Court Opinion

ID: 9450951
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:01:21.127834+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:30.302035
License: Public Domain

FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge
(concurring) :
Since I am persuaded that Collins’ confession was not voluntary, I join in the disposition directed in Chief Judge Tuttle’s opinion. Taking that view, I prefer not to decide what to me are more difficult questions whether Collins is also entitled to prevail because of Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963), or Escobedo v. State of Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758,12 L.Ed.2d 977 (1964).
The standard as to review of a lower court judgment varies with the type of issue, and we are instructed that the vol-untariness of a confession involves several inquiries. Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U.S. 568, 603-606, 81 S.Ct. 1860, 1879, 6 L.Ed.2d 1037 (1961). The first step is to establish “the crude historical facts * * * surrounding the confession,” 367 U.S. at 603, 81 S.Ct. at 1879. As to these the district judge’s findings control “unless clearly erroneous,” F.R. Civ.P. 52(a). In the light of the lower court’s contrary finding, made after full hearing, we are thus precluded from giving any consideration to Collins’ claim that the police beat him to make him confess. After all the circumstances are established, the court must then decide what impact they had on the mind and will of the individual defendant — perhaps also a question of “fact” but one of a quite different sort, particularly when, as here, expert psychological testimony in the record somewhat diminishes the advantage of the district judge from seeing the prisoner in the courtroom. Finally, the court must decide the “inextricably interwoven” question of “the application to this psychological fact of standards for judgment informed by the larger legal conceptions ordinarily characterized as rules of law * * 367 U.S. at 603, 81 S.Ct. at 1879 specifically, whether the totality of the “crude historical” and “psychological” facts warrants the legal label “coercion.” These two later decisions depend very little on the credibility of witnesses, which usually is critical for “crude historical facts,” and precedents confirm that an appellate court has considerable responsibility to form its own judgment whether a record in a particular case suffices to bespeak coercion. See Culombe v. Connecticut, supra, 367 U.S. at 603-605, 81 S.Ct. 1860; Haynes v. State of Washington, 373 U.S. 503, 515-517, 83 S.Ct. 1336, 10 L.Ed.2d 513 (1963); United States ex rel. Eckwerth v. Denno, 261 F.2d 511, 513 (2 Cir. 1958), cert. denied, 358 U.S. 945, 79 S.Ct. 355, 3 L.Ed.2d 353 (1959).
Chief Judge Tuttle has clearly set out the facts based upon the concessions of both sides and the findings of the district judge. If we disregard the claimed beating as we must, no single circumstance standing alone would characterize the *833statements as involuntary; but when all the elements are taken together, it is not possible for me to feel that Collins’ confessions were “the expression of free choice,” Watts v. State of Indiana, 338 U.S. 49, 53, 69 S.Ct. 1347, 93 L.Ed. 1801 (1949).
The first step the police took when they picked Collins up was to attempt to isolate him. Instead of taking him to the police station, they drove him ten miles across town to a Ranger headquarters, so that there would be no “interference” with the questioning. Around midnight, they transported him another ten or twelve miles to a jail in a small community on the outskirts of the city, where he was deliberately lodged under a false name. Picked up the next afternoon, Collins rode around with police officers for two and a half hours and arrived back at Ranger headquarters at 5 o’clock for the evening’s interrogation. Carried to an extreme, the deliberate shuffling of a prisoner from one jail to another outside his community has itself been deemed enough to invalidate a confession. Ward v. State of Texas, 316 U.S. 547, 555, 62 S.Ct. 1139, 86 L.Ed. 1663 (1942). This unwarranted isolation of Collins was compounded, for during the 36-hour period ending in his second confession he saw no relatives, no friends, and no lawyer. Indeed, since he had not been booked at the city police station nor taken before a judicial officer, he might quite reasonably have believed that no one would be able to locate him until the police chose to make his arrest public; and it is not hard to realize the corrosive effect of such fears upon the will of one entirely within the police’s power. Compare Haynes v. State of Washington, 373 U.S. 503, 83 S.Ct. 1336 (1963). At no stage was Collins ever told that he had a right to consult with a lawyer, or even with his family, before making any statement. Such advice offers a prisoner a link with the outside world and a chance to seek guidance other than from those who want him to confess; however Esco-bedo may ultimately be read, the presence or absence of such a warning weighs in measuring the voluntariness of a confession.
Collins’ own mental and emotional makeup indicates that his capacity to resist pressure was strikingly low. The district judge summarized by saying, “A psychiatrist and a psychologist, testifying in Collins’ behalf, stated that he was of low intelligence, although not mentally defective, and that they felt he had a low ability to withstand stress.” Their testimony reveals that Collins’ I.Q. was in the lowest ten percent of the population ; that his judgment was “extremely poor”; that he would “respond abnormally in an attempt to avoid * * * what to him would represent stress”; that his low I.Q. made him a “greater target for suggestibility”; and that with respect to resisting pressure, Collins’ character was “more like that found in children between the ages of three and six.” That these special susceptibilities and Collins’ mea-gre education must be given due weight is clear from Haley v. State of Ohio, 332 U.S. 596, 68 S.Ct. 302, 92 L.Ed. 224 (1948), and Spano v. People of State of New York, 360 U.S. 315, 322, 79 S.Ct. 1202, 3 L.Ed.2d 1265 (1959).
The circumstances of the confession itself are also revealing. The questioning took place not during normal hours but late at night after Collins had been up during the day. See Spano v. People of State of New York, supra, 360 U.S. at 322, 79 S.Ct. 1202. He was questioned by changing teams of officers, who presumably had an opportunity to refresh themselves which he lacked. After he gave his midnight confession, which placed him near the crime but denied participation, he discovered that the police were not prepared either to release him or to hold him merely to check out his story, but renewed their questioning at 3:00 A.M. after two lie detector tests. Collins could well have believed there would be no end until he told the police what they wanted to hear. Finally, while early unequivocal advice that no statement was required might have served to alert or reassure Collins as to the choice before him, the warning that he received was *834quite inadequate to that end. At best he was twice told that he need not incriminate himself, in each case after he had made the oral confession and before he began to reiterate it for a formal transcription. See Turner v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 338 U.S. 62, 64, 69 S.Ct. 1352, 93 L.Ed. 1810 (1949).
A concluding word is called for regarding the admitted, deliberate violations of law by the police. The 36-hour detention of Collins on the uncorroborated and conclusory charge of a private bounty hunter was a gross violation of the Fourth Amendment. The police swore to a false charge to obtain a warrant under a false name, failed to take Collins before a magistrate as Texas requires after arrests without warrants, and avoided having a magistrate inform Collins of his right to counsel and right not to incriminate himself. See Vernon’s Ann.Texas Code Crim.Proc. arts. 215, 217, 245, 247 (1948). The law relating to arrest and detention does not always provide bright lines, and minor errors by the police are hardly to be avoided. But when the police operate in calculated and substantial disregard of the applicable rules, they cannot expect the benefit of any doubts as to undue pressure in a truly close case.
Since in my opinion this ground, established as far back as Brown v. State of Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278, 56 S.Ct. 461, 80 L.Ed.2d 682 (1936), requires us to reverse the judgment, I prefer not to attempt resolution of Collins’ claims in regard to Wong Sun and Escobedo. In view of Chief Judge Tuttle’s persuasive exegesis of these cases, it seems desirable that I pinpoint my areas of doubt.
Wong Sun held that statements which were the fruit of a seizure violating the Fourth Amendment stood no differently than its tangible results, 371 U.S. at 484-487, 83 S.Ct. 407. It is true, as the state emphasizes, that Wong Sun was a federal trial and that the Court spoke “in terms of deterring lawless conduct by federal officers” and “of closing the doors of the federal courts to any use of evidence unconstitutionally obtained,” 371 U.S. at 486, 83 S.Ct. at 416. But I perceive no basis for supposing that, having equated verbal with real evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment with respect to exclusion in federal trials, see Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 81 S.Ct. 679, 5 L.Ed.2d 734 (1961), the Court that had decided Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 43, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961), only two years earlier would distinguish the two sorts of evidence with respect to the necessity for exclusion in state trials. See Rogers v. United States, 330 F.2d 535, 541 (5 Cir.), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 916, 85 S.Ct. 265, 13 L.Ed.2d 186 (1964). It is also true that in Wong Sun there had been both an unlawful arrest and an unlawful search, whereas here there was only the former. But that also would seem an unlikely basis for distinction. The Fourth Amendment protects against improper seizure of the person as fully as against unreasonable breaking into the close, see Albrecht v. United States, 273 U.S. 1, 5, 47 S.Ct. 250, 71 L.Ed. 505 (1927); United States ex rel. Potts v. Rabb, 141 F.2d 45 (3 Cir.), cert. denied, 322 U.S. 727, 64 S.Ct. 943, 88 L.Ed. 1563 (1944), and nothing in the Supreme Court’s language would warrant a view that the Fourteenth Amendment “absorbs” the Fourth less in one respect than in the other, see Ker v. State of California, 374 U.S. 23, 83 S.Ct. 1623, 10 L.Ed.2d 726 (1963); compare Cohen v. Norris, 300 F.2d 24, 28 n. 3 (9 Cir. 1962).
I thus follow Chief Judge Tuttle on the general proposition that Wong Sun prohibits the introduction in a state criminal trial of a confession that is the result of an arrest violating the Fourth Amendment, just as Mapp prohibits the reception of an object obtained through an unconstitutional search.1 Where the *835problems become different is the less clear causal relation between the unconstitutional act and the “fruit.” When the police, by a search violating the Fourth Amendment, seize contraband or overhear a conversation disclosing the location of stolen goods, the connection between the unconstitutional intrusion and the booty offered at trial is so automatic and inevitable that the latter is readily seen as the “fruit” of the unconstitutional act. But when the object improperly seized is a person and the alleged “fruit” is a statement by him, there intervenes the individual’s own decision to speak. In Wong Sun itself the causal problems were at the temporal extremes. Toy’s statement, which the Court required to be excluded along with the narcotics to which it led, came directly after “[s]ix or seven officers had broken the door and followed on Toy’s heels into the bedroom where his wife and child were sleeping” and “[h]e had been almost immediately handcuffed and arrested.” 371 U.S. at 486, 83 S.Ct. at 416. By contrast, Wong Sun’s statement, held to have been properly admitted despite his unlawful arrest, was made after he “had been released on his own recognizance after a lawful arraignment, and had returned voluntarily several days later to make the statement * * *” 371 U.S. at 491, 83 S.Ct. at 419.
If the objective of obtaining maximum deterrence of arrests by state officers in violation of the Fourth Amendment overrode all other considerations, a narrow test of what breaks the causal chain would be appropriate in every case. But the few courts that have yet had to face the problem have shown reluctance to press Wong Sun so far, placing stress upon the Court’s statement, “We need not hold that all evidence is ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’ simply because it would not have come to light but for the illegal actions of the police.” 371 U.S. at 487-488, 83 S.Ct. at 417. Thus, another panel in this circuit has shrunk from concluding that a possible error by the police in thinking an arrest to be legal must require exclusion of a confession made some hours later in a wholly voluntary manner — the court saying, “At first blush * * * [Wong Sun] would appear to require only a passing of sufficient time between the arrest and the statement for the defendant to clear and arrange his mind.” Rogers v. United States, supra, 330 F.2d at 541-542. In State v. Traub, 150 Conn. 169, 187 A.2d 230 (1962), vacated and remanded “for further consideration in light of Wong Sun * * 374 U.S. 493, 83 S.Ct. 1899, 10 L.Ed.2d 1048 (1963), the Connecticut Supreme Court adhered to its decision admitting the confession, 151 Conn. 246, 196 A.2d 755 (1963), although Traub had no attorney and claimed he had not been warned that he was entitled to remain silent and that anything he said could be used against him, 150 Conn. at 183-187, 187 A.2d at 237-238; and the Supreme Court denied certiorari, 377 U.S. 960, 84 S.Ct. 1637, 12 L.Ed.2d 503 (1964). See also Prescoe v. State, 231 Md. 486, 191 A.2d 226 (1963); State v. Jackson, 43 N.J. 148, 203 A.2d 1 (1964).
Doubtless this judicial reluctance to press Wong Sun to its possible logical limits reflects a realization that interests other than maximum deterrence of unconstitutional arrests are at stake. Also the absence of probable cause or failure to comply with prescribed methods of search or arrest generally has nothing more than a “but-for” causal relation to a subsequent confession, and sometimes not even that. A good deal might be said for a limiting principle based on the wantonness of the arrest, as one passage in Chief Judge Tuttle’s opinion may intimate. Compare United States v. Kyle, 297 F.2d 507 (2 Cir. 1961). On this view, a flagrantly unlawful violation by the police would require depriving them of every foreseeable benefit that might spur further adventures of the same kind, certainly suppression of all evidence acquired, including confessions given prior to release or in the absence of a lawyer. On the other hand, those errors of judgment inevitable when the Fourth Amendment is being interpreted “on the run” would not disqualify the evidence, on the theory that the added margin of *836deterrence and increased security is not worth the added price. Deciding what is flagrant is no harder than appraising probable cause. If I were sure that some such limiting principle was available, I would be less hesitant in joining Chief Judge Tuttle as to Wong Sun, since the police conduct here was as wanton as could be. But as matters stand, I think it undesirable for an inferior court to attempt to predict what terminal, if any, the Supreme Court will put on Wong Sun until it is seized of a case where that task cannot be shirked.
Before leaving this phase of the case, I should make clear that I am not prepared to hold the initial encounter between the police and Collins on the evening of January 19 to have been an illegal arrest. Although Special Investigator Williams, answering a rather leading question by Collins’ counsel, did characterize the episode as such, Detective Ray testified that he didn’t arrest Collins, that Collins “agreed to go along and go with us,” and that Williams had simply told Collins “that Captain Waycott wanted to see him.” There is no evidence that force was used or threatened, though Collins may have thought it would be if he did not comply. The issue whether the police, though lacking enough evidence to justify arrest and incarceration, may not request or even demand that a person suspected of serious crime accompany them to a suitable place of interview for a reasonable period of investigation is so important and the proper answer so doubtful, see, e. g., Watts v. State of Indiana, 338 U.S. 49, 58, 61-62, 69 S.Ct. 1347, 93 L.Ed. 1801 (1949) (concurring and dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Jackson); Culombe v. Connecticut, supra, 367 U.S. at 576-581, 81 S.Ct. 1860 (opinion of Mr. Justice Frankfurter); United States ex rel. Corbo v. La Vallee, 270 F.2d 513, 518 (2 Cir. 1959), cert. denied, 361 U.S. 950, 80 S.Ct. 403, 4 L.Ed.2d 382 (1960); United States v. Vita, 294 F.2d 524, 528-530 (2 Cir. 1961), cert. denied, 369 U.S. 823, 82 S.Ct. 837, 7 L.Ed.2d 788 (1962); United States v. Middleton, 344 F.2d 78 (2 Cir. 1965); United States v. Bonanno, 180 F.Supp. 71 (S.D.N.Y.), rev’d on other grounds, 285 F.2d 408 (2 Cir. 1960); LaFave, Arrest, 300-18, 343-53 (1965), that resolution of that issue also should await a case where the task cannot be avoided.
There has been sharp difference of opinion, see United States ex rel. Russo v. New Jersey, - F.2d - (3 Cir. 1965) and cases there cited, on the highly important question whether Escobedo v. State of Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977 (1964), is to be extended beyond what the Court characterized as “the critical question” in that case, 378 U.S. 479, 84 S.Ct. 1758, and, if so, how far. The testing point is whether the phrase in the holding, 378 U.S. at 490-491, 84 S.Ct. at 1765, “the suspect has requested and been denied an opportunity to consult with his lawyer,” was intended to set limits on the decision or was merely an accurate description of the facts. A plausible argument can indeed be assembled for the view that Escobedo will not be limited to factual situations like that there presented. The decision, it is said, obliterates the significance of the beginning of judicial proceedings as triggering the right to counsel; the Court considered it enough that Escobe-do “had become the accused” in the eyes of the police. The next proposition is that once that stage has been reached, it can make no difference whether the prospective defendant has sought counsel or not; as to this, reliance is placed on the statement that “the right to be furnished counsel does not depend on a request.” Carnley v. Cochran, 369 U.S. 506, 513, 82 S.Ct. 884, 8 L.Ed.2d 70 (1962). If the state has not taken the initiative and furnished counsel at this stage, the argument runs, it must at least advise the accused in such a way that he will clearly understand that he has a right to consult with an attorney before responding to interrogation and that he need not answer at all unless he freely chooses. For only if the suspect makes a “considered choice,” Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 439, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963), to *837forego the aid to which, ex hypothesi, he is then and there entitled does the Sixth Amendment permit his statements to be used against him. Finally, depending on the rationale thought to underlie an expanded Escobedo doctrine, arguments of some force can be advanced for applying it retroactively. But, as against this chain of quotations from cases presenting quite different problems, there are the many limiting phrases presumably placed in the Escobedo opinion for some purpose — not only the characterizations of the question and of the holding already mentioned, but further language stressing the frustrated attempts of client and attorney to communicate, 378 U.S. at 481-482, 485, 488, 84 S.Ct. 1758, and the reliance on People v. Donovan, 13 N.Y.2d 148, 151, 243 N.Y.S.2d 841, 843, 193 N.E.2d 628 (1963), 378 U.S. 486-487, 84 S.Ct. 1758. Cases like Carnley and Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 82 L.Ed. 1461 (1938), concerned the right to counsel at trial, where pitting a layman against a trained prosecutor creates a serious risk that an innocent man will go to jail. The police station confession — itself desirable so far as truly voluntary — presents a very different problem not only in its legal history but in the practical considerations involved. Strong arguments can be mustered for hedging confessions with further safeguards, but we must beware of treating the “right to counsel,” “waiver,” or any other concept of law as a Platonic reality without considering the context at hand. Since the expansive reading of Es-cobedo sometimes proposed would take the Court rather far from the historic purpose of the Sixth Amendment, as explained in Powell v. State of Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 60-65, 68-73, 53 S.Ct. 55, 77 L.Ed. 158 (1932), and Bute v. People of State of Illinois, 333 U.S. 640, 660-663, 68 S.Ct. 763, 92 L.Ed. 986 (1948), would invalidate numerous state and federal convictions if retroactively applied, and might drastically affect the necessary investigation of crime, I do not wish to essay resolution of these grave problems, even on the tentative basis on which a Court of Appeals necessarily acts on a question of this sort, when, in my view, the relator is entitled to prevail on another ground. Compare Edwards v. Holman, 342 F.2d 679 (5 Cir. 1965).
For the reason first stated I join in reversal of the judgment.

. I here assume, without deciding, that since Collins’ direct appeal was still pending when Mapp was decided, Wong Sun, which was a corollary of Mapp, would be applicable although it was decided after Collins’ appeal bad been terminated by the denial of certiorari, 369 U.S. 881, 82 S.Ct. 1152, 8 L.Ed.2d 283 (1962). Cf. Linkletter v. Walker, 85 S.Ct. 1731 (1965).