Court Opinion

ID: 9432051
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:34:04.531071+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:32.006733
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
concurring in the judgment.
The Court holds that Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), does not require suppression of a statement made by an incarcerated suspect to an undercover agent. Although I do not subscribe to the majority’s characterization of Miranda in its entirety, I do agree that when a suspect does not know that his questioner is a police agent, such questioning does not amount to “interrogation” in an “inherently coercive” environment so as to require application of Miranda. Since the only issue raised at this stage of the litigation is the applicability of Miranda,* I concur in the judgment of the Court.
*301This is not to say that I believe the Constitution condones the method by which the police extracted the confession in this case. To the contrary, the deception and manipulation practiced on respondent raise a substantial claim that the confession was obtained in violation of the Due Process Clause. As we recently stated in Miller v. Fenton, 474 U. S. 104, 109-110 (1985):
“This Court has long held that certain interrogation techniques, either in isolation or as applied to the unique characteristics of a particular suspect, are so offensive to a civilized system of justice that they must be condemned under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. . . . Although these decisions framed the legal inquiry in a variety of different ways, usually through the ‘convenient shorthand’ of asking whether the confession was ‘involuntary,’ Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U. S. 199, 207 (1960), the Court’s analysis has consistently been animated by the view that ‘ours is an accusatorial and not an inquisitorial system,’ Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U. S. 534, 541 (1961), and that, accordingly, tactics for eliciting inculpatory statements must fall within the broad constitutional boundaries imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of fundamental fairness.”
*302That the right is derived from the Due Process Clause “is significant because it reflects the Court’s consistently held view that the admissibility of a confession turns as much on whether the techniques for extracting the statements, as applied to this suspect, are compatible with a system that presumes innocence and assures that a conviction will not be secured by inquisitorial means as on whether the defendant’s will was in fact overborne.” Id., at 116. See Spano v. New York, 360 U. S. 315, 320-321 (1959) (“The abhorrence of society to the use of involuntary confessions does not turn alone on their inherent untrustworthiness. It also turns on the deep-rooted feeling that the police must obey the law while enforcing the law; that in the end life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves”); see also Degraffenreid v. McKellar, 494 U. S. 1071, 1072-1074 (1990) (Marshall, J., joined by Brennan, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari).
The method used to elicit the confession in this case deserves close scrutiny. The police devised a ruse to lure respondent into incriminating himself when he was in jail on an unrelated charge. A police agent, posing as a fellow inmate and proposing a sham escape plot, tricked respondent into confessing that he had once committed a murder, as a way of proving that he would be willing to do so again should the need arise during the escape. The testimony of the undercover officer and a police informant at the suppression hearing reveal the deliberate manner in which the two elicited incriminating statements from respondent. See App. 43-53 and 66-73. We have recognized that “the mere fact of custody imposes pressures on the accused; confinement may bring into play subtle influences that will make him particularly susceptible to the ploys of undercover Government agents.” United States v. Henry, 447 U. S. 264, 274 (1980). As Justice Marshall points out, the pressures of custody make a suspect more likely to confide in others and to engage *303in “jailhouse bravado.” See post, at 307-308. The State is in a unique position to exploit this vulnerability because it has virtually complete control over the suspect’s environment. Thus, the State can ensure that a suspect is barraged with questions from an undercover agent until the suspect confesses. Cf. Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385, 399 (1978); Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U. S. 143, 153-155 (1944). The testimony in this case suggests the State did just that.
The deliberate use of deception and manipulation by the police appears to be incompatible “with a system that presumes innocence and assures that a conviction will not be secured by inquisitorial means,” Miller, supra, at 116, and raises serious concerns that respondent’s will was overborne. It is open to the lower court on remand to determine whether, under the totality of the circumstances, respondent’s confession was elicited in a manner that violated the Due Process Clause. That the confession was not elicited through means of physical torture, see Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U. S. 278 (1936) or overt psychological pressure, see Payne v. Arkansas, 356 U. S. 560, 566 (1958), does not end the inquiry. “[A]s law enforcement officers become more responsible, and the methods used to extract confessions more sophisticated, [a court’s] duty to enforce federal constitutional protections does not cease. It only becomes more difficult because of the more delicate judgments to be made.” Spano, supra, at 321.

As the case comes to us, it involves only the question whether Miranda applies to the questioning of an incarcerated suspect by an undercover agent. Nothing in the Court’s opinion suggests that, had respondent previously invoked his Fifth Amendment right to counsel or right to silence, his statements would be admissible. If respondent had invoked either right, the inquiry would focus on whether he subsequently waived the particular right. See Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U. S. 477 (1981); Michigan v. Mosley 423 U. S. 96, 104 (1975). As the Court made clear in *301Moran v. Burbine, 475 U. S. 412, 421 (1986), the waiver of Miranda rights “must [be] voluntary in the sense that it [must be] the product of a free and deliberate choice rather than intimidation, coercion or deception." (Emphasis added.) Since respondent was in custody on an unrelated charge when he was questioned, he may be able to challenge the admission of these statements if he previously had invoked his Miranda rights with respect to that charge. See Arizona v. Roberson, 486 U. S. 675 (1988); Mosley, supra, at 104. Similarly, if respondent had been formally charged on the unrelated charge and had invoked his Sixth Amendment right to counsel, he may have a Sixth Amendment challenge to the admissibility of these statements. See Michigan v. Jackson, 475 U. S. 625, 629-636 (1986). Cf. Roberson, supra, at 683-685.