reason to think that this was at the detectives’ urging either, since, early in his May 7 interrogation, he told the detectives repeatedly that he was an alcoholic and drank “every day.” In addition, he told the detectives that he knew that it was not their job to determine what charges would be brought against him.
I note, moreover, that when Mr. Dorsey initiated the conversation with detectives on the afternoon of May 8, he asked to speak with Detective Ross. Mr. Dorsey also called out to Detective Crespo, saying that he wanted to speak with him. It was Detective Ross, the lead detective, who advised Mr. Dorsey of his Miranda rights when the interrogation began on the evening of May 7. It was also Detective Ross, who, at a later point in the May 7 interrogation, with Detective Crespo present, told Mr. Dorsey that “I have to stop talking to you” if Mr. Dorsey requested a lawyer, and who sought clarification that Mr. Dorsey was “willing to still talk to me.” Thus, Mr. Dorsey asked to speak to the detective who had acknowledged an obligation to honor Mr. Dorsey’s rights.11 With Detective Ross being unavailable, Mr. Dorsey actually spoke with Detective Young (who had not participated at all in the earlier rounds of questioning) and Detective Cres-po.12 Neither Ross nor Young nor Crespo had been present when Mr. Dorsey unambiguously (but to no avail) said that he needed to speak with a lawyer, and all three denied having been told that Mr. Dorsey invoked his right to counsel.13 Further, Detective Crespo had known Mr. Dorsey for about ten years and Mr. Dorsey agreed that the two had had a relationship of mutual respect. I am unpersuaded that Mr. Dorsey’s experience taught him that these detectives could not be trusted to honor his rights.
Finally, the tactics that the detectives used in this case do not even come close to the “questionable mode of psychological pressure” — officers’ telling the defendant that his mother and grandmother had been arrested as a result of the discovery of contraband in their house and that he needed to confess so that his mother and *239grandmother would be released — involved in Brisbon v. United States, 957 A.2d 931, 946-47 (D.C.2008), that led us to say that the question of the voluntariness of the defendant’s confession was a “close one.” Id. at 949.
Given all of the foregoing, I am satisfied that there was a qualitative “break in the stream of events sufficient to insulate” Mr. Dorsey’s confession from “the effect of the prior coercion,”14 and that Mr. Dorsey’s initiation of a further discussion or his confession was not tainted by the detectives’ improper conduct after he had invoked his right to counsel. I cannot say that Detectives Young and Crespo, to whom Mr. Dorsey confessed, were “beneficiaries of the pressure applied”15 by earlier interrogators after Mr. Dorsey invoked his right to counsel.16 I find it much more plausible that Mr. Dorsey acted with the benefit of a long break from contact with the detectives, rest, and time for reflection.17

. In addition, after Mr. Dorsey had confessed, he made a comment to Detective Crespo about the detectives' having "said all that bullsh*t[,]" and then said "I’ve been in the system and all. I know.”

. Albeit with slight exaggeration, the government has it about right in arguing that the detectives' tone throughout the questioning was "unfailingly polite and conversational.”

. Detective Ross had left the interview room shortly after 2:00 a.m., telling Mr. Dorsey that it was "time for you to get some rest.”

. See Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 301, 100 S.Ct. 1682, 64 L.Ed.2d 297 (1980) (explaining that "the term ‘interrogation’ under Miranda refers not only to express questioning, but also to any words or actions on the part of the police (other than those normally attendant to arrest and custody) that the police should know are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from the suspect”).

.Cf. Stewart v. United States, 668 A.2d 857, 866, 867 (D.C. 1995) (reasoning that where Detective Treadwell, Stewart’s fellow church member, spoke to Stewart in his cell after Stewart had invoked his right to remain silent and asked Stewart whether he would be willing to speak to the detective later in the day, Stewart’s statements to Detective Treadwell eight hours later when he asked to speak to the detective were inadmissible, because *236Stewart acted "in response to Detective Treadwell’s invitation during the improper interrogation at the cellblock”).

. Cf. Holland v. McGinnis, 963 F.2d 1044, 1051 (7th Cir.1992) (reasoning that the approximately six hours that passed between the defendant’s mistreatment and his confession and the difference in treatment accorded him by his subsequent interrogators had provided a "meaningful interlude” that permitted the threat of physical mistreatment to ”fade[] considerably in the interim,” and concluding that even though the contamination from the earlier interrogation had not completely disappeared, the "break in the stream of events” meant that the contamination was not sufficient to render the confession involuntary).

. The transcript of the questioning up to that point covers almost 170 transcript pages.

. Unlike the defendant in Collazo, Mr. Dorsey did not "testiffy] he was scared” into confessing. 940 F.2d at 421.

. In short, Mr. Dorsey’s responses were not "mere supine attempts to give the desired response to leading questions.” Lyons v. Oklahoma, 322 U.S. 596, 605, 64 S.Ct. 1208, 88 L.Ed. 1481 (1944).

.Mr. Dorsey also talked repeatedly about "get[ting] it off my chest.” He thus used words similar to those Detective Thompson had used after Mr. Dorsey said he needed a lawyer. But Detective Thompson had also used this language before Mr. Dorsey invoked his right to counsel, saying "Any decent person would want to get this off their chest, would you agree?”
*238In addition, during his confession Mr. Dorsey said, "If that would have happened to my mother, man-" This was a theme that Detective Thompson pursued after Mr. Dorsey invoked his right to counsel, but it was also a theme that Detective Ross had pursued before Mr. Dorsey invoked his rights (asking, "Your wouldn’t want to see anything happen to your mother, would you?.... So you don’t think that’s somebody’s mother?").

.To be sure, during his interrogation of Mr. Dorsey, Detective Ross did deflect many statements and questions from Mr. Dorsey about ”[j]ust go[ing] to court” and about when he would be taken to lockup so that he could sleep. Detective Ross testified that he did not regard these statements as an invocation of the right to remain silent, and as to some of the statements, the trial judge agreed. Cf. DeWeaver v. Runnels, 556 F.3d 995, 1000, 1002 (9th Cir.2009) (holding that ”[t]he state appellate court could properly conclude ... that a reasonable officer in the circumstances would not have understood [defendant's] request [to be "taken back to jail"] to be an invocation of the right to silence”). But the court found that Detective Ross had continued to question Mr. Dorsey after one such statement that the trial judge determined to be an unambiguous statement that Mr. Dorsey did not want to talk any more and wanted to terminate the interrogation ("go back there to sleep.... Take me back there.”) In contrast, Mr. Dorsey told Detective Thompson, "I don't want to talk no more. I’m not saying nothing else” — words that the parties agree were unequivocal.

. There was thus a "change in the identity of the interrogators [that] interrupted the effect of the [prior] coercion....” Collazo, 940 F.2d at 421.

. For this and other reasons, I see no basis to conclude broadly, as Mr. Dorsey argues, that police "affirmatively and deliberately set out on a course to show Mr. Dorsey that his rights were a nullity....”

. Collazo, 940 F.2d at 421; cf. Riley, 923 A.2d at 885 n. 17 (describing the court’s satisfaction that the taint from a detective’s improper remarks to the defendant after the defendant had invoked his right to remain silent was “dissipated” by a lengthy break even though "we cannot totally eliminate the possibility that [the detective] solicited” the defendant’s initiation of a conversation with detectives).

. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 497, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).

. I note also that many of the interrogation techniques that the detectives used after Mr. Dorsey had invoked his Miranda rights (such as accusations that he was lying, descriptions of the mounting evidence against Mr. Dorsey, and warnings about going to court and ”roll[ing] the dice”) were ones that detectives had also used early during the interrogation, before he invoked. Thus, even if the coercive effect of the detectives' techniques was not completely eliminated by the afternoon of May 8, it would be difficult to conclude that any remaining effect was from post-invocation interrogation.

.Cf. Chavez v. State, 832 So.2d 730, 749 (Fla.2002) (per curiam) (concluding that confession was voluntary where, among other things, long interrogation was followed by "a six-hour rest period,” time during which defendant "was left alone for quiet reflection").