Court Opinion

ID: 9430409
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:40.666428+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:24.407771
License: Public Domain

Justice Rehnquist,
with whom Justice Powell and Justice O’Connor join, dissenting.
The Court’s decision today rests on the following deceptively simple line of reasoning: Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U. S. 477 (1981), created a bright-line rule to protect a defendant’s Fifth Amendment rights; Sixth Amendment rights are even more important than Fifth Amendment rights; therefore, we must also apply the Edwards rule to the Sixth Amendment. The Court prefers this neat syllogism to an effort to discuss or answer the only relevant question: Does the Edwards rule make sense in the context of the Sixth Amendment? I think it does not, and I therefore dissent from the Court’s unjustified extension of the Edwards rule to the Sixth Amendment.
*638My disagreement with the Court stems from our differing understandings of Edwards. In Edwards, this Court held that once a defendant has invoked his right under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), to have counsel present during custodial interrogation, “a valid waiver of that right cannot be established by showing only that he responded to further police-initiated custodial interrogation even if he has been advised of his rights.” 451 U. S., at 484. This “prophylactic rule,” see Solem v. Stumes, 465 U. S. 638, 644, 645 (1984), was deemed necessary to prevent the police from effectively “overriding” a defendant’s assertion of his Miranda rights by “badgering” him into waiving those rights. See Oregon v. Bradshaw, 462 U. S. 1039, 1044 (1983) (plurality opinion of Rehnquist, J.) (Edwards rule “designed to protect an accused in police custody from being badgered by police officers”).1 In short, as we explained in later cases, “Edwards did not confer a substantive constitutional right that had not existed before; it ‘created a protective umbrella serving to enhance a constitutional guarantee.’” Solem v. Stumes, supra, at 644, n. 4, quoting Michigan v. Payne, 412 U. S. 47, 54 (1973); see also Shea v. Louisiana, 470 U. S. 51, 61 (1985) (White, J., dissenting) (describing “prophylactic purpose” of Edwards rule).
What the Court today either forgets or chooses to ignore is that the “constitutional guarantee” referred to in Solem v. Stumes is the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition on compelled self-incrimination. This prohibition, of course, is also the constitutional underpinning for the set of prophylactic rules announced in Miranda itself. See Moran v. Burbine, ante, at 424-425; Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U. S. 298, 304-305, 306, *639and n. 1 (1985).2 Edwards, like Miranda, imposes on the police a bright-line standard of conduct intended to help ensure that confessions obtained through custodial interrogation will not be “coerced” or “involuntary.” Seen in this proper light, Edwards provides nothing more than a second layer of protection, in addition to those rights conferred by Miranda, for a defendant who might otherwise be compelled by the police to incriminate himself in violation of the Fifth Amendment.
The dispositive question in the instant cases, and the question the Court should address in its opinion, is whether the same kind of prophylactic rule is needed to protect a defendant’s right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment. The answer to this question, it seems to me, is clearly “no.” The Court does not even suggest that the police commonly deny defendants their Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Nor, I suspect, would such a claim likely be borne out by empirical evidence. Thus, the justification for the prophylactic rules this Court created in Miranda and Edwards, namely, the perceived widespread problem that the police were violating, and would probably continue to violate, the Fifth Amendment rights of defendants during the course of custodial interrogations, see Miranda, supra, at 445-458,3 is conspicu*640ously absent in the Sixth Amendment context. To put it simply, the prophylactic rule set forth in Edwards makes no sense at all except when linked to the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition against compelled self-incrimination.
Not only does the Court today cut the Edwards rule loose from its analytical moorings, it does so in a manner that graphically reveals the illogic of the Court’s position. The Court phrases the question presented in these cases as whether the Edwards rule applies “to a defendant who has been formally charged with a crime and who has requested appointment of counsel at his arraignment.” Ante, at 626 (emphasis added). And the Court ultimately limits its holding to those situations where the police “initiate interrogation after a defendant’s assertion, at an arraignment or similar proceeding, of his right to counsel.” Ante, at 636 (emphasis added).
In other words, the Court most assuredly does not hold that the Edwards per se rule prohibiting all police-initiated interrogations applies from the moment the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel attaches, with or without a request for counsel by the defendant. Such a holding would represent, after all, a shockingly dramatic restructuring of the balance this Court has traditionally struck between the rights of the defendant and those of the larger society. Applying the Edwards rule to situations in which a defendant has not made an explicit request for counsel would also render completely nugatory the extensive discussion of “waiver” in such prior Sixth Amendment cases as Brewer v. Williams, 430 U. S. 387, 401-406 (1977). See also id., at 410 (Powell, J., concurring) (“The critical factual issue is whether there had been a voluntary waiver”); id., at 417 (Burger, C. J., dissenting) (“[I]t is very clear that Williams had made a valid *641waiver of his . . . Sixth Amendment right to counsel); id., at 430, n. 1 (White, J., joined by Blackmun and Rehnquist, JJ., dissenting) (“It does not matter whether the right not to make statements in the absence of counsel stems from Massiah v. United States, 377 U. S. 201 (1964), or Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966). In either case the question is one of waiver”).4
This leaves the Court, however, in an analytical straitjacket. The problem with the limitation the Court places on the Sixth Amendment version of the Edwards rule is that, unlike a defendant’s “right to counsel” under Miranda, which does not arise until affirmatively invoked by the defendant during custodial interrogation, a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel does not depend at all' on whether the defendant has requested counsel. See Brewer v. Williams, supra, at 404; Carnley v. Cochran, 369 U. S. 506, 513 (1962). The Court acknowledges as much in footnote six of its opinion, where it stresses that “we do not, of course, suggest that *642the right to counsel turns on ... a request [for counsel].” Ante, at 633, n. 6.
The Court provides no satisfactory explanation for its decision to extend the Edwards rule to the Sixth Amendment, yet limit that rule to those defendants foresighted enough, or just plain lucky enough, to have made an explicit request for counsel which we have always understood to be completely unnecessary for Sixth Amendment purposes. The Court attempts to justify its emphasis on the otherwise legally insignificant request for counsel by stating that “we construe the defendant’s request for counsel as an extremely important fact in considering the validity of a subsequent waiver in response to police-initiated interrogation.” Ibid. This statement sounds reasonable, but it is flatly inconsistent with the remainder of the Court’s opinion, in which the Court holds that there can be no waiver of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel after a request for counsel has been made. See ante, at 635-636, n. 10. It is obvious that, for the Court, the defendant’s request for counsel is not merely an “extremely important fact”; rather, it is the only fact that counts.
The truth is that there is no satisfactory explanation for the position the Court adopts in these cases. The glaring inconsistencies in the Court’s opinion arise precisely because the Court lacks a coherent, analytically sound basis for its decision. The prophylactic rule of Edwards, designed from its inception to protect a defendant’s right under the Fifth Amendment not to be compelled to incriminate himself, simply does not meaningfully apply to the Sixth Amendment. I would hold that Edwards has no application outside the context of the Fifth Amendment, and would therefore reverse the judgment of the court below.

 The four dissenters in Oregon v. Bradshaw apparently agreed with the plurality’s characterization of the Edwards rule. See 462 U. S., at 1055, n. 2 (MARSHALL, J., joined by BRENNAN, Blackmun, and Stevens, JJ., dissenting) (citing passage from plurality opinion quoted in the text, and noting that “[t]he only dispute between the plurality and the dissent in this case concerns the meaning of ‘initiation’ for purposes of Edwards’ per se rule”).

 The Court suggests, in dictum, that the Fifth Amendment also provides defendants with a “right to counsel.” See ante, at 629. But our cases make clear that the Fifth Amendment itself provides no such “right.” See Moran v. Burbine, ante, at 423, n. 1; Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U. S., at 304-305. Instead, Miranda confers upon a defendant a “right to counsel,” but only when such counsel is requested during custodial interrogations. Even under Miranda, the “right to counsel” exists solely as a means of protecting the defendant’s Fifth Amendment right not to be compelled to incriminate himself.

 In Miranda, this Court reviewed numerous instances in which police brutality had been used to coerce a defendant into confessing his guilt. The Court then stated:
“The use of physical brutality and violence is not, unfortunately, relegated to the past or to any part of the country. . . .
“The examples given above are undoubtedly the exception now, but they are sufficiently widespread to be the object of concern. Unless a proper *640limitation upon custodial interrogation is achieved . . . there can be no assurance that practices of this nature will be eradicated in the foreseeable future.” 384 U. S., at 446-447.

 See also Moran v. Burbine, ante, at 428 (“It is clear, of course, that, absent a valid waiver, the defendant has the right to the presence of an attorney during any interrogation occurring after the first formal charging proceeding, the point at which the Sixth Amendment right to counsel initially attaches”).
Several of our Sixth Amendment eases have indeed erected virtually per se barriers against certain kinds of police conduct. See, e. g., Maine v. Moulton, 474 U. S. 159 (1985); United States v. Henry, 447 U. S. 264 (1980); Massiah v. United States, 377 U. S. 201 (1964). These cases, however, all share one fundamental characteristic that separates them from the instant cases; in each case, the nature of the police conduct was such that it would have been impossible to find a valid waiver of the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel. See Maine v. Moulton, supra, at 176-177 (undisclosed electronic surveillance of conversations with a third party); United States v. Henry, supra, at 265, 273 (use of undisclosed police informant); Massiah v. United States, supra, at 202 (undisclosed electronic surveillance). Here, on the other hand, the conduct of the police was totally open and aboveboard, and could not be said to prevent the defendant from executing a valid Sixth Amendment waiver under the standards set forth in Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458 (1938).