Custodial Interrogation
Custodial Interrogation. — At first, the Court followed the rule of "fundamental fairness," assessing whether under all the circumstances a defendant was so prejudiced by the denial of access to counsel that his subsequent trial was tainted.272 It was held in Spano v. New York273 that under the totality of circumstances a confession obtained in a post-indictment interrogation was involuntary, and four Justices wished to place the holding solely on the basis that post-indictment interrogation in the absence of defendant's lawyer was a denial of his right to assistance of counsel. That holding was made in Massiah v. United States,274 in which federal officers caused an informer to elicit from the already-indicted defendant, who was represented by a lawyer, incriminating admissions which were secretly overheard over a broadcasting unit. Then, in Escobedo v. Illinois,275 the Court held that preindictment interrogation was a violation of the Sixth Amendment. But Miranda v. Arizona276 switched from reliance on the Sixth Amendment to the Fifth Amendment's self-incrimination clause, although that case still placed great emphasis upon police warnings with regard to counsel and foreclosure of interrogation in the absence of counsel without a valid waiver by defendant. The different issues in Fifth and Sixth Amendment cases were recently summarized in Fellers v. United States, 124 S. Ct. 1019 (2004), holding that absence of an interrogation is irrelevant in a Massiah-based Sixth Amendment inquiry.
272 Crooker v. California, 357 U.S. 433 (1958) (five-to-four decision); Cicenia v. Lagay, 357 U.S. 504 (1958) (five-to-three).
273 360 U.S. 315 (1959).
274 377 U.S. 201 (1964). See also McLeod v. Ohio, 381 U.S. 356 (1965) (applying Massiah to the States, in a case not involving trickery but in which defendant was endeavoring to cooperate with the police). But see Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293 (1966). Cf. Milton v. Wainwright, 407 U.S. 371 (1972).
275 378 U.S. 478 (1964).
276 384 U.S. 436 (1966).
Massiah was reaffirmed and in some respects expanded by the Court. Thus, in Brewer v. Williams,277 the right to counsel was found violated when police elicited from defendant incriminating admissions not through formal questioning but rather through a series of conversational openings designed to play on the defendant's known weakness. The police conduct occurred in the post-arraignment period in the absence of defense counsel and despite assurances to the attorney that defendant would not be questioned in his absence. United States v. Henry278 held that government agents violated the Sixth Amendment right to counsel when they contacted the cellmate of an indicted defendant and promised him payment under a contingent fee arrangement if he would "pay attention" to incriminating remarks initiated by the defendant and others. The Court concluded that even if the government agents did not intend the informant to take affirmative steps to elicit incriminating statements from the defendant in the absence of counsel, the agents must have known that result would follow.
The Court has extended the Edwards v. Arizona279 rule protecting in-custody requests for counsel to post-arraignment situations where the right derives from the Sixth Amendment rather than the Fifth. Thus, the Court held in Michigan v. Jackson, "if police initiate interrogation after a defendant's assertion, at an arraignment or similar proceeding, of his right to counsel, any waiver of the defendant's right to counsel for that police-initiated interrogation is invalid."280 The Court concluded that "the reasons for prohibiting the interrogation of an uncounseled prisoner who has asked for the help of a lawyer are even stronger after he has been formally charged with an offense than before."281 The protection, however, is not as broad under the Sixth Amendment as it is under the Fifth. While Edwards has been extended to bar custodial questioning stemming from a separate investigation as well as questioning relating to the crime for which the suspect was arrested,282 this extension does not apply for purposes of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The Sixth Amendment right is "offense-specific," and so also is "its Michigan v. Jackson effect of invalidating subsequent waivers in police-initiated interviews."283 Therefore, while a defendant who has invoked his Sixth Amendment right to counsel with respect to the offense for which he is being prosecuted may not waive that right, he may waive his Miranda-based right not to be interrogated about unrelated and uncharged offenses.284chanrobles-red
277 430 U.S. 387 (1977). Chief Justice Burger and Justices White, Blackmun, and Rehnquist dissented. Id. at 415, 429, 438. Compare Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291 (1980), decided on self-incrimination grounds under similar facts.
278 447 U.S. 264 (1980) Justices Blackmun, White, and Rehnquist dissented. Id. at 277, 289. But cf. Weatherford v. Bursey, 429 U.S. 545 (1977).
279 451 U.S. 477 (1981).
280 475 U.S. 625, 636 (1986).
281 475 U.S. at 631. If a prisoner does not ask for the assistance of counsel, however, and voluntarily waives his rights following a Miranda warning, these reasons disappear. Moreover, although the right to counsel is more difficult to waive at trial than before trial, "whatever standards suffice for Miranda's purposes will also be sufficient [for waiver of Sixth Amendment rights] in the context of postindictment questioning." Patterson v. Illinois, 487 U.S. 285, 298 (1988).
282 Arizona v. Roberson, 486 U.S. 675 (1988).
283 McNeil v. Wisconsin, 501 U.S. 171, 175 (1991). The reason why the right is "offense-specific" is that "it does not attach until a prosecution is commenced." Id.
284 Rejecting an exception to the offense-specific limitation for crimes that are closely related factually to a charged offense, the Court instead borrowed the Blockburger test from double-jeopardy law: if the same transaction constitutes a violation of two separate statutory provisions, the test is "whether each provision requires proof of a fact which the other does not." Texas v. Cobb, 532 U.S. 162, 173 (2001) . This meant that the defendant, who had been charged with burglary, had a right to counsel on that charge, but not with respect to murders committed during the burglary.
The remedy for violation of the Sixth Amendment rule is exclusion from evidence of statements so obtained.285 And, while the basis for the Sixth Amendment exclusionary rule—to protect the right to a fair trial—differs from that of the Fourth Amendment rule—to deter illegal police conduct—exceptions to the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule can apply as well to the Sixth. In Nix v. Williams,286 the Court held the "inevitable discovery" exception applicable to defeat exclusion of evidence obtained as a result of an interrogation violating the accused's Sixth Amendment rights. "Exclusion of physical evidence that would inevitably have been discovered adds nothing to either the integrity or fairness of a criminal trial."287 Also, an exception to the Sixth Amendment exclusionary rule has been recognized for the purpose of impeaching the defendant's trial testimony.288chanrobles-red
285 See Michigan v. Jackson, 475 U.S. 625 (1986).
286 467 U.S. 431 (1984).
287 467 U.S. at 446.
288 Michigan v. Harvey, 494 U.S. 344 (1990) (postarraignment statement taken in violation of Sixth Amendment is admissible to impeach defendant's inconsistent trial testimony).
