Edward Dennis Jacks, Jr. v. Jack R. Duckworth, Warden

651 F.2d 480
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedAugust 14, 1981
Docket80-1639
StatusPublished
Cited by59 cases

This text of 651 F.2d 480 (Edward Dennis Jacks, Jr. v. Jack R. Duckworth, Warden) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Edward Dennis Jacks, Jr. v. Jack R. Duckworth, Warden, 651 F.2d 480 (7th Cir. 1981).

Opinions

CUMMINGS, Circuit Judge.

Petitioner Edward Dennis Jacks, Jr. appeals from a denial of his habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Petitioner was indicted by an Indiana grand jury in September 1975 for the first-degree murder of his wife, Kathleen B. Jacks, on August 28, 1975. The case was tried to a jury in Indiana state court in November 1976. At trial, petitioner contended that he was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity at the time of the homicide. The jury found petitioner guilty as charged, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Indiana Supreme Court affirmed the conviction on direct appeal. Jacks v. State, Ind., 394 N.E.2d 166 (1979). Petitioner then filed the present habeas corpus petition, raising essentially the same issues decided adversely to him in the direct appeal. The district court agreed with the conclusions of the Indiana Supreme Court and dismissed the petition. Our review in a habeas corpus proceeding is limited to constitutional errors that deprive a defendant of fundamental fairness guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 642-643, 94 S.Ct. 1868, 1871, 40 L.Ed.2d 431, see Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 96 S.Ct. 3037, 49 L.Ed.2d 1067. Finding no such error in petitioner’s trial, we affirm.

I

Petitioner’s first asserted ground for relief concerns a portion of a tape-recorded conversation between himself and Detective Sergeant Miller which took place at the police station after petitioner’s arrest on August 28, 1975. At the outset of the conversation, Sergeant Miller gave petitioner his Miranda warnings. • Petitioner did not then invoke either his right to remain silent or his right to have an attorney present, but continued to converse with Sergeant Miller and to answer preliminary questions about his name, age, and occupation. Thereafter the following colloquy took place:

Mr. Miller: Do you know what happened? Tonight?
[Petitioner]: I’m not exactly sure what happened.
Mr. Miller: You’re not exactly sure. Have you been drinking?
[Petitioner]: As regards what happened this evening, I want to talk to my attorney.
Mr. Miller: Okay.

Thereafter petitioner continued to engage in an extended conversation with Sergeant Miller. The trial court admitted into evidence that portion of the conversation, offered for supposed admissions and denials therein, ending with the above-quoted colloquy and excluded everything thereafter.

Petitioner claims that his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and his Sixth Amendment right to counsel, as incorporated in the Fourteenth Amendment, were violated when the jury was permitted to hear over his objection the single statement to Sergeant Miller that “As regards what happened this evening, I want to talk to my attorney.” The prior conversation with Miller is not challenged. (It is reproduced in Appendix A hereto.) To support this argument, petitioner relies principally on Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610, 96 S.Ct. 2240, 49 L.Ed.2d 91, in which the Supreme Court held, “that the use for impeachment purposes of petitioners’ silence, at the time of arrest and after receiving Miranda warnings violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” 426 U.S. at 619, 96 S.Ct. at 2245. Petitioner also relies on United States v. Hale, 422 U.S. 171, 95 S.Ct. 2133, 45 L.Ed.2d 99, in which the prosecutor was not permitted “during the trial to call attention to * * [petitioner’s] silence at the time of arrest and to insist that because he did not speak about the facts of the case at that time, as [483]*483he was told he need not do so, an unfavorable inference might be drawn as to the truth of his trial testimony * * 422 U.S. at 182-183, 95 S.Ct. at 2139.

However, neither Doyle nor Hale is applicable here because this case does not involve an attempt by the prosecutor to use petitioner’s silence or failure to testify against him or for impeachment purposes. In fact, petitioner did not remain silent at the time of arrest. Rather, he spoke voluntarily and freely with Sergeant Miller after having received his Miranda warnings and even after having uttered the 13 words now in issue, thereby indicating that he was not then invoking his right to remain silent.1 Out of an abundance of caution and in foreordained harmony with Edwards v. Arizona, - U.S. -, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 68 L.Ed.2d 378 decided by the Supreme Court on May 18, 1981, the trial judge granted petitioner’s motion to suppress the portion of the tape immediately following the challenged sentence (R. 554-555). (The suppressed statement is reproduced in Appendix B hereto.) But it is only at the very end of the tape, some three pages of transcript after that sentence, that petitioner stated he “desired to have an attorney before talking [further] to the police” (R. 352) and stopped talking. Petitioner himself explained to Sergeant Miller after the challenged sentence that he did not want to call an attorney (R. 351), and Richard H. Sproull, then co-counsel for petitioner, subsequently admitted to the judge that at the time in question petitioner did not want a lawyer (R. 558). Petitioner also testified freely at his trial. Certainly the reading of this one sentence to the jurors after they had been read the considerable forepart of petitioner’s conversation with Officer Miller would be lost in all the rest of the evidence rather than cause them to convict. The trial judge left it in merely to mark the termination of the permissible evidence and that which became impermissible, he thought, after defendant first sought counsel. While it might have been better practice to suppress the sentence, certainly it was not so prejudicial a ruling as to constitute reversible error in view of the strong case against petitioner.

Consequently, it is obvious that appellate counsel for petitioner is now presenting a self-serving, unwarranted interpretation of a single sentence whose admission, in nowise was a violation of petitioner’s constitutional rights in that petitioner was not at that point invoking either his right to remain silent or his right to have counsel present. Indeed his right to counsel under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments had not attached because no adversary judicial proceedings had been initiated. Moore v. Illinois, 434 U.S. 220, 226-227, 98 S.Ct. 458, 463-464, 54 L.Ed.2d 424. The district court therefore correctly held that reversible error was not committed when this sentence was permitted into evidence without any misuse by the prosecutor.

II

Petitioner next claims that the trial court committed reversible error by allowing the jury to hear a tape recording of a telephone conversation between petitioner and his mother that also took place on the night of his arrest. The conversation was [484]

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651 F.2d 480, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/edward-dennis-jacks-jr-v-jack-r-duckworth-warden-ca7-1981.