Court Opinion

ID: 9743702
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:40:50.185479+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:42.831958
License: Public Domain

Nolan, J.
(dissenting). I dissent. The court today has reversed convictions for serious crimes because a police officer failed to inform the defendant that a lawyer on the staff of the Massachusetts Defenders Committee who was representing him in a pending but totally unrelated case had asked to be informed of the time and place of the officer’s interrogation of the defendant and expressed a desire to be present when the interrogation took place. The police officer did not agree to the attorney’s request to notify her. To this extent, the warning of Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387, 406 (1977), is not apposite.
It is true that the Commonwealth has a heavy burden in demonstrating that the defendant has waived his Miranda rights (Commonwealth v. Cameron, 385 Mass. 660, 664 [1982]), and that this burden requires a showing that the waiver was made knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily (Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444 [1966]). The court today, however, seems to suggest that there are at least two tests to determine waiver, a “totality of the circumstances” test and a “voluntary” test under Commonwealth v. McKenna, 355 Mass. 313 (1969). I do not agree. In fact, it was precisely because of the totality of the circumstances in McKenna that the court ruled that the defendant had not waived his right to counsel.
*297In the instant case, the circumstances are important. The defendant was given all the Miranda rights. He was notified of his right to use the telephone. He was not under arrest before, during, or after the interrogation. He was permitted to leave the interrogation room to talk with his friend, Jones, a codefendant. His father was present for the final ten minutes of the interrogation and the defendant signed the statement sought to be excluded in his father’s presence. No threats or promises were made. He left the police station with his father. There is nothing in the record to suggest that the defendant was of marginal intelligence or otherwise mentally handicapped. All of these circumstances should be weighed against the failure of the police officer to tell the defendant that the attorney in the unrelated case asked to be notified in advance of the police interrogation. Regrettably, the court has isolated this last “circumstance” and made it controlling. The court should consider the failure to inform the defendant of the attorney’s request to be notified as merely one factor among many for evaluation on the question of waiver. This is the approach which the Supreme Court took in the analogous problem of the defendant’s unawareness of his right to refuse to consent to a warrantless search in Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 248-249 (1973). The Supreme Court treated the defendant’s nescience as one factor among many in determining whether he had voluntarily consented to a search without a warrant. This is the better approach.