Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 2009

Montejo v. Louisiana

556 U.S. 778 | 129 S. Ct. 2079 | 173 L. Ed. 2d 955 | 2009 U.S. LEXIS 3973

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Takeaway

In short, this case overruled Michigan v. Jackson: the appointment of counsel after charges does not itself bar police from seeking a Miranda waiver and initiating interrogation, though Edwards and ordinary Sixth Amendment waiver rules still protect defendants who clearly invoke counsel or whose waiver is not knowing and voluntary.

Background

Jesse Montejo was arrested for the robbery and murder of Lewis Ferrari. After initially waiving his Miranda rights, Montejo gave police several accounts of the crime and eventually admitted that he had shot Ferrari during a failed burglary.

At a Louisiana preliminary "72-hour hearing," a judge charged Montejo with first-degree murder and ordered the public defender's office appointed to represent him. Montejo did not expressly request counsel. Later that day, detectives approached him in jail, gave him Miranda warnings, and obtained his agreement to accompany them in an effort to find the murder weapon. During the trip, Montejo wrote an inculpatory letter apologizing to Ferrari's widow. He met his appointed lawyer only after returning from the trip.

The trial court admitted the letter, and the jury convicted Montejo of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death. The Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed. It held that Michigan v. Jackson barred police-initiated questioning only when a defendant had personally requested or otherwise affirmatively asserted the Sixth Amendment right to counsel at an arraignment or similar proceeding. Because counsel had been appointed automatically and Montejo had remained silent, the state court found that Jackson did not apply and that his Miranda waiver was valid.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether Michigan v. Jackson should continue to bar police from initiating interrogation after a defendant has requested counsel at an arraignment or similar proceeding.

Holding

No. The Court overruled Michigan v. Jackson; after the Sixth Amendment right to counsel has attached, police may initiate interrogation if the defendant makes a voluntary, knowing, and intelligent waiver of the right to counsel.

Reasoning

The Court first found Louisiana's interpretation of Jackson unsatisfactory. Requiring a defendant to affirmatively invoke counsel before Jackson applied might work in States where an indigent defendant must request counsel, but it creates uncertainty in States that appoint counsel automatically. It would require courts and police to parse ambiguous gestures or statements at rushed, often unrecorded preliminary hearings, or would arbitrarily deny protection to defendants whose States appoint counsel without a request.

Montejo's proposed alternative—barring all police-initiated interrogation once counsel has been appointed—was also inconsistent with Jackson's rationale. Jackson had imported the Fifth Amendment rule of Edwards v. Arizona into the Sixth Amendment context. Edwards prevents police from badgering a suspect into abandoning a previously asserted desire for counsel; a person for whom counsel was appointed automatically has not necessarily expressed any decision not to speak with police without a lawyer.

A defendant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel at a post-charge interrogation remains intact, but it is waivable. Under Patterson v. Illinois, Miranda warnings generally advise a defendant adequately of both the right to counsel during questioning and the consequences of waiving that right. The Court saw no categorical reason why a represented defendant could not make such a waiver without first consulting counsel.

Stare decisis did not require the Court to preserve or substantially expand Jackson. Jackson was only about two decades old, created no substantial reliance interest requiring constitutional protection, and had proved unworkable when applied across differing state appointment systems. A State remained free, as a matter of its own law or policy, to prohibit questioning of represented defendants without counsel present.

The Court concluded that Jackson's benefits did not justify its costs. Miranda requires warnings before custodial interrogation; Edwards bars renewed police questioning after a suspect invokes the Miranda right to counsel; and Minnick v. Mississippi requires counsel's presence before renewed questioning after such an invocation. Those safeguards already prevent police from badgering a custodial suspect who says he does not wish to speak without counsel. Jackson's additional automatic exclusion rule was therefore largely redundant while excluding voluntary confessions and deterring officers from seeking them.

Issue #2

Whether Montejo was entitled to pursue suppression of his letter under Edwards or on the ground that his Sixth Amendment waiver was not knowing and voluntary.

Holding

Yes. The Court vacated and remanded so that Montejo could raise an Edwards claim and challenge the validity of his waiver under the changed legal framework.

Reasoning

Montejo reasonably had not relied on Edwards in the state courts because Jackson had supplied broader protection. After overruling Jackson, the Court held that fairness required allowing him to argue that he clearly invoked his Miranda right to counsel when detectives approached him. If he made an unambiguous invocation, Edwards would have prohibited police-initiated interrogation unless Montejo himself reopened the dialogue.

The Court also left open Montejo's claim that his Sixth Amendment waiver was not knowing and voluntary, including his allegation that detectives misrepresented whether counsel had been appointed. The relevant factual accounts conflicted, and the Louisiana Supreme Court had not made the necessary factual or credibility findings. The Supreme Court therefore declined to decide admissibility of the letter itself.

Concurrences

Justice Alito

Reasoning

Justice Alito joined the Court's judgment and wrote separately to challenge the Stevens dissent's use of stare decisis. He argued that the Court's recent decision in Arizona v. Gant had overruled a 28-year-old Fourth Amendment precedent despite its workability, law-enforcement reliance, and bright-line character.

In Justice Alito's view, Justice Scalia's concurrence in Gant showed that a precedent's poor reasoning and erroneous results could suffice to overcome stare decisis. Because Gant had discarded an older and more relied-upon rule than Jackson, Alito concluded that the dissent could not consistently invoke Jackson's age, clarity, and reliance interests as reasons to retain it.

Dissents

Justice Stevens

Reasoning

Justice Stevens, joined by Justices Souter and Ginsburg and by Justice Breyer except for one footnote, agreed that Louisiana's narrow reading of Jackson was indefensible. But he would have held that Jackson protects a defendant once an attorney-client relationship has been established, whether counsel was requested, retained, or automatically appointed. In his view, a defendant who has actually secured counsel deserves at least the protection afforded one who merely requests counsel.

Stevens rejected the majority's account of Jackson as simply an anti-badgering rule modeled on Edwards. Jackson rested principally on the Sixth Amendment's protection of an accused person's right to rely on counsel as a buffer between the accused and the State after adversarial proceedings begin. It protected against any uncounseled, police-initiated interrogation and helped ensure that a decision to waive counsel was informed by the advice of the lawyer already representing the accused.

The dissent argued that stare decisis strongly favored retaining Jackson. The rule had existed for 23 years, was simple and workable, and gave police, prosecutors, and courts a clear test. Law-enforcement amici acknowledged that Jackson rarely impeded prosecutions or caused guilty defendants to go free, while professional ethics rules and established police practices already generally discouraged direct police contact with represented defendants.

Stevens also concluded that Montejo's Sixth Amendment rights were violated even apart from Jackson. In his view, police knowingly questioned a represented, charged defendant outside counsel's presence and without notifying counsel. Miranda warnings, which principally protect the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, did not adequately inform a represented defendant of the distinct Sixth Amendment value of counsel's advice during a critical post-charge interrogation.

Because the record did not show that Montejo understood the nature and consequences of giving up his existing lawyer's assistance, Stevens would not treat his Miranda waiver as a knowing waiver of his Sixth Amendment right. He would have reversed rather than overruled Jackson and remanded only for proceedings consistent with that rule.

Justice Breyer

Reasoning

Justice Breyer joined Justice Stevens' dissent except for its discussion distinguishing Arizona v. Gant. He separately emphasized that, although stare decisis is not absolute, it should control here. He regarded the Court's overruling of Jackson as inconsistent with the stability that adherence to precedent ordinarily provides.