Court Opinion

ID: 9465175
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:38:12.252555+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:01.210601
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I respectfully dissent.
After Wilson declined to “make a statement,” Detective Cullen did not cease interrogation. Without the slightest deference to Wilson’s expressed wishes, Cullen immediately asked him the question: “Well, would you care to tell me what you did on July 4th?”1 This failure to stop the questioning violated Wilson’s Miranda rights as *1193enunciated in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 471-74, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), and as subsequently developed in Michigan v. Mosley, 423 U.S. 96, 96 S.Ct. 321, 46 L.Ed.2d 313 (1975).
Whatever else Michigan v. Mosley, supra, did to Miranda, it did not construe “the interrogation must cease” language of that much maligned case2 “to require only the immediate cessation of questioning, and to permit a resumption of interrogation after a momentary respite.” Id. at 102, 96 S.Ct. at 325. Just as Justice Stewart’s opinion in Mosley observed that Miranda did not “create a per se proscription of indefinite duration” against further interrogation, id., it similarly abjured the equally doctrinaire reading of Miranda, espoused by the State of New York and adopted by the majority, which would “permit the continuation of custodial interrogation after a momentary cessation,” id.,3 provided only that the suspect’s will was not overborne. Rather, the Court reiterated an essential teaching of Miranda — that “the admissibility of statements obtained after the person in custody has decided to remain silent depends . on whether his ‘right to cut off questioning’ was ‘scrupulously honored.’ ” Id. at 104, 96 S.Ct. at 326 (footnote omitted).4 Here, when Wilson declined to make a statement, he effectively exercised his right to remain silent. Surely Detective Cullen’s immediately subsequent interrogation did not amount to a scrupulous honoring of that decision. See United States v. Crisp, 435 *1194F.2d 354, 356-57 (7th Cir. 1970), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 947, 91 S.Ct. 1640, 29 L.Ed.2d 116 (1971). On the contrary, Cullen scrupulously ignored Wilson’s request.5
To be sure, Miranda has suffered “piecemeal” erosion; 6 and some would weaken it further.7 But Miranda has not been overruled even though more than twenty briefs were filed in Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387, 97 S.Ct. 1232, 51 L.Ed.2d 424 (1977), urging the Court to do so.8 Unless the Court overrules Miranda, we as lower courts are bound to follow it.
I find the Massiah9. point equally persuasive. In that case, as here, a conceded police agent was used to secure incriminating statements from a represented defendant in the absence of his counsel. There is surely no difference, except one of reliability perhaps, between the radio transmitter used in Massiah and the planted cellmate used here. Thus, the only real distinction advanced is that Benny Lee did not “interrogate” Wilson.10 But the Government did not “interrogate” Massiah.11 Certainly the Court did not rely on the fact that Massiah *1195was interrogated.12 Rather, what is critical is whether police conduct “deliberately elicited” information, not the precise manner in which the statements were obtained:
We hold that the petitioner was denied the basic protections of that guarantee when there was used against him at his trial evidence of his own incriminating words, which federal agents had deliberately elicited from him after he had been indicted and in the absence of his counsel. It is true that in the Spano [Spano v. New York, 360 U.S. 215, 79 S.Ct. 1202, 3 L.Ed.2d 1265 (1959)] case the defendant was interrogated in a police station, while here the damaging testimony was elicited from the defendant without his knowledge while he was free on bail. But, as Judge Hays pointed out in his dissent in the Court of Appeals, “if such a rule is to have any efficacy it must apply to indirect and surreptitious interrogations as well as those conducted in the jailhouse. In this case, Massiah was more seriously imposed upon . . . because he did not even know that he was under interrogation by a government agent.” 307 F.2d at 72-73.
Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201, 206, 84 S.Ct. 1199, 1203, 12 L.Ed.2d 246 (1964). As far as I know, Massiah is still the law. See Brewer v. Williams, supra, 430 U.S. at 400-01, 97 S.Ct. 1232. See note 10 supra.
I would reverse and grant the writ unless appellant were retried.

. Appellant surrendered at the 44th Detective Squad. There, Detective Cullen placed him under arrest. Following a short conversation between Detective Cullen and appellant’s brother Michael, and then a brief colloquy between appellant and his brother, Detectives Cullen and Dunn took appellant into an office.
At a pretrial “Huntley hearing,” Detective Cullen described the ensuing interrogation as follows:
Q. From the beginning, tell us what you said to the defendant and what he said to you?
A. He had a right to remain silent. I asked him if he understood. He said yes. I told him anything he did say could be used against him in a court of law. I asked if he understood; he replied yes. I told him he could have an attorney; he had a right to an attorney now, at any time in the future. I asked him if he understood; he said yes. I told him if he could not afford an attorney, one would be provided for him free of charge. I asked him if he understood. He said yes. I then asked him, having understood all of this, do you wish to make a statement? And he replied no.
Q. What did you then say?
A. I then asked him, “Well, would you care to tell me what you did on July 4th?”
Q. What did he say to that?
A. Yes.
*1193Detective Dunn then left the room and appellant proceeded to tell Detective Cullen that he had been at the Star garage looking for his brother, had heard shots and had seen the victim lying on the floor. He explained that he then fled because he “was afraid [he] would get blamed.”

. Since Miranda was decided, I believe that it has exercised two principal effects. First, it has given poor or amateur suspects the same rights that rich or professional suspects have always had. The latter have always refused to talk without their “mouthpiece.” And, second, Miranda has required the police to do more thorough investigative work than some of them had been accustomed to doing before that case was decided. Graduates of better police training academies and FBI agents investigating professionally committed crimes had long since relied mainly upon investigative techniques other than “grilling the suspect.” Unless we are to disbelieve the late Chief Justice Warren, the terrible Miranda rules were derived from FBI practice. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 483 & n.54, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1956).
But then I am in a minority, I suppose, in not thinking that Miranda is so horrible. Perhaps, adoption of the Miranda rules by exercise of the rule-making power rather than by judicial decision would have made them more palatable.

. Here of course there was not even a momentary cessation of questioning.

. Mosley’s initial decision to remain silent was expressed in these terms:
Detective Cowie gave the only testimony at the suppression hearing concerning the scope of Mosley’s earlier refusal to answer his questions:
“A. I think at that time he declined to answer whether he had been involved.
“Q. He declined to answer?
“A. Yes. Anything about the robberies.” At the suppression hearing, Mosley did not in any way dispute Cowie’s testimony. Not until trial, after the judge had denied the motion to suppress the incriminating statement, did Mosley offer a somewhat different version of his earlier refusal to answer Detective Cow-ie’s questions. The briefs submitted by Mosley’s counsel to the Michigan Court of Appeals and to this Court accepted Detective Cowie’s account of the interrogation as correct, and the Michigan Court of Appeals decided the case on that factual premise. At oral argument before this Court, both counsel discussed the case solely in terms of Cowie’s description of the events.
Michigan v. Mosley, 423 U.S. 96, 105 n.11, 96 S.Ct. 321, 327, 46 L.Ed.2d 313 (1975).
Mosley is not dispositive. There questioning resumed two hours after Mosley first refused to make a statement and then only after full and complete Miranda warnings were again administered. Id. at 104, 96 S.Ct. 321. Nor does United States v. Collins, 462 F.2d 792 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 409 U.S. 988, 93 S.Ct. 343, 34 L.Ed.2d 254 (1972), control this case. In Collins, interrogation ceased after Collins stated that “ ‘he did not want to make a statement,’ ” 462 F.2d at 799 (Mansfield, J., dissenting). Each time new questioning was attempted, it was preceded by fresh Miranda warnings. Id., at 799-800. In rehearing en banc the court held simply that “ ‘interrogation must cease’ until new and adequate warnings have been given and there is a reasonable basis for inferring that the suspect has voluntarily changed his mind.” Id. at 802.

. In his Mosley opinion, Justice Stewart makes much of the fact that the subsequent interrogation related to a different offense from that for which the original warnings were given. 423 U.S. at 104-05, 96 S.Ct. 321. One commentator has suggested that this fact may be of controlling significance. Stone, The Miranda Doctrine in the Burger Court, 1977 Sup.Ct.Rev. 99, 134. In this case, however, Cullen’s subsequent interrogation focused on the only crime for which Wilson was in custody and for which he initially received Miranda warnings.

. Id. at 169.

. See Ritchie, Compulsion That Violates the Fiñh Amendment: The Burger Court’s Defínition, 61 Minn.L.Rev. 383, 429-31 (1977). It is interesting to note that not one case in the Supreme Court in the last five years has witnessed a single item of evidence held inadmissible on the basis of Miranda. See Stone, supra note 5, 423 U.S. at 100-01, 96 S.Ct. 321. In the recent case of Mincey v. Arizona, - U.S. -, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 57 L.Ed.2d 290 (1978), the Court excluded Miranda -violative admissions introduced for impeachment purposes, see Harris v. New York, 401 U.S. 222, 91 S.Ct. 643, 28 L.Ed.2d 1 (1971), because they were also involuntary.

. Predictions of Miranda’s demise may be premature. See Stone, supra note 5, at 169. Another much maligned rule, the exclusionary rule, despite some erosion, see Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 96 S.Ct. 3037, 49 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1976); United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 94 S.Ct. 613, 38 L.Ed.2d 561 (1974), has retained its core vitality. Franks v. Delaware, -U.S.-,-, 98 S.Ct. 2674, 57 L.Ed.2d 667 (1978). See also Kamisar, Is the Exclusionary Rule an “Illogical” or “Unnatural” Interpretation of the Fourth Amendment?, 62 Judicature 66 (1978).

. Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201, 84 S.Ct. 1199, 12 L.Ed.2d 246 (1964).

. True, Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387, 401, 97 S.Ct. 1232, 1240, 51 L.Ed.2d 424 (1977), states that “the clear rule of Massiah is that once adversary proceedings have commenced against an individual, he has a right to legal representation when the government interrogates him” (footnote omitted). But I do not think that by the use of this language Brewer has sub silentio limited Massiah. Justice Stewart’s opinion in Brewer begins by pointing out that the Court need not rely on Miranda because it was “clear” that the Sixth Amendment was violated. Then the Court implicitly concedes that Williams may not have been formally interrogated in the sense proscribed by Miranda: “Detective Learning deliberately and designedly set out to elicit information from Williams just as surely as — and perhaps more effectively than — if he had formally interrogated him.” 430 U.S. at 399, 97 S.Ct. at 1239.
The Court then points out that the state courts had proceeded as if the detective’s speech had been “tantamount to interrogation.” Throughout the rest of the opinion, the Court must be using “interrogation” to mean both formal interrogation and “deliberate eliciting” (which is “tantamount” to formal). The “interrogation” language may be ill chosen, but the Court’s statement that the “clear rule” of Massiah is that the right to counsel attaches when the State “interrogates” could not by any stretch of the imagination be interpreted as a limitation of Massiah. The next sentence, indeed, to the effect that it “requires no wooden or technical application” of Massiah to conclude that Williams was entitled to counsel, shows that the spirit, as well as the substance, of Massiah is alive and well.

. The Massiah Court said:
A few days later, and quite without the petitioner’s knowledge, Colson decided to cooperate with the government agents in their continuing investigation of the narcotics activities in which the petitioner, Colson, and others had allegedly been engaged. Colson permitted an agent named Murphy to install *1195a Schmidt radio transmitter under the front seat of Colson’s automobile, by means of which Murphy, equipped with an appropriate receiving device, could overhear from some distance away conversations carried on in Colson’s car.
On the evening of November 19, 1959, Col-son and the petitioner held a lengthy conversation while sitting in Colson’s automobile, parked on a New York street. By prearrangement with Colson, and totally unbeknown to the petitioner, the agent Murphy sat in a car parked out of sight down the street and listened over the radio to the entire conversation. The petitioner made several incriminating statements during the course of this conversation. At the petitioner’s trial these incriminating statements were brought before the jury through Murphy’s testimony, despite the insistent objection of defense counsel. The jury convicted the petitioner of several related narcotics offenses, and the convictions were affirmed by the Court of Appeals.
377 U.S. at 202-03, 84 S.Ct. at 1201 (footnote omitted).

. The cases cited by the majority are distinguishable. In United States v. Garcia, 377 F.2d 321 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 389 U.S. 991, 88 S.Ct. 489, 19 L.Ed.2d 484 (1967), the officer to whom the incriminating statements were made was, in the majority’s own words, “unaware of the existence of an indictment and was not seeking information about the crime charged in the indictment.” United States v. Hearst, 563 F.2d 1331, 1347-48 (9th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 1000, 98 S.Ct. 1656, 56 L.Ed.2d 90 (1978), also differs from this case since in Hearst the incriminating statements were made to Ms. Hearst’s friend who was not working for the Government. Their conversation was simply recorded by government agents. The majority’s reliance on United States v. Fioravanti, 412 F.2d 407 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 396 U.S. 837, 90 S.Ct. 97, 24 L.Ed.2d 88 (1969), is also misplaced. In that case, where an informant was arrested along with the defendant who subsequently made incriminating statements to the informant, the purpose of arresting the in- . formant was not to elicit admissions from the defendant but to protect his cover and his person. See id. at 413-14 n.15.