Court Opinion

ID: 9479283
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:13:32.620076+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:55.692854
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I believe my brothers have decided this case prematurely. By proceeding to a judgment in light of Arizona v. Roberson, — U.S. -, 108 S.Ct. 2093, 100 L.Ed.2d 704 (1988) without remanding for further factfinding by the District Court that tried Mary Alice Wolf’s case below, this Court has elided the peculiar difficulties of this case and rendered a decision which, sub silentio, significantly expands the rule of Roberson. Because I believe these difficulties require specific deliberation — and because I believe such deliberation requires further development of the record — I most respectfully dissent.
Roberson involved custody on one state charge and custodial interrogation about another possible state charge. Wolf, however, was in state custody on a state charge when she was interrogated about a possible and unrelated federal charge by federal agents. Even if there were no factual difficulties involved in deciding this case under Roberson, I think it is our job to examine this difference in the postures of the two cases — particularly since the appellant, on this remand, has asked us to. Instead, the majority extends the application of Roberson significantly beyond its facts, to a case involving state custody and federal interrogation. Whether or not such an extension is called for, it certainly requires some analysis.
That purely legal problem is not the only one that appears here, however. My brothers’ opinion does not survey all of the facts that are established in this case, but consideration of them leads me to conclude that still further facts must be found before we can reach a fully reasoned decision in this case. The record reveals that, on April 18, 1986, Wolf was arraigned on state charges in the Jefferson County, Kentucky, district court. As the District Court below found in ruling on Wolf’s motion to suppress, Wolf had voluntarily gone to the office of the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, also on April 18, 1986, in order to provide information about a jailbreak she claimed was planned by Richard Savage. (Savage, it was later learned, was one of her co-conspirators in the plot to kill Vicki Brashear.) Wolf failed to appear for her preliminary hearing in the state proceedings, and a warrant was issued for her arrest. She did appear at a second hearing, on May 27, 1986, and bond was evidently set at a figure she could not meet. As the majority notes, at this time Wolf requested that an attorney be appointed to represent her. She was then returned to the Louisville Women’s Jail, where the interrogation that produced the statement which is involved in this appeal took place.
Thus far the facts are clear. What is not clear is whether we should construe the arrival of ATF agents at the jail as an initiation of interrogation. Of course, we know that Wolf herself voluntarily commenced her discussion with ATF agents well before she was placed in state custody on other charges. This strongly suggests to me that her discussions with federal officers developed independently of and pri- or to her being placed in state custody. If that were the fact, this case would raise yet another question about the application of Roberson: that is, can a defendant suppress a statement made in the course of a federal investigation that she herself initiated on the grounds that, in an unrelated state proceedings, she was later placed in state custody on state charges and requested an attorney in that matter? Two unresolved factual matters are directly pertinent to this question. First, the record presents us with apparently contradictory and inconclusive testimony on the question of whether one of the ATF agents appeared at her preliminary hearing on May 27, 1986 and sought to have her bond set high enough to keep her in custody. If in fact Wolf’s custody did result in part from the actions of the federal agent, the facts of this case would be much closer to those of Roberson than is now apparent. And *1326finally, it appears from the record that Wolf may have been told by the correctional officer who came to her cell to bring her to meet with the ATF agents, that she had no choice about going to meet with them. If this were established as a fact, it would certainly be pertinent to a determination of whether the arrival of ATF agents at the jail should be considered an initiation of interrogation or merely the continuation of discussions begun before Wolf became subject to state custody.
I might be confident to make factual findings on this point if I did not remember that I am an appellate judge, commissioned to review factual findings of a trial judge who has had first-hand acquaintance with the case. And I might gloss over these problems altogether — as I contend the majority has done — if I did not feel that we should move very deliberately to reach a just result in this difficult case and to apply Roberson correctly. I regret that I must dissent.