The cost of Quarles: from Tsarnaev to you

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It appears now that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was begun to be questioned late on Sunday evening, almost 48 hours after he was apprehended, hiding in a boat in a backyard.

There are some things that should be without dispute:

1. That Tsarnaev is an American Citizen;

2. That the Constitution and all of its protections apply to all American Citizens (and, to be sure, to all residents, but that’s not necessary here), and;

3. That, by virtue of 1 & 2, Tsarnaev has the inalienable right to remain silent, to be appointed counsel and to not be made a witness against himself.

It is irrelevant that the privilege against self-incrimination is a trial right, in that if the right is violated, the statements cannot be used against him at his own trial. It is irrelevant that Miranda is prophylactic and isn’t a right in of itself, but an advisement of already existing rights.

The right exists. It is his right; it is my right; it is your right.

And yet we dither and equivocate and we say, but there is an exception. All laws have an exception. This one is called the “we are scared” exception, also commonly known as the “public safety exception”. It is also the exception to swallow the right.

In New York v. Quarles, a 5-4 majority of the United States Supreme Court said that if the police were faced with the “immediate necessity” of obtaining information that would prevent danger to themselves or others they could invoke a “narrow exception” to the Miranda rule and question a suspect about that “immediate” danger without having to advise him of his rights first¹. They further ruled that those statements would then be admissible in court to prove the defendant’s guilt. See also U.S. v. Abdulmutallab [PDF].

The Obama administration, which has put on a clinic [Bazelon at Slate] of how to forcefully and conclusively [FBI memo] encroach on individual liberties [NYTimes], was quick to state [TPM] that they “plan to invoke the public-safety exception to Miranda in order to question the suspect extensively about other potential explosive devices or accomplices, and to gain critical intelligence.”

It’s been 48 hours. You know the funny thing? As of 9:00pm on Friday night, there were people lining the streets of Boston, cheering and celebrating as they so much deserved to do.

Had there truly been a immediate necessity and an imminent threat to public safety, would that have been allowed? Should it?

I don’t say the above to participate in the more looney fringes of internet discussion that are sure to crop up arguing that the whole thing was a set up, but rather to point out the obvious: that the “public safety” exception is an excuse used by the administration to rip a hole into the Constitution and drive a truck through it.

Others have written more persuasively than I have about why Tsarnaev should have been read his rights: James Holmes was, Timothy McVeigh was.

What makes Tsarnaev different? His name? The color of his skin? The fact that he used a “bomb” and not a gun?

Is our application of the Constitution dependent on the person who seeks its protection? Scratch that; of course it is. Should it be? Can we sustain our moral superiority as the foremost defender of freedom and liberty in the world if we are so quick to make it a Constitution of convenience?

The cost of Quarles is that we are living in a fear-ridden society; that everything is a “public safety exception”. That the bogeyman at night is now a terrorist with a slightly different colored skin, nevermind the fact that we used to proudly trumpet being the “melting pot of the world”. We are xenophobic and afraid. Hiding in the dark clutching our guns, paralyzed in fear, because the terrorists are out to get us, whoever they might be. We are like a person in the throes of a mental illness whose anxiety and fear have taken over every aspect of their existence.

We are a country that has sacrificed everything we believed in at the altar of a promise of safety:

our constitutional rights are now deemed to be partial or provisional rather than absolute, do not necessarily apply to everyone, and can be revoked by the government at any time.

A safety that is illusory – and if it comes, at what cost? Consider the following quote:

“I think that the good news is we don’t need ‘enemy combatant’ to get all the information we need out of him. No. 1, the court, the one court that has ruled, has allowed a lot of flexibility in the public safety exception before you Mirandize somebody,” Senator Schumer said. “But second, at any time, what’s called a HIG, a High-Value Interrogation Group, composed of the F.B.I., C.I.A. and anyone else, can question him without a lawyer in a secured situation and find out whatever they need.”

A second U.S. Senator (Schumer) had said, with a straight face apparently, that an American citizen can be interrogated after denying him the Sixth Amendment right to counsel “in a secured situation and find out whatever they need”. If that isn’t an euphemism for torture, I don’t know what is.

Tsarnaev – and you and I – has the right, Miranda notwithstanding, to refuse to answer questions. Do you realistically think that is an option here?¹ Either he won’t be aware of that right (in which case the government has subverted a U.S. citizen’s Constitutional right), or he won’t be allowed to exercise that right if he knows it. I don’t know which is more frightening.

And therein lies the problem. We can quibble about the legal realities of the admissibility of his statement, but such a discussion is a mere distraction allowing the Government to get away with much more. They’re making off with our rights and our protections; while you’re staunchly guarding the second, they’ve stolen your fourth and fifth and sixth. They’ve made it impossible to exercise a right, either because you weren’t paying attention or too scared of terrorism.

You want to know something funny? There’s a perfectly legal way for the Government to have its cake and eat it too: they can “question” Tsarnaev under the “public safety” exception, the Mirandize him, then ask him the same questions again and the second statements are now admissible in Court. There. Dispensed with that pesky “Fifth Amendment”.

You think this doesn’t happen every day in police stations across America? You’re wrong. Ask any cop you know about the “pre-interview“. It’s here. It’s real. It’s in violation of your Fifth Amendment right.

If Quarles was about the immediate need to find a gun in a supermarket and Tsarnaev is about finding “critical information” 48 hours later, is there a scenario that isn’t covered?

The Constitution is a document that deserves more than lip service. It is a document that deserves obedience. It is not a suggestion of rights that may be offered, if enough people agree that the recipient is deserving. It is there to protect the worst among us, because if the worst are protected, then the best are protected – and more importantly, the vast majority of us – the only human – are protected.

The rights exist. They are his rights; they are my rights; they are your rights. Do you want your rights to be subject to a popularity vote? To convenience? To the color of your skin?

If the world is full of “terrorists” and “criminals”, then will you abide a judge ruling that the “public safety” exception wasn’t met and suppressing statements? If an “exception” can be so broad, can it be called an exception at all?

And if the exception so swallows the Right, can you be said to have that Right at all?

—

¹Putting aside entirely the question of whether, had he been Mirandized and then confessed, such a confession would have been voluntarily made.

—

N.B. 1: If a single one of you so much as suggests that this post in any way implies that I have no sympathy for the victims of the bombings, I will track you down using thermal imaging and shove you inside a boat and leave you adrift on land.

N.B. 2: It seems that the Federal Public Defender of Massachusetts is on standby, waiting appointment. If it were Connecticut (and State court), the police would be required to inform Tsarnaev that he had legal counsel available to provide pertinent legal representation if he chose to, prior to being presented in court and appointed. It is the practice of many public defender offices in CT to fax letters to or call police departments when they know suspects are in custody and may be questioned. State v. Stoddard.

Compare and contrast

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Compare Senator Lindsey Graham, R-SC, writing about the Boston Marathon bombing suspect, who despite everything else, is an American citizen:

Lindsey-Graham-tweet-2

 

with:

The term “person,” used in the Fifth Amendment, is broad enough to include any and every human being within the jurisdiction of the republic. A resident, alien born, is entitled to the same protection under the laws that a citizen is entitled to. He owes obedience to the laws of the country in which he is domiciled, and, as a consequence, he is entitled to the equal protection of those laws. This has been decided so often that the point does not require argument. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 369; Ho Ah Kow v. Nunan, 5 Sawyer, 552; Carlisle v. United States, 16 Wall. 147; In re Lee Tong, 18 Fed. Rep. 253; In re Wong Yung Quy, 6 Sawyer, 237; In re Chow Goo Pooi, 25 Fed. Rep. 77.

Wong Wing v. United States. And:

More than one student of society has expressed the view that not the least significant test of the quality of civilization is its treatment of those charged with crime, particularly with offenses which arouse the passions of a community. One of the rightful boasts of Western civilization is that the State has the burden of establishing guilt solely on the basis of evidence produced in court and under circumstances assuring an accused all the safeguards of a fair procedure. These rudimentary conditions for determining guilt are inevitably wanting if the jury which is to sit in judgment on a fellow human being comes to its task with its mind ineradicably poisoned against him. How can fallible men and women reach a disinterested verdict based exclusively on what they heard in court when, before they entered the jury box, their minds were saturated by press and radio for months preceding by matter designed to establish the guilt of the accused. A conviction so secured obviously constitutes a denial of due process of law in its most rudimentary conception.

Mr. Justice Frankfurter in Irwin v. Dowd, And finally:

The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism, but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false; for the government, within the Constitution, has all the powers granted to it, which are necessary to preserve its existence; as has been happily proved by the result of the great effort to throw off its just authority.

Mr. Justice David Davis, in Ex Parte Milligan, 4 Wall 2 (1866).

The investigative subpoena: because who needs probable cause?

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big_brother

[This is the second in a two-parter today on the State pushing the boundaries of their power and seeking to perform their law enforcement function without the constraints of the Constitution. The first post, on their desire to be free from the Fourth Amendment, is here.]

Prosecutors want the power to subpoena witnesses under threat of contempt penalty to secret proceedings without probable cause.

For many years now – maybe over a decade – the prosecutors in Connecticut have asked every session of the state legislature to “reform” the grand jury process here. By “reform” they merely mean completely revamp and retool it, giving themselves vast powers to subpoena any manner of things with minimal judicial oversight.

But first, to understand the scope of this request, we must understand that Connecticut is not an indicting grand jury state; not typically, at least. Almost all of our charging is done via the information: the grand jury indictment was abolished in the 80s. This OLR report has all the background and information you’ll ever need on the grand jury in Connecticut.

What this means is that the decision to arrest people of crimes and to charge them with crimes is made based on probable cause – that requirement enshrined in both the United States and State constitutions. Either you get an arrest warrant signed by a neutral judge, based on probable cause, or you arrest someone and then a neutral judge makes a finding that there is probable cause to believe that the person arrested committed the crime.

Out of the 50 states, only half actually use grand juries and out of those, only 22 require their use. [Here is an informative ABA article on grand juries.] Most of these grand juries investigate the commission of crimes and are composed of lay people, but some states have other types of juries like civil grand juries, which aren’t involved in the criminal investigative process.

The indicting grand jury as you imagine it – held in secret, where a ham sandwich can get indicted – was abolished precisely because it was so secretive and its ex parte nature. Several amendments to the statutes and the State Constitution established our current system. The vast majority of criminal cases are brought by employing the method I’ve described above and a very, very small class of crimes are still via grand jury:

Continue reading →

Argument Recap: Guilt by association because we’re all criminals

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The_Matrix_Reloaded_Burly_Brawl

It didn’t occur to me until earlier today, but there is a pattern here. The State has been trying for years to get great police powers at the expense of individual rights. But two things that happened in the last two days have really crystallized the extent to which they’re willing to go: 1. The absurd and frightening position staked out by the State of Connecticut at oral arguments yesterday, and; 2. Their repeated requests for vast investigative subpoena powers. I will take them up in turn.

The State of Connecticut thinks that everyone on the street is a suspect and the police should be able to detain anyone they feel like.

I wrote two days ago about the stunning argument the State is making in State v. Jeremy Kelly, where they are seeking to justify the detention of Kelly where he was only known to police officers as the guy standing next to someone they were looking for. Briefly, the police were looking for Gomez. They saw Burgos and Kelly. They thought Burgos was Gomez. They had no idea who Kelly was and were not interested in him. They ordered both men to stop. Both questioned that authority. The police repeated their commands. They both did not acquiesce and ran off. Kelly was eventually apprehended and charged with possession of cocaine.

The State argued that it did not need to show that there was any reason whatsoever to stop Kelly before making him submit to the police power of the State. The U.S. Supreme Court has said that a “brief, investigatory” stop is permitted where there is reasonable suspicion to believe that the person you are stopping has committed or is committing a crime. If you cannot show that reasonable belief, the stop violates the Fourth Amendment.

The State, though, urged the Supreme Court to adopt a ‘bright-line’ rule called the “Automatic Companion” Rule. It means essentially what you think it means: that the police should have the authority to automatically stop whomever is with someone they may think is committing a crime.

The hierarchy of standards goes something like this, from highest to lowest: beyond a reasonable doubt -> clear and convincing evidence -> preponderance of the evidence -> probable cause -> reasonable and articulable suspicion -> nothing.

So, R&AS is just a small step above nothing. It is slightly, but only just, more than a hunch. It requires that police officers put into words why they chose to stop someone as it relates to that person.

But no, this, apparently, is too difficult for the police. They want the power to stop everyone. Continue reading →

Failure to submit to government authority is evidence of a crime

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I’ve already written once this week about the really stunning arguments the State is making to completely erode Fourth Amendment protections. And now, via John Wesley Hall, I see evidence that at least one state – North Carolina again – has gone completely batshit insane when it comes to the application of the prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.

So where we left off in that last post was that the police need particularized suspicion that a person is committing or has committed a crime in order to stop them for investigatory purposes. What I mentioned peripherally is that this applies to motor vehicles as well (Terry v. Ohio). What I didn’t mention is that the United States Supreme Court has explicitly held that two types of detentions of motor vehicles without particularized suspicion are okay: 1) DUI checkpoints (Michigan v. Sitz) and 2) stops where the purpose is not to investigate the person stopped but general investigation and information gathering (Illinois v. Lidster).

The rationale of both these cases is that these are not unreasonable intrusions into the protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment and that the minor inconvenience suffered by motorists pales in comparison to the overriding concerns of society: preventing drunk driving and catching criminals. [The Fourth Amendment provides that all people shall be free from unreasonable searches and seizures...]

The Supreme Court did set out some rules, however, in Michigan v. Sitz (the CT case is State v. Mikolinski): that

just as the Terry standard protects an individual’s freedom from arbitrary police conduct by requiring that a seizure “be based on specific, objective facts indicating that society’s legitimate interests require the seizure of the particular individual”; id.; so does the requirement “that the seizure must be carried out pursuant to a plan embodying explicit, neutral limitations on the conduct of individual officers.” Id.

Mikolinski. See also Delaware v. Prouse. So now, on to North Carolina. In State v. Kevin Griffin [PDF], the North Carolina Supreme Court has just held that a stop of a motor vehicle is legal under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution where the only thing the motor vehicle did was turn around near a checkpoint.

Kevin Griffin was driving down a road, saw a checkpoint, made a legal turn away from the checkpoint and then was stopped by police officers.

Their reasonable and articulable suspicion that Kevin Griffin had committed or was committing a crime? That he turned away from the checkpoint.

Q. But he just made a left turn; is that correct?

A. Onto the shoulder, yes.

Q. That’s not an illegal turn; is it?

A. A left turn is not an illegal turn.

Q. And you never gave him a moving violation for that; did you not?

A. No.

The police state is here, folks. You will do what we tell you to do, otherwise you’re a criminal. This is the logical extension of those “search me, I’ve got nothing to hide” attitudes. A completely legal act – the left turn – is now evidence of a crime. “Sure we’ll search you and if you don’t let us, we’ll use that as evidence that you, in fact, do have something to hide.”

What’s next? Refusing to talk to a police officer on the street will now be sufficient evidence that you’ve got something to hide? So would it be okay then for the police to go up to people for no reason and start asking them incriminating questions? And if you refuse, well, then, you must be guilty of something, because only guilty people refuse to co-operate with the police and submit to their authority.

When we start giving up our rights in the name of security, they keep taking those rights. And then they’ll take every last scrap of freedom you have left and then you’re left staring at decisions where a man was suspected of committing a crime solely on the basis of a perfectly legal action.

We might as well just give up the ghost on this Fourth Amendment and install surveillance cameras in our houses and cars and workplaces because what is the point of having all this freedom? Wouldn’t it just be easier to let the Government have whatever it wants, hey as long as we’re not criminals, right?

War is peace
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

The guilt by association exception to the Fourth Amendment

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cat_group_pic

now which one-a-youz ates that bone?

Tomorrow at 10:00am, the Connecticut Supreme Court will hear argument in one of the most important cases to come before them in a long time. The case involves the authority of the police to stop and detain individuals just because they happen to be on a public street alongside someone the police might be looking for. In other words, the authority to automatically detain the companion of someone who is a suspect. In fewer words: guilt by association.

The defendant’s brief is here [PDF], the state’s brief is here [PDF] and the reply brief is here [PDF].

First, some setup. The Constitutional provision at play here is the Fourth Amendment, which protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures”. Normally, in order to enter a home or to arrest someone, the police need a warrant based on probable cause. In rare circumstances, a warrantless arrest or seizure can also be made, but it also must be justified by probable cause.

“[A] police officer is permitted in appropriate circumstances and in an appropriate manner to detain an individual for investigative purposes if the officer believes, based on a reasonable and articulable suspicion that the individual is engaged in criminal activity, even if there is no probable cause to make an arrest.”

State v. Clark; see also Terry v. Ohio. What that means is that even if an officer is making a brief investigatory stop, he has to be able to articulate a reasonable suspicion as to why he believes that particular person is engaged in criminal activity.

The facts. Got it? Okay. So, in State v. Kelly, police officers were looking for a guy named Gomez. They had the most generic of descriptions of Gomez before they set out that day: 20-22 year old Hispanic male. 5’5-5’7, 130-150lbs, medium complexion and very short hair. Everyone whom that description fits, raise your hands. They wanted to serve a warrant on him for violating his probation. They didn’t know how he had violated his probation or what he was on probation for. Despite their considerable resources, they hadn’t even bothered to look at a photo of Gomez before setting out.

They got a tip from one of their informants that Gomez might reside in the area of Brown Street in Wethersfield. So off they went, with only the most generic of descriptions. They come upon two men, Burgos and Kelly. While Burgos is Hispanic, he apparently had very lengthy hair. Kelly is African-American. So, in no way could Kelly be mistaken for Gomez.

Yet, the two officers decide to stop the two men and displaying their badges, motion for them to come over. [Under Connecticut state law, a broader definition of seizure applies than under the Federal Constitution - meaning we have greater protections. So a person is seized when a reasonable person would not feel free to leave a police encounter. State v. Oquendo.] Burgos asked “what for?” and Kelly said “I live here”. The police continued to order the men to come to them at which point they both took off running. For some reason, the police abandoned their chase of Burgos-who-they-thought-was-Gomez and focused on Kelly. They say him drop a baggie of something and he was eventually apprehended and charged with possession of cocaine.

The argument Kelly raises on appeal is essentially this: if, as described above, the police need particularized and individualized suspicion to infringe on someone’s Fourth Amendment right and the only reason they stopped him was because they were looking for Gomez, then his seizure and detention is in violation of the Constitution. The police admitted during the suppression hearing that they did not suspect Kelly of committing any crime when they stopped him and that they stopped him merely because he was walking next to the guy they thought they were looking for.

The State argues, however, that this violation of a Constitutional right is permitted because of the so-called “automatic companion” rule: that any time the police suspect that a person on the street is someone they are looking for or want to investigate, they have the authority to stop whomever else that person is with, in the name of officer safety.

The Appellate Court likened this situation to the line of motor vehicle stop cases in the United States Supreme Court, which has held that it is Constitutional for an officer to order a passenger out of the car during such a stop. Maryland v. Wilson. SCOTUS has also said it’s okay to detain passengers while the car is searched for contraband pursuant to a warrant. Michigan v. Summers.

Those cases, in my opinion, are quite different:

  • First, SCOTUS has carved out a very specific exception to the Fourth Amendment for motor vehicles due to their distinct nature. The automatic companion rule is not just an extension of the motor vehicle exception, but is another new comparable exception.
  • Second, passengers in a car are different than two people walking on a street. Passengers in a car are, by definition in some sort of companionship relationship together and, more importantly, it is physically impossible to stop a car and detain only one person inside while letting the others go on their way. That is not the case with two people walking on the street. It is far easier for officers to approach one individual – the one for whom they have reasonable and articulable suspicion or probable cause – while asking the others to step aside or go on their way. They are severable in a way that passengers in a car aren’t.
  • Finally, the motor vehicle cases presuppose that the entire car has been legally detained and then say that, once legally seized, to ask a passenger to step outside is a de minimis intrusion that is justified by officer safety. Here, that first step is at issue: is Kelly legally detained to begin with? The answer, of course, is no, unless you adopt the view that you do not need a specific particular individualized reason to stop him as long as he is with someone else whom you do have reason to stop.

The implications of permitting a rule whereby police can stop every person for whom they may or may not have reasonable suspicion and every companion in their immediate radius are frightening. One need only look at the allegations of racial profiling that have landed East Haven in trouble or the trial of the stop and frisk policies of New York City Police to know that permitting wholesale detention and seizure of people on inner city streets based on nothing more than “guilt by association” would result in, well…just look at these stats:

In 2010, New Yorkers were stopped by the police 601,285 times.
518,849 were totally innocent (86 percent).
315,083 were black (54 percent).
189,326 were Latino (33 percent).
54,810 were white (9 percent).
295,902 were aged 14-24 (49 percent).

In 2011, New Yorkers were stopped by the police 685,724 times.
605,328 were totally innocent (88 percent).
350,743 were black (53 percent).
223,740 were Latino (34 percent).
61,805 were white (9 percent).
341,581 were aged 14-24 (51 percent).

In 2012, New Yorkers were stopped by the police 533,042 times
473,300 were totally innocent (89 percent).
286,684 were black (55 percent).
166,212 were Latino (32 percent).
50,615 were white (10 percent).

If you think that’s a NYPD specific problem, look at these Philly PD allegations.

But it’s about more than all of that. It’s about the strength of our rights and the Constitution. Do we want an America where we can walk down the street and talk to whomever we want, without fear of being stopped by the police just because of the person next to us, even if they don’t suspect us of doing anything wrong?

Should we not require that bare minimum? If the police want to stop a person – any person – they should be required to say why they stopped that person that’s not “because he was talking to a drug dealer”? Talking to a dealer isn’t a crime. Our police forces shouldn’t have license to stop anyone they feel like without a suspicion that they are committing or have committed a crime. And, let’s be honest, that standard is absurdly low. Just look at their inept efforts to apprehend “Gomez” and how they bumbled into Burgos and Kelly instead. Was the stop of Burgos legal? How can we permit what happened to Kelly? And if this is permitted, what else will be?

 

This month at the Supreme Court: blockbuster session

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not an actual judge

not an actual judge

I’m reviving a series I briefly dabbled in, back in 2008, called ‘This Month‘, which serves to preview the cases assigned for oral argument in the CT Supreme Court in the upcoming month. I may also include cases of special interest in SCOTUS, depending on whether I’m in the mood. I’ve also added a permanent link to this post in the sidebar, alongside the above picture, so you can find it at any time. The link will be updated every month to the most current ‘this month’ post.

The reason for reviving this is this upcoming April term, in which the court is scheduled to hear at least four cases that can have significant and profound impacts on the state of individual rights in Connecticut: State v. Kelly; State v. Brown, Brown v. Commissioner and State v. Santiago, impacting, in turn, the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments.

The following is the listing of criminal cases scheduled for oral argument in the CT Supreme Court by date.

Monday, April 15 @ 10:00am: State v. Richard Annulli. [Briefs available here.] The defendant was charged with several sex related crimes. During the trial, he wanted to cross-examine the complaining witness to show that she was lying by questioning her about another separate instance in which she allegedly lied to the police in order to get someone else arrested. The trial judge, after hearing what that evidence would be, disagreed with the defendant’s characterization that she “lied” and thus did not permit the defendant to question her about that. The Appellate Court affirmed the conviction and the Supreme Court will review whether his Sixth Amendment right to confront one’s accuser was violated by the trial court. There is also a claim that the evidence was insufficient, but that’s going nowhere.

Tuesday, April 16 @ 10:00am: State v. Jeremy Kelly. The link to the left is to a separate post for this case. I don’t often engage in hyperbole but it is my opinion that this is one of the most important cases the CT Supreme Court will have to deal with for a while (except that other case coming up on April 23). This case involves the ability of the police to seize or detain groups of people when they have a reasonable suspicion to stop only one person out of that group. The implications of permitting such an “automatic companion” rule are staggering, especially for policing in minority neighborhoods, given the dubious “stop and frisk” tactics that are already employed there.

Wednesday, April 17 @ 10:00am: State v. Brown. [Briefs available here.] One of the fundamental concepts of the privilege against self-incrimination is that you have the right to remain silent. The police, pursuant to Miranda v. Arizona, generally advise a suspect of his rights. So, if a person chooses to invoke his rights and remain silent, that fact cannot be used to show that he is guilty. See Doyle v. Ohio. The question in Brown is whether post-arrest silence can be used against the defendant if the defendant first puts on evidence that he was co-operative with police and answered their questions. Has he, in essence, “opened the door” to harmful questioning? Once he does that, can the prosecutor show that when asked by the police how much he (in this case) had to drink, the defendant remained silent? The Appellate Court said yes and the Supreme Court will decide if that important protection of Due Process has an exception of these circumstances.

Interestingly enough, on the very same day, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Salinas v. Texas, in which the issue to be decided is whether the pre-arrest silence of a suspect can be used to show his guilt. [Greenfield has more here.]

Wednesday, April 17 @ 11:00am: State v. Stephen J.R. [Briefs available here.] The defendant, who was accused of sexually abusing the minor victim on four occasions, was charged with eight counts of sexual assault in the first degree and eight counts of risk of injury. At trial, the victim testified that the defendant abused her on “three or four” occasions and that she was forced to engage in two sexual acts each time. The defendant subsequently was convicted of all sixteen charges. He argues that the victim’s testimony was too vague to support the guilty verdicts on all sixteen charges, as she described generally what happened each time the abuse occurred but did not differentiate between the incidents. In addition, the defendant contends that the trial court, after conducting an in camera review of the records of the department of children and families pertaining to the victim and her family, improperly failed to fully disclose all of the relevant records. Finally, the defendant asserts that the prosecutor, during closing argument, improperly appealed to the emotions of the jury and thereby denied him a fair trial.

Thursday, April 18 @ 10:00am: O’Neil Brown v. Commissioner. [Briefs available here.] A case that will decide the applicability of Padilla v. Kentucky here in Connecticut. Padilla said that it was a lawyer’s responsibility to advise a defendant about any immigration consequences of a guilty plea. While Padilla was an important case for defendants going forward, the question here is whether it applies retroactively to people whose convictions are final and who may be awaiting deportation. While SCOTUS has said no, Chaidez v. US [PDF], they have also said that states are free to provide retroactivity under state law, Danforth v. Minnesota. Further, last year the Connecticut Supreme Court also said too bad you’re shit out of luck to a guy who sought to vacate his 1999 conviction because he was facing deportation in 2010 and no one told him that he could be deported. He relied on CGS 54-1j, but the Court said no, that only provides relief within the first three years. So O’Neil Brown is critical for defendants who may have pled guilty without any knowledge of the negative deportation consequences of that plea.

Monday, April 22 @ 10:00am: State v. Pires. The issue in this case is whether the defendant properly invoked his right to represent himself and whether that right was violated. The Appellate Court said no and the Supreme Court will review that decision.

Monday, April 22 @ 11:00am: State v. Mitchell Henderson. In 1993, the defendant was found guilty of several crimes and due to his extensive criminal record, was also found to be a persistent serious felony offender and a persistent dangerous felony offender, both of which triggered a greater punishment than normal. As a result of this, his sentence was lengthened or “enhanced”. In 2007, our Supreme Court decided that any such “enhancements” must be based on facts that are found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, rather than by a judge. So Henderson argued that his enhanced sentence is illegal because the facts weren’t found by a jury. The Appellate Court said no, the 2007 rule doesn’t apply backwards. The Supreme Court will now review.

Tuesday, April 23 @ 10:00am: State v. Eduardo Santiago. [Briefs available here.] This is the other big one this month, which will decide whether the prospective repeal of the death penalty is Constitutional or whether the entire death penalty needs to be scrapped or whether the repeal needs to be repealed. Keep in mind that the hearings on the racial and geographic disparity in the application of the death penalty are still pending.

Wednesday, April 24 @ 10:00am: State v. Milner. Here’s another fascinating case (and the last one of) this term. Milner was placed on probation in 2005. Sometime later, he was charged with a new crime and as a result of that, also charged with violating his probation. He apparently had a hearing on the violation of probation (VOP) first and a judge decided to revoke his probation and sentence him to jail. He appealed that judge’s decision. While that appeal was pending, he pled guilty to one of the new charges that formed the basis for the violation of his probation. He didn’t appeal that conviction (he couldn’t, really, because you typically can’t appeal from a guilty plea), but he did challenge its legality by filing a habeas corpus petition. The Appellate Court held that it wasn’t the same, his conviction was final and so his pending appeal (from the VOP) was moot. The Supreme Court will decide if that’s the case.

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If you have the briefs in any of these cases, please email them to me. If you’re going to see oral argument in any of these cases, please leave a comment with your observations.

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