Lead Opinion
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We consider whether a break in custody ends the presumption of involuntariness established in Edwards v. Arizona,
I
In August 2003, a social worker assigned to the Child Advocacy Center in the Criminal Investigation Division of the Hagerstown Police Department referred to the department allegations that respondent Michael Shatzer, Sr., had sexually abused his 3-year-old son. At that time, Shatzer was
Two years and six months later, the same social worker referred more specific allegations to the department about the same incident involving Shatzer. Detective Paul Hoover, from the same division, was assigned to the investigation. He and the social worker interviewed the victim, then eight years old, who described the incident in more detail. With this new information in hand, on March 2, 2006, they went to the Roxbury Correctional Institute, to which Shatzer had since been transferred, and interviewed Shatzer in a maintenance room outfitted with a desk and three chairs. Hoover explained that he wanted to ask Shatzer about the alleged incident involving Shatzer’s son. Shatzer was surprised because he thought that the investigation had been closed, but Hoover explained they had opened a new file. Hoover then read Shatzer his Miranda rights and obtained a written waiver on a standard department form.
Hoover interrogated Shatzer about the incident for approximately 30 minutes. Shatzer denied ordering his son to perform fellatio on him, but admitted to masturbating in
Five days later, on March 7, 2006, Hoover and another detective met with Shatzer at the correctional facility to administer the polygraph examination. After reading Shatzer his Miranda rights and obtaining a written waiver, the other detective administered the test and concluded that Shatzer had failed. When the detectives then questioned Shatzer, he became upset, started to cry, and incriminated himself by saying, “ ¶ didn’t force him. I didn’t force him.’ ”
The State’s Attorney for Washington County charged Shatzer with second-degree sexual offense, sexual child abuse, second-degree assault, and contributing to conditions rendering a child in need of assistance. Shatzer moved to suppress his March 2006 statements pursuant to Edwards. The trial court held a suppression hearing and later denied Shatzer’s motion. The Edwards protections did not apply, it reasoned, because Shatzer had experienced a break in custody for Miranda purposes between the 2003 and 2006 interrogations. No. 21-K-06-37799 (Cir. Ct. Washington Cty., Md., Sept. 14, 2006), App. 55. Shatzer pleaded not guilty, waived his right to a jury trial, and proceeded to a bench trial based on an agreed statement of facts. In accordance with the agreement, the State described the interview with the victim and Shatzer’s 2006 statements to the detectives. Based on the proffered testimony of the victim and the “admission of the defendant as to the act of masturbation,” the trial court found Shatzer guilty of sexual child abuse of his
Over the dissent of two judges, the Court of Appeals of Maryland reversed and remanded. The court held that “the passage of time alone is insufficient to [end] the protections afforded by Edwards,” and that, assuming, arguendo, a break-in-custody exception to Edwards existed, Shatzer’s release back into the general prison population between interrogations did not constitute a break in custody.
II
The Fifth Amendment, which applies to the States by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment, Malloy v. Hogan,
To counteract the coercive pressure, Miranda announced that police officers must warn a suspect prior to questioning
In Edwards, the Court determined that Zerbsfs traditional standard for waiver was not sufficient to protect a suspect’s right to have counsel present at a subsequent interrogation if he had previously requested counsel; “additional safeguards” were necessary.
“[W]hen an accused has invoked his right 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. . . . [He] is not subject to further interrogation by the authorities until counsel has been made available to him, unless the accused himself initiates further communication, exchanges, or conversations with the police.”451 U. S., at 484-485 .
The rationale of Edwards is that once a suspect indicates that “he is not capable of undergoing [custodial] questioning without advice of counsel,” “any subsequent waiver that has come at the authorities’ behest, and not at the suspect’s own instigation, is itself the product of the ‘inherently compelling
We have frequently emphasized that the Edwards rule is not a constitutional mandate, but judicially prescribed prophylaxis. See, e. g., Montejo v. Louisiana,
It is easy to believe that a suspect may be coerced or badgered into abandoning his earlier refusal to be questioned without counsel in the paradigm Edwards case. That is a ease in which the suspect has been arrested for a particular crime and is held in uninterrupted pretrial custody while that crime is being actively investigated. After the initial interrogation, and up to and including the second one, he remains cut off from his normal life and companions, “thrust into” and isolated in an “unfamiliar,” “police-dominated atmosphere,” Miranda,
When, unlike what happened in these three cases, a suspect has been released from his pretrial custody and has returned to his normal life for some time before the later attempted interrogation, there is little reason to think that his change of heart regarding interrogation without counsel has been coerced. He has no longer been isolated. He has likely been able to seek advice from an attorney, family members, and friends.
At the same time that extending the Edwards rule yields diminished benefits, extending the rule also increases its costs: the in-fact voluntary confessions it excludes from trial, and the voluntary confessions it deters law enforcement officers from even trying to obtain. Voluntary confessions are not merely “a proper element in law enforcement,” Miranda, supra, at 478, they are an “unmitigated good,” McNeil,
The only logical endpoint of Edwards disability is termination of Miranda custody and any of its lingering effects. Without that limitation — -and barring some purely arbitrary time limit
We conclude that such an extension of Edwards is not justified; we have opened its “'protective umbrella/” Solem,
Like McLaughlin, this is a case in which the requisite police action (there, presentation to a magistrate; here, abstention from further interrogation) has not been prescribed by statute but has been established by opinion of this Court. We think it appropriate to specify a period of time to avoid the consequence that continuation of the Edwards presumption “will not reach the correct result most of the time.” Coleman, supra, at 737. It seems to us that period is 14 days. That provides plenty of time for the suspect to get reacclimated to his normal life, to consult with friends and counsel, and to shake off any residual coercive effects of his prior custody.
The 14-day limitation meets Shatzer’s concern that a break-in-custody rule lends itself to police abuse. He envisions that once a suspect invokes his Miranda right to counsel, the police will release the suspect briefly (to end the Edwards presumption) and then promptly bring him back into custody for reinterrogation. But once the suspect has been out of custody long enough (14 days) to eliminate its
Shatzer argues that ending the Edwards protections at a break in custody will undermine Edwards’ purpose to conserve judicial resources. To be sure, we have said that “[t]he merit of the Edwards decision lies in the clarity of its command and the certainty of its application.” Minnick,
III
The facts of this case present an additional issue. No one questions that Shatzer was in custody for Miranda purposes during the interviews with Detective Blankenship in 2003 and Detective Hoover in 2006. Likewise, no one questions that Shatzer triggered the Edwards protections when, according to Detective Blankenship’s notes of the 2003 interview, he stated that “ ‘he would not talk about this case without having an attorney present,’ ”
We have never decided whether incarceration constitutes custody for Miranda purposes, and have indeed explicitly declined to address the issue. See Perkins,
Here, we are addressing the interim period during which a suspect was not interrogated, but was subject to a baseline set of restraints imposed pursuant to a prior conviction. Without minimizing the harsh realities of incarceration, we think lawful imprisonment imposed upon conviction of a crime does not create the coercive pressures identified in Miranda.
Interrogated suspects who have previously been convicted of crime live in prison. When they are released back into the general prison population, they return to their accustomed surroundings and daily routine — they regain the degree of control they had over their lives prior to the interrogation. Sentenced prisoners, in contrast to the Miranda paradigm, are not isolated with their accusers. They live among other inmates, guards, and workers, and often can receive visitors and communicate with people on the outside by mail or telephone.
Their detention, moreover, is relatively disconnected from their prior unwillingness to cooperate in an investigation. The former interrogator has no power to increase the duration of incarceration, which was determined at sentencing.
Shatzer’s experience illustrates the vast differences between Miranda custody and incarceration pursuant to conviction. At the time of the 2003 attempted interrogation, Shatzer was already serving a sentence for a prior conviction. After that, he returned to the general prison population in the Maryland Correctional InstitutionHagerstown and was later transferred, for unrelated reasons, down the street to the Roxbury Correctional Institute. Both are medium-security state correctional facilities. See Maryland Div. of Correction Inmate Handbook 7 (2007), online at http://dpscs.md.gov/rehabservs/doc/pdfs/ 2007_Inmate_Handbook.pdf (all Internet materials as visited Feb. 22, 2010, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file). Inmates in these facilities generally can visit the library each week, id., at 28; have regular exercise and recreation periods, id., at 17; can participate in basic adult education and occupational training, id., at 26, 7; are able to send and receive mail, id., at 21-22, 16; and are allowed to receive visitors twice a week, see http://dpscs.md.gov/locations/ mcih.shtml; http://www.dpscs.state.md.us/locations/rci.shtml. His continued detention after the 2003 interrogation did not depend on what he said (or did not say) to Detective Blankenship, and he has not alleged that he was placed in a higher level of security or faced any continuing restraints as a result of the 2003 interrogation. The “inherently compelling pressures” of custodial interrogation ended when he returned to his normal life.
IV
A few words in response to Justice Stevens’ concurrence: It claims we ignore that “[w]hen police tell an indigent
The “concer[n] that motivated the Edwards line of cases,” post, at 121, n. 2, is that the suspect will be coerced into saying yes. That concern guides our decision today. Contrary to the concurrence’s conclusion, post, at 122, 124-125, there is no reason to believe a suspect will view confession as “ ‘the only way to end his interrogation’ ” when, before the interrogation begins, he is told that he can avoid it by simply requesting that he not be interrogated without counsel present — an option that worked before. If, as the concurrence argues will often be the case, post, at 124, a break in custody does not change the suspect’s mind, he need only say so.
The concurrence also accuses the Court of “ignor[ing] that when a suspect asks for counsel, until his request is answered, there are still the same ‘inherently compelling’ pressures of custodial interrogation on which the Miranda line of cases is based.” Post, at 123. We do not ignore these pressures; nor do we suggest that they disappear when custody is recommenced after a break, see post, at 124. But if those pressures are merely “the same” as before, then Miranda provides sufficient protection — as it did before. The
In the last analysis, it turns out that the concurrence accepts our principal points. It agrees that Edwards prophylaxis is not perpetual; it agrees that a break in custody reduces the inherently compelling pressure upon which Edwards was based; it agrees that Shatzer’s release back into the general prison population constituted a break in custody; and it agrees that in this case the break was long enough to render Edwards inapplicable. Post, at 129-130. We differ in two respects: Instead of terminating Edwards protection when the custodial pressures that were the basis for that protection dissipate, the concurrence would terminate it when the suspect would no longer “feel that he has ‘been denied the counsel he has clearly requested,’” post, at 129. This is entirely unrelated to the rationale of Edwards. If confidence in the police’s promise to provide counsel were the touchstone, Edwards would not have applied in Minnick, where the suspect in continuing custody actually met with appointed counsel. The concurrence’s rule is also entirely unrelated to the existence of a break in custody. While that may relieve the accumulated coercive pressures of custody that are the foundation for Edwards, it is hard to see how it bolsters the suspect’s confidence that if he asks for counsel he will get one.
And secondly, the concurrence differs from us in declining to say how long after a break in custody the termination of Edwards protection occurs. Two and one-half years, it says, is clearly enough — but it gives law enforcement authorities no further guidance. The concurrence criticizes our use of
* * *
Because Shatzer experienced a break in Miranda custody lasting more than two weeks between the first and second attempts at interrogation, Edwards does not mandate suppression of his March 2006 statements. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals of Maryland, and remand the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Notes
The State filed a nolle prosequi to the second-degree sexual offense charge, and consented to dismissal of the misdemeanor charges as barred by the statute of limitations.
Jail is a “local government’s detention center where persons awaiting trial or those convicted of misdemeanors are confined.” Black’s Law Dictionary 910 (9th ed. 2009). Prison, by contrast, is a “state or federal facility of confinement for convicted criminals, esp. felons.” Id., at 1314.
Justice Stevens points out, post, at 126 (opinion concurring in judgment), that in Minnick, actual pre-reinterrogation consultation with an attorney during continued, custody did not suffice to avoid application of Edwards. That does not mean that the ability to consult freely with attorneys and others does not reduce the level of coercion at all, or that it is “only questionably relevant,” post, at 125, to whether termination of custody reduces the coercive pressure that is the basis for Edwards’ super-prophylactic rule.
The State’s alternative argument in the present case is that the substantial lapse in time between the 2008 and 2006 attempts at interrogation independently ended the Edwards presumption. Our disposition makes it unnecessary to address that argument.
This assumes that Roberson’s extension of Edwards to subsequent interrogation for a different crime and Minnick's extension of Edwards to subsequent interrogation by a different law enforcement agency would apply even when the place of custody and the identity of the custodial agency are not the same (as they were in Roberson and Minnick) as those of the original interrogation. That assumption would seem reasonable if the i/dwards-suspending effect of a termination of custody is rejected. Reinterrogation in different custody or by a different interrogating agency would seem, if anything, less likely than termination of custody to reduce coercive pressures. At the original site, and with respect to the original interrogating agency, the suspect has already experienced cessation of interrogation when he demands counsel — which he may have no reason to expect elsewhere.
According to a recent study, 67.5% of prisoners released from 15 States in 1994 were rearrested within three years. See Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Special Report, Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1994 (NCJ 193427, 2002).
A defendant who experiences a 14-day break in custody after invoking the Miranda, right to counsel is not left without protection. Edwards establishes a presumption that a suspect’s waiver of Miranda rights is involuntary. See Arizona v. Roberson,
We distinguish the duration of incarceration from the duration of what might be termed interrogative custody. When a prisoner is removed from the general prison population and taken to a separate location for questioning, the duration of that separation is assuredly dependent upon his interrogators. For which reason once he has asserted a refusal to speak without assistance of counsel Edwards prevents any efforts to get him to change his mind during that interrogative custody.
Concurrence Opinion
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I join Part III of the Court’s opinion, which holds that release into the general prison population constitutes a break in custody. I do not join the Court’s decision to extend the presumption of involuntariness established in Edwards v. Arizona,
It is not apparent to me that the presumption of involuntariness the Court recognized in Edwards is justifiable even in the custodial setting to which Edwards applies it. See, e. g., Minnick v. Mississippi,
The Court concedes that this extension, like the Edwards presumption itself, is not constitutionally required. The Court nevertheless defends the extension as a judicially created prophylaxis against compelled confessions. Even if one accepts that such prophylaxis is both permissible generally and advisable for some period following a break in custody,
Our precedents insist that judicially created prophylactic rules like those in Edwards and Miranda v. Arizona,
This ipse dixit does not explain why extending the Edwards presumption for 14 days following a break in custody — as opposed to 0,10, or 100 days — provides the “closest possible fit” with the Self-Incrimination Clause, Patane, supra, at 640-641; see ante, at 110 (merely stating that “[i]t seems to us that” the appropriate “period is 14 days”). Nor does it explain how the benefits of a prophylactic 14-day rule (either on its own terms or compared with other possible rules) “outweigh its costs” (which would include the loss of law enforcement information as well as the exclusion of confessions that are in fact voluntary). Ante, at 106 (citing Montejo, supra, at 793).
To be sure, the Court’s rule has the benefit of providing a bright line. Ante, at 111. But bright-line rules are not necessary to prevent Fifth Amendment violations, as the Court has made clear when refusing to adopt such rules in cases involving other Miranda rights. See, e. g., Michigan v. Mosley,
As the Court concedes, “clarity and certainty are not goals in themselves. They are valuable only when they reasonably further the achievement of some substantive end — here, the exclusion of compelled confessions” that the Fifth Amendment prohibits. Ante, at 111. The Court’s arbitrary 14-day rule fails this test, even under the relatively permis
At a minimum the latter proposition is questionable. I concede that some police officers might badger a suspect during a subsequent interrogation after a break in custody, or might use catch-and-release tactics to suggest they will not take no for an answer. But if a suspect reenters custody after being questioned and released, he need only invoke his right to counsel to ensure Edwards’ protection for the duration of the subsequent detention. And, if law enforcement officers repeatedly release and recapture a suspect to wear down his will — such that his participation in a subsequent interrogation is no longer truly voluntary — the “high stand-arid] of proof for the waiver of constitutional rights [set forth in] Johnson v. Zerbst,
Though the Court asserts that its 14-day rule will tell “law enforcement officers ... with certainty and beforehand, when renewed interrogation is lawful,” ante, at 110, that is not so clear. Determining whether a suspect was previously in custody, and when the suspect was released, may be difficult without questioning the suspect, especially if state and federal authorities are conducting simultaneous investigations.
Concurrence Opinion
concurring in the judgment.
While I agree that the presumption from Edwards v. Arizona,
In conducting its “cost-benefit” analysis, the Court demeans Edwards as a “‘second layer’” of “judicially prescribed prophylaxis,” ante, at 104, 105, 111, n. 7; see also ante, at 105 (describing Edwards as “ ‘our rule, not a constitutional command’ ” (quoting Arizona v. Roberson,
The most troubling aspect of the Court’s time-based rule is that it disregards the compulsion caused by a second (or third, or fourth) interrogation of an indigent suspect who was told that if he requests a lawyer, one will be provided for him. When police tell an indigent suspect that he has the right to an attorney, that he is not required to speak without an attorney present, and that an attorney will be provided to him at no cost before questioning, the police have made a significant promise. If they cease questioning and then reinterrogate the suspect 14 days later without providing him with a lawyer, the suspect is likely to feel that the police lied to him and that he really does not have any right to a lawyer.
When officers informed Shatzer of his rights during the first interrogation, they presumably informed him that if he requested an attorney, one would be appointed for him before he was asked any further questions. But if an indigent suspect requests a lawyer, “any further interrogation” (even 14 days later) “without counsel having been provided will surely exacerbate whatever compulsion to speak the suspect may be feeling.” Roberson,
II
The Court never explains why its rule cannot depend on, in addition to a break in custody and passage of time, a concrete event or state of affairs, such as the police’s having honored their commitment to provide counsel. Instead, the Court simply decides to create a time-based rule, and in so doing, disregards much of the analysis upon which Edwards and subsequent decisions were based. “[T]he assertion of the right to counsel” “[i]s a significant event.”
Instead of deferring to these well-settled understandings of the Edwards rule, the Court engages in its own speeula
The Court ignores these understandings from the Edwards line of cases and instead speculates that if a suspect is reinterrogated and eventually talks, it must be that “further deliberation in familiar surroundings has caused him to believe (rightly or wrongly) that cooperating with the investigation is in his interest.” Ante, at 108. But it is not apparent why that is the case. The answer, we are told, is that once a suspect has been out of Miranda custody for 14 days, “[h]e has likely been able to seek advice from an attorney, family members, and Mends.” Ante, at 107. This speculation, however, is overconfident and only questionably relevant. As a factual matter, we do not know whether the defendant has been able to seek advice: First of all, suspects are told that if they cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for them. Yet under the majority’s rule, an indigent suspect who took the police at their word when he asked for a lawyer will nonetheless be assumed to have “been able to seek advice from an attorney.” Second, even suspects who
The many problems with the Court’s new rule are exacerbated in the very situation in this case: a suspect who is in prison. Even if, as the Court assumes, a trip to one’s home significantly changes the Edwards calculus, a trip to one’s prison cell is not the same. A prisoner’s freedom is severely limited, and his entire life remains subject to government control. Such an environment is not conducive to “shak[ing] off any residual coercive effects of his prior custody.” Ante, at 110.
Because, at the very least, we do not know whether Shatzer could obtain a lawyer, and thus would have felt that police had lied about providing one, I cannot join the Court’s opinion. I concur in today’s judgment, however, on another ground: Even if Shatzer eould not consult a lawyer and the police never provided him one, the 2-year break in custody is a basis for treating the second interrogation as no more coercive than the first. Neither a break in custody nor the passage of time has an inherent, curative power. But certain things change over time. An indigent suspect who took police at their word that they would provide an attorney probably will feel that he has “been denied the counsel he has clearly requested,” Roberson,
See Dickerson v. United States,
The Court states that this argument rests on a “fallacy” because “we are not talking about 'reinterrogating’ the suspect; we are talking about asking his permission to be interrogated.” Ante, at 115 (emphasis deleted). Because, however, a suspect always has the right to remain silent, this is a distinction without a difference: Any time that the police interrogate or reinterrogate, and read a suspect his Miranda rights, the suspect may decline to speak. And if this is a “fallacy,” it is the same “fallacy” upon which this Court has relied in the Edwards line of cases that held that police may not continue to interrogate a suspect who has requested a lawyer: Police may not continue to ask such a suspect whether they may interrogate him until that suspect has a lawyer present. The Court’s apparent belief that this is a “fallacy” only underscores my concern that its analysis is insufficiently sensitive to the concerns that motivated the Edwards line of cases.
Indeed, a lawyer has a “unique ability to protect the Fifth Amendment rights of a client undergoing custodial interrogation.” Fare v. Michael C.,
See Michigan v. Harvey,
See Minnick v. Mississippi,
See Roberson,
Today’s decision, moreover, offers no reason for its 14-day time period. To be sure, it may be difficult to marshal conclusive evidence when setting an arbitrary time period. But in light of the basis for Edwards, we should tread carefully. Instead, the only reason for choosing a 14-day time period, the Court tells us, is that “[i]t seems to us that period is 14 days.” Ante, at 110. That time period is “plenty of time for the suspect to get reacclimated to his normal life, to consult with friends and counsel, and to shake off any residual coercive effects of his prior custody.” Ibid. But the Court gives no reason for that speculation, which may well prove inaccurate in many circumstances.
In Roberson, for example, we observed that once a suspect has asserted his right to an attorney, courts must presume he does “not feel sufficiently comfortable with the pressures of custodial interrogation to answer questions without an attorney. This discomfort is precisely the state of mind that Edwards presumes to persist. . . .”
The compulsion is heightened by the fact that “[t]he uncertainty of fate that being released from custody and then reapprehended entails is, in some circumstances, more coercive than continual custody.” Strauss, Re-interrogation, 22 Hastings Const. L. Q. 359, 390 (1995).
Not only is this a likely effect of reinterrogation, but police may use this effect to their advantage. Indeed, the Court’s rule creates a strange incentive to delay formal proceedings, in order to gain additional information by way of interrogation after the time limit lapses. The justification for Fifth Amendment rules “must be consistent with . . . practical realities,” Roberson,
It is important to distinguish this from the point that I make above about indigent suspects. If the police promise to provide a lawyer and never do so, it sends a message to the suspect that the police have lied and that the rights read to him are hollow. But the mere fact that a suspect consulted a lawyer does not itself reduce the compulsion when police reinterrogate him.
Cf. Orozco v. Texas,
Prison also presents a troubling set of incentives for police. First, because investigators know that their suspect is also a prisoner, there is no need formally to place him under arrest. Thus, police generally can interview prisoners even without probable cause to hold them. This means that police can interrogate suspects with little or no evidence of guilt, and police can do so time after time, without fear of being sued for wrongful arrest. Second, because police know that their suspect is otherwise detained, there is no need necessarily to resolve the case quickly. Police can comfortably bide their time, interrogating and reinterrogating their suspect until he slips up. Third, because police need not hold their suspect, they do not need to arraign him or otherwise initiate formal legal proceedings that would trigger various protections.
The Court attempts to distinguish detention in prison from the “paradigm Edwards ease,” ante, at 106, but it is not clear why that is so. The difference cannot be simply that convicted prisoners’ “detention ... is relatively disconnected from their prior unwillingness to cooperate in an investigation,” ante, at 113, because in many instances of pretrial custody, the custody will continue regardless of whether a detainee answers questions. Take Roberson for example. Roberson was arrested and being held for one crime when, days later, a different officer interrogated him about a different crime.
This problem of pretrial custody also highlights a tension with the Court’s decision last Term in Montejo v. Louisiana,
The Court responds that “[i)f confidence in the police’s promise to provide counsel were the touchstone, Edwards would not have applied in Minnick, where the suspect in continuing custody actually met with appointed counsel.” Ante, at 116. But my view is not that “confidence in the police’s promise to provide counsel” is “the touchstone.” Ibid. Rather, my view is that although an appropriate break in custody will mitigate many of the reasons that custodial reinterrogation of a suspect who requested counsel is inherently compelling, it will not mitigate the effect of an indigent detainee believing that he has “been denied the counsel he has clearly requested,” Roberson,
I do not doubt that some of the compulsion caused by reinterrogating an indigent suspect without providing a lawyer may survive even a break in custody and a very long passage of time. The relevant point here is more limited: A long break in time, far longer than 14 days, diminishes, rather than eliminates, that compulsion.