Court Opinion

ID: 9726069
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 12:30:00.740031+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:12:38.936592
License: Public Domain

HANSON, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. I would hold that the district court erred in admitting Clark’s post-arraignment statements to police because those statements were obtained through a violation of Rule 4.2 of the Minn. R. Prof. Conduct that was sufficiently egregious to warrant suppression. And, if we need to reach the issue of the denial of Clark’s constitutional right to counsel, and his related right against compelled self-incrimination, I would also hold that Clark’s constitutional rights were violated.
Perhaps my disagreement with the majority opinion begins, fundamentally, with the supposition that Clark’s requests to the jailers that he be able to talk with police created some urgency for the state, which necessitated that the state respond immediately and imposed a similar burden of urgency on defense counsel. Such requests created no greater urgency for the state than a defendant’s requests to his jailers that he be let free. There is no basis in the law to conclude that the state has any obligation to act on the request of a defendant to go around his own counsel and initiate conversations with police, especially where the police have improperly urged him to do just that. If there was any urgency here, it was one the police created because the police wanted to talk to Clark without counsel present.
I.
I agree with the principles formulated in the majority opinion concerning Rule 4.2, that, absent a communication that is authorized by law or by a specific court order, the state must obtain counsel’s explicit consent before communicating with a represented defendant. I also agree that the state violated those principles when it conducted post-arraignment communications with Clark without counsel’s consent. But I disagree with the conclusion of the majority opinion that the post-arraignment communications were not sufficiently egregious to warrant suppression
First, the police adopted a clear strategy to undermine Clark’s relationship with his counsel, even before counsel was appointed. In their pre-arraignment interview with Clark, the police were fully aware of and obviously concerned about the limitations they would face in getting access to Clark after counsel was appointed. To avoid those limitations, police persuaded Clark to go around his counsel, misleading Clark into believing that the police would be more attuned to Clark’s best interests than would his counsel. During the very first interview, which was going to be brief because Clark was about to be taken to court and would be provided with counsel, Frazer and Doran engaged in this persistent effort to persuade Clark to waive his right to counsel for future interrogations:
Frazer: They’re gonna come and ask to talk to ya in a few minutes and- — and you’re gonna have to go to court. And if you want to talk to us — lawyer or no lawyer — you can always talk to us. Okay? You know how to get a hold of Mike, and you know how to get a hold of me. But if they interrupt us in a few minutes, and you *349gotta go, and you have a lawyer saying, “You don’t want to talk to those guys because of the case”. What you’re telling me piques my curiosity. ’Cause this stuff happened in St. Paul. Mike knows ya from the past and — and that’s why we’re working together, okay? And the only way for you to get this whole story out is gonna be if you call us and ask to talk to us. If we get interrupted and you haven’t told the whole story, okay? So what I’m gonna leave you is my card and you’re gonna know how to get a hold of me. And you already know how to get a hold of Mike. And we’ll keep going.
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Frazer: Do you understand what I’m saying about if we get interrupted though?
Defendant: Yeah [inaudible] his — his people. You know what I’m saying?
Frazer: But you can call us back to tell this story. We can’t come and talk to us once you have a lawyer. You would have to call us. Do you understand that?
Defendant: Why is that?
Frazer: Well, it’s just the rules. But you’re gonna have a lawyer here in a little bit when you go to court.
Defendant: Right.
Doran: And that lawyer might tell you not to talk to us. I can’t tell you what to do, you know, that’s — that’s your choice, but if — if they ask you not to talk to us, and you still want to, you can call either of us.
⅜ ⅜ ⅜ ⅜
Frazer: Your attorney’s coming — remember — you can talk to us at anytime if they interrupt us, okay? If you want to talk to us, well, you’re gonna have to say that you want to talk to us.
Defendant: All right.
Frazer: Even if they tell us you don’t want to talk to us, you can still talk to us if you choose to do that.
⅜ ⅜: ⅜ H:
Frazer: But you gotta call him or me and ya gotta ask us to come see you. You know all ya have to do is tell the jailer, “I want to see Mike Dorn [sic] with Minneapolis and Steve Frazer: with St. Paul.”
Defendant: I’ve been—
Frazer: And we’ll help you clear it up, but if you don’t ask that — we can’t come back and see you.
Defendant: All right.
⅜ * * *
Frazer: [inaudible] deal with them, I’ll talk to you with Mike as much as you would like, but from here out, in a few minutes, you’re gonna go into court, and it’s gonna be up to you if you call us. And if you don’t call us, Mike and I we’ll just have to proceed with what we already know, okay? And what other people are saying.
Doran: We can’t reach out to' you, okay?
Defendant: If I don’t call — the only thing I’m going through these withdrawals right now. You know what I’m saying? And I gotta get this out.
Frazer: But if you don’t—
Defendant: I’m not feeling right.
Doran: Time’s of essence.
Frazer: Yup.
Doran: Time’s of essence.
Frazer: Just so you know — if you don’t call — then we have to do our job and keep plugging ahead with what other people have told us. And I think you have a lot of important stuff to tell us. ’Cause you’re one of the people *350who was actually there. Okay? Finish up your smoke and when we’re done we’ll turn off, and we’ll head out, but I thank you for being — you know, straight with Mike. You and I just met, but if we can do something for ya to straighten all this mess out — we’ll do it. You don’t belong in here if you didn’t do this.
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Frazer: We’re not going anywhere. You have to call us—
Doran: Yeah.
Frazer: As soon as you’re done with court, as soon as you’re done, if you say to the jailer “I need to talk to Mike and Steve from St. Paul and Minneapolis” — they’ll call us on those numbers and we’ll come right back.
Doran: Over here. I give you my word.
Defendant: All right.
These conversations had particular significance because Clark had a pre-existing relationship with Doran as a confidential informant and wrongly assumed that Do-ran would look out for his interest. Doran reinforced that assumption, and attempted to establish a further divide between Clark and any counsel he might obtain, when, according to Clark’s unrebutted testimony, he said “I’m your attorney. I can prove better than your attorney. Just do what I’m telling you to do.” It is no surprise that Clark later ignored his counsel’s advice and sought to talk directly to Doran, who by then had successfully subverted Clark’s relationship with any counsel. Although the police thereafter contacted Balck each time Clark asked to speak with them, the use of this protocol cannot be divorced from the prior efforts by police to induce Clark to ignore his counsel, as detailed above.
As will be discussed in section II below, these comments by police violated Clark’s right to counsel equally as much as would attempts to persuade a defendant to continue with an interrogation without counsel after the defendant has asked to speak to a lawyer. See e.g. State v. Hannon, 636 N.W.2d 796, 806 (Minn.2001) (holding that the police made impermissible inducements by telling a defendant that his side of the story would never be told if he asked for a lawyer); State v. Munson, 594 N.W.2d 128, 140-43 (Minn.1999) (holding that police made impermissible inducements by telling a defendant that a window of opportunity would close if he asked for a lawyer).
Second, Frazer testified that Balck played a role in assisting the police to implement their strategy to get access to Clark after counsel was appointed. Frazer said that, because he knew that “once [Clark] had counsel appointed to him, that there were procedures we had to go through before we could talk to him,” he “put some things in motion prior to [Clark’s post-arraignment request to speak to police]” by contacting Balck to seek his advice on how to proceed after counsel was appointed.
Third, Balck had little specific recall of his attempts to contact defense counsel. He could only say that each time he was contacted by Frazer, he attempted to contact someone from the public defender’s office. He did not testify to the content of any specific contact or what response he received from defense counsel. Most importantly, he did not say that he made any attempt to contact counsel on August 2 or before 8:40 p.m. on August 3. In fact, Balck said he could not specifically recall whether Handley or Iversen ever told him that Clark did not want to speak to the police. Obviously, from the testimony of Iversen, we know that she, both directly and through Frazer, told Balck at least *351twice that Clark did not want to speak to the police.
The state attempted to fill the gap of Balck’s recollection by relying on the hearsay testimony of Frazer, who described his communications with Balck and what Balck told him about Balck’s communications with defense counsel. But Frazer’s second-hand descriptions actually identified problems with Balck’s communications with defense counsel. Frazer reported that Balck told him on July 281 that Balck and Iversen had set a time for police to talk to Clark that day and that Iversen had been told that she could be present. Frazer then reported that when he arrived for the interview, Iversen was present and told Frazer that Clark was not going to be interviewed and said, “You’re not going anywhere near my client.”
Frazer said that he explained this situation fully to Balck when Clark again asked to meet with police on August 2. He then described Balck’s advice on the evening of August 3 as follows:
He told me that a notification had been made to the public defender’s office and they were aware of the time, and he said that I could expect to maybe or maybe not — he couldn’t answer that — see someone from their office there again, like the earlier date, on the [28th] with Miss Iversen [sic], and irregardless of whether they were there or not there, that I should proceed with the interview.
Of course, we know from Balck’s testimony that the only notification he gave before the 9 p.m. August 3 interview was a phone message left at the public defender’s main telephone number at 8:40 p.m. Balck had no basis to believe that defense counsel were actually aware of the time or to expect that they might be present.
Fourth, the majority excuses Balck’s failure to comply with Rule 4.2 on the grounds that “Balck could reasonably have believed that his obligation under Rule 4.2 was to provide Clark’s lawyer with notice and an opportunity to be present at the post-arraignment interviews.” But Balck did not testify that he held such a belief. More importantly, Balck acknowledged that he did not fulfill even this lesser obligation, testifying that:
Each time that I received a call from Sergeant Frazer, I would tell him that I was going to make the call to the Public Defender’s Office to inform them; and to the best of my recollection, after making that attempt, whether the contact was made or not, I would call Sergeant Frazer back and inform him that I had made the attempt or made that contact.
(Emphasis added). Of course, an attempt to contact counsel, by itself, does not constitute actual notice and provides no opportunity to be present.
Balck described his responsibility to be to “attempt to contact” defense counsel. Balck acknowledged that the only time he told Frazer not to talk to Clark was on his first phone call from Frazer on July 26, when he asked Frazer to “wait until I attempted to make the call to * * * defense counsel.” He did not tell Frazer to hold off interviewing Clark on the evening of August 3rd because he considered that “at 8:40 at night, I made every attempt I could to contact the defense attorney or attorneys by leaving a message on the main number, by talking to someone from the answering service.”
It is obvious from the extremely short notice, given after hours to a generic main *352office telephone, and the authorization for Frazer to proceed even though defense counsel had not actually been contacted, Balck had no intention of providing adequate notice or a real opportunity for counsel to be present for the evening meeting on August 3, but instead considered his responsibility to be over when he attempted contact, no matter how futile that attempt might have been. Balck clearly knew on the evening of August 3 that defense counsel would not have any opportunity to be present for an interview that was to begin only 20 minutes after Balck left the 8:40 p.m. telephone message at the main office. That interview was nearly completed before Balck talked to the public defender’s answering service at 10:40 p.m. Thus, any confusion Balck may have had about the precise scope of his legal responsibility does not excuse him because he not only failed to secure defense counsel’s consent, he failed to even provide defense counsel with notice and an opportunity to be present.
Fifth, the majority suggests that Balck may have grown frustrated by what he “perceived to have been a lack of responsiveness by the public defender’s office.” But Balck did not testify to either frustration or lack of responsiveness. To the contrary, he recognized that each time he had contacted defense counsel before August 3, defense counsel had rushed to the jail and persuaded Clark not to meet with police. If Balck was frustrated, it could only be because each time he provided defense counsel with notice and an opportunity to be present, defense counsel did their job and were successful in blocking the interview.
Sixth, I can find no support for the statement of the majority that “there was poor communication between both offices that may have led to frustration on both sides and this frustration may have led to Balck’s lapse in judgment when he did not attempt to prevent the 9 p.m. interview on August 3.” I find no basis in the record to suggest that defense counsel communicated poorly with the state or were not timely in their responses to Balck.
It should be remembered that the police contact with Clark spanned only nine days from beginning to end. Although Balck’s recall was not specific, from the testimony of Frazer, Handley, and Iversen we can account for the activity of each day and can see that defense counsel responded immediately to every call that provided adequate notice of a proposed meeting with Clark.
On Tuesday, July 26, the day of the arraignment, Clark asked to talk to police after the arraignment and Frazer called Balck, who then talked to Handley. Handley made it clear to Balck that he did not want his client interviewed. He told Balck it would be the better practice to not speak with Clark because it would only create problems later. Of course, Handley could have been more forceful, but his answer was responsive and it did not provide the requisite consent.
On Wednesday, July 27, Clark asked to talk to police and Frazer called Balck, who then called Iversen. Iversen responded immediately by visiting Clark at the jail. Iversen met with Clark for an hour and, when she left, Clark no longer wished to talk to police. Iversen left a message for Balck to that effect on the evening of the 27th.
On Thursday, July 28, Clark called police, Frazer called Balck, Balck called Iver-sen, and Iversen again visited Clark in Jail. Balck told Frazer that he and Iversen had arranged for a meeting with Clark and police later that day. But after Iversen met with Clark, Clark no longer wanted to meet with police. Iversen found Frazer, who was waiting to interview Clark, and *353advised him that Clark did not want to talk to him.
Clark did not make any request to talk to police on Friday, July 29, Saturday, July 30, Sunday, July 31, or Monday, August 1. Clark apparently made such a request on August 2, and Frazer testified that he called Balck, but as the majority notes, it is unclear from Balck’s testimony whether he made any attempt to contact defense counsel that day. Balck did not testify to initiating any specific contact and Iversen did not testify to receiving any contact on August 2. The only other attempt to contact defense counsel that Balck described was at 8:40 p.m. on August 3, when he left a telephone message at the main office number, about a 9 p.m. interview of Clark.
Balck did not contradict any of the testimony of Handley and Iversen. Prior to the evening of August 3, defense counsel had responded to each contact from Balck by visiting Clark and reporting to Balck that Clark no longer wished to meet with police. Defense counsel was completely responsive and was not even slightly at fault for any lack of effective communication. In fact, their communication was quite effective in consistently preventing police from meeting with Clark privately. Defense counsel were clear that if police proposed to meet with Clark, defense counsel would intervene, would attempt to persuade Clark not to meet, or would be present if Clark insisted on having a meeting. Of course, the statement attributed to Iversen, that she was “washing her hands” of Clark, was said to have been made on August 4, after the last of Clark’s damaging interviews had already been concluded and Iversen was simply responding to the telephone message that Balck had left for her on the evening of August 3.
Finally, I do not share the concern expressed by the majority about the possible infringement on a defendant’s “personal autonomy.” To the contrary, I believe that both defense counsel and the court have an obligation to safeguard a defendant from the unknowing, unintelligent, or involuntary exercise of personal autonomy that results in the waiver of significant rights. When a defendant wishes to exercise personal autonomy to waive the right to be represented by counsel, he must do so before the court on the record, not in a private meeting with police, and only after being fully advised by the ■ court of the disadvantages. Minn. R.Crim. P. 5.02, subd. 1(4). When a defendant wishes to exercise his personal autonomy to plead guilty to an offense, the court cannot accept that plea without making an extensive record to assure that the plea is knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. Minn. R.Crim. P. 15.01. When a defendant wishes to exercise his personal autonomy to agree to a trial on stipulated facts, the court cannot allow him to do so without making a record to be sure that his waiver of his right to testify is knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. Minn. R.Crim. P. 26.01, subd. 3.
All of these protections against the unwise exercise of personal autonomy are meaningless if a defendant, who has accepted counsel, can be persuaded by the police, in private meetings from which counsel has effectively been excluded, that he need not listen to the advice of counsel, that the police know better than counsel, and that he should talk to the police without counsel present.
I would not compare this situation to that present in State v. Ford, 539 N.W.2d 214 (Minn.1995). There, the defendant was truly the party who initiated the contact with police. Here, Clark initiated contact only after having been induced to do so by police, who had undermined his confidence in counsel. In Ford, the defendant suggested that he wanted to talk about “a *354matter of urgency and a life and death situation,” suggesting that he wanted to talk about something other than his involvement in the crime and that some emergency might exist. Id. at 223. Clark, on the other hand, was clearly asking to talk to police to follow-up on their invitation to “call us back to tell this story” so they could “help [him] clear it up.” Clark’s case is more akin to State v. Lefthand, 488 N.W.2d 799 (Minn.1992), where the facts were egregious and the administration of justice had been compromised. And Clark’s case is even more egregious than State v. Miller, 600 N.W.2d 457 (Minn.1999), because the state effectively precluded Clark’s counsel from attending a custodial interrogation, whereas in Miller the state only prevented counsel from attending a voluntary, noncustodial interrogation.2 See 600 N.W.2d at 461.
I would hold that the violation of Rule 4.2 was sufficiently egregious to warrant suppression of Clark’s post-arraignment statements to police.
II.
Even if we were not to suppress Clark’s post-arraignment statements to police because of the violation of Rule 4.2, I would hold that the statements should be suppressed because the state also violated Clark’s right to counsel, under the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution and art. I, § 6 of the Minnesota Constitution. The police engaged in persistent efforts to undermine the role of Clark’s defense counsel from the beginning to the end of the state’s contacts with Clark. The police began those contacts by urging Clark to ignore his counsel and speak directly to police, suggesting the precise mechanism that Clark needed to use to avoid the involvement of his counsel and misleading Clark into believing that the police were protecting his best interests. And when defense counsel interfered with that strategy, by intervening to protect Clark whenever they were given notice of a proposed meeting, the county attorney took defense counsel out of the picture by authorizing to meet with Clark at a time when defense counsel had not received actual notice and thus was not able to be present. These efforts to bypass defense counsel effectively eliminated Clark’s right to counsel.
The efforts of the police to induce Clark to waive his right to have counsel present for future interrogations are also violations of the defendant’s related right against compelled self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution and art. I, § 7 of the Minnesota Constitution. The United States Supreme Court has held that police violate a defendant’s right against compelled self-incrimination by continuing interrogation after a defendant asserts his right to counsel. Smith v. Illinois, 469 U.S. 91, 94-95, 105 S.Ct. 490, 83 L.Ed.2d 488 (1984) (citing Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 484-85, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 68 L.Ed.2d 378 (1981)). And we have held that, after a defendant requests counsel, the interrogating officers must cease all questions except “ones designed to clarify the [defendant’s] desires regarding the presence of counsel,” and *355that police statements “designed to induce [defendant] to continue talking [are] improper.” State v. Hannon, 636 N.W.2d at 806. In fact, we have condemned, as improper inducements, statements that are similar to, and even less offensive, than statements made by Frazer and Doran to Clark. In Munson, we said that the detective’s reference to a “window of opportunity” that would be closing if the defendant did not continue to answer questions was an impermissible attempt to induce the defendant’s waiver of his right to counsel. 594 N.W.2d at 140-43. And in Han-non, we said that the police statements that a defendant’s “side of [the] story [would] never be known” was an impermissible inducement. 636 N.W.2d at 806. Here, Frazer and Doran were far more forceful than the officers in Hannon or Munson, stating:
“And the only way for you to get this whole story out is gonna be if you call us and ask to talk to us.
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But you can call us back to tell this story.
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And if you don’t call us, [Doran] and I we’ll just have to proceed with what we already know, okay? And what other people are saying.
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Time’s of essence.
* * * *
Just so you know — if you don’t call— then we have to do our job and keep plugging ahead with what other people have told us.”
If the police are precluded from making these types of statements to induce an unrepresented defendant to continue talking without asserting his right to have counsel present, then police are equally precluded from making these types of statements to induce a represented defendant to agree to a later interrogation without his counsel present.
Given the egregious violations of Rule 4.2, I would suppress the second July 26 statement and the August 3 statement of Clark to police. If necessary, I would reach the same result for violations of Clark’s constitutional rights to be represented by counsel and to be free of compelled self-incrimination. I would further hold that the admission of those statements was prejudicial error, necessitating a new trial.

. Frazer originally said this event occurred on the 29th, but amended his testimony to the 28th.

. In Miller, we recognized that Rule 4.2 focuses on the conduct of the prosecuting attorney, but we also confirmed that the prosecuting attorney will be held responsible for the conduct of police if the attorney ordered or ratified it. 600 N.W.2d at 464. It could be argued here that the most egregious conduct was that of the police in their pre-arraignment inducements of Clark to ignore his counsel. But the testimony that Frazer contacted Balck even before defense counsel was appointed and that Balck authorized the August 3 interview knowing that defense counsel did not have notice or an opportunity to attend, is sufficient to show that Balck ordered or ratified the conduct of police.