Jewell v. State

957 N.E.2d 625, 2011 Ind. LEXIS 1051, 2011 WL 5974662
Indiana Supreme Court·Decided November 30, 2011·No. 32S04-1104-CR-200·Published·Cited by 13 cases

Opinion

On Petition to Transfer from the Indiana Court of Appeals, No. 32A04-1003-CR-00187

SHEPARD, Chief Justice.

When a defendant is represented by a lawyer for a particular offense, do the police violate his right to counsel if they approach him about a different offense? Under the Sixth Amendment, the answer is no. We hold that under the broader protections of Article 1, Section 13, of the Indiana Constitution, the right to counsel is violated only where the different offense is inextricably intertwined with the charge on which counsel is already representing the defendant. Nevertheless, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

Facts and Procedural History

In August 2008, Christopher Jewell was arrested and charged with tattooing a minor, a class A misdemeanor, for allegedly taking his former stepdaughter T.S. to get a tattoo. 1 Detective Terry Judy investigated the case for the Hendricks County Sheriffs Department. Released on bond, Jewell retained counsel for the charge.

Shortly thereafter, but while the tattooing charge was still pending, T.S. got into an argument with her boyfriend. During the course of the argument, she revealed that Jewell forced a sexual relationship upon her while Jewell and her mother were married. T.S.’s mother contacted *628 the police and Detective Judy also began to investigate the alleged sex crimes. The sexual relationship appeared to last from March 25, 2004, through June 30, 2007. T.S. was between thirteen and sixteen years of age during this period.

Detective Judy arranged for T.S. to make recorded phone calls to Jewell in order to obtain evidence concerning sexual misconduct. T.S. made two such calls in late August 2008. Detective Judy was present and listening in during the calls and prompted T.S. with notes on things to say and questions to ask. During the course of the conversations, Jewell mentioned the pending misdemeanor charge and that he had obtained an attorney for that charge, but also made several potentially incriminating statements about sexual misconduct. (Tr. at 37-38, 40-46, 49-57, 65-66; State’s Ex. 7, 10.) At no point during the phone conversations did T.S. indicate that she was working with, or in the presence of, the police.

The State then charged Jewell with three counts of sexual misconduct with a minor, two as class B felonies and one as a class C felony, 2 one count of felony child molesting, a class C felony, 3 and two counts of child seduction, a class D felony. 4 It eventually dismissed the tattooing charge.

Jewell moved to suppress the incriminating statements from the recorded conversations, claiming they were obtained in violation of his right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment and Article 1, Section 13, of the Indiana Constitution. Following a hearing, the trial court denied the motion. The court admitted the evidence at trial over Jewell’s renewed objection.

A jury found Jewell guilty of all six counts, and the trial court sentenced him to a total of forty years: consecutive twenty-year terms for the class B felonies with concurrent eight-year terms for each class C felony and concurrent three-year terms for each class D felony. Jewell appealed.

The Court of Appeals affirmed. Jewell v. State, 938 N.E.2d 1283 (Ind.Ct.App.2010). It noted that the Sixth Amendment’s protection is specific to the offense on which counsel represents a defendant, citing Texas v. Cobb, 532 U.S. 162, 121 S.Ct. 1335, 149 L.Ed.2d 321 (2001). It found no precedent for any broader protection of the attorney-client relationship under Article 1, Section 13, of our constitution. Id. at 1290.

We granted transfer, thereby vacating the opinion of the Court of Appeals, to consider whether an “inextricably intertwined” exception exists under Article 1, Section 13. Jewell v. State, 950 N.E.2d 1205 (Ind.2011) (table).

I. Origin and Application of the “Inextricably Intertwined” Exception

The Sixth Amendment guarantees that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.” U.S. Const, amend. VI. The purpose of this guarantee is “to ‘protec[t] the unaided layman at critical confrontations’ with his ‘expert adversary,’ the government, after ‘the adverse positions of government and defendant have solidified’ with respect to a particular alleged crime.” McNeil v. Wisconsin, 501 U.S. 171, 177-78, 111 S.Ct. 2204, 115 L.Ed.2d 158 (1991) (emphasis in original) (quoting United States v. Gouveia, 467 U.S. 180, 189, 104 S.Ct. 2292, 81 *629 L.Ed.2d 146 (1984)). As such, its protections are “offense specific,” do not attach until formal commencement of adversarial proceedings, and “cannot be invoked once for all future prosecutions.” Id. at 175, 111 S.Ct. 2204.

While the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel is broadly viewed as “offense specific,” most federal circuits traditionally recognized two exceptions. These were the “inextricably intertwined” (or “closely related”) exception and the “circumvention of Sixth Amendment right” exception, both inferred from the holdings of the U.S. Supreme Court in Brewer v. Williams 5 and Maine v. Moulton. 6 See, e.g., United States v. Covarrubias, 179 F.3d 1219, 1223 (9th Cir.1999), abrogated by Cobb, 532 U.S. at 168 n. 1, 121 S.Ct. 1335. The “circumvention of the Sixth Amendment right” exception applies when the government or state breaches its “ ‘affirmative obligation not to act in a manner that circumvents and thereby dilutes the protection afforded by the right to counsel.’ ” Id. at 1223 n. 6 (quoting Moulton, 474 U.S. at 171, 106 S.Ct. 477). See also Moulton, 474 U.S. at 176, 106 S.Ct. 477 (“Accordingly, the Sixth Amendment is violated when the State obtains incriminating statements by knowingly circumventing the accused’s right to have counsel present in a confrontation between the accused and a state agent.”). The crux of this exception is the knowing use of state agents to obtain incriminating statements relevant to pending charges for which a defendant has already obtained counsel. It does not apply to statements obtained by “luck or happenstance.” See Moulton, 474 U.S. at 176, 106 S.Ct. 477.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Jewell v. State, 957 N.E.2d 625, 2011 Ind. LEXIS 1051, 2011 WL 5974662 (Ind. 2011).

957 N.E.2d 625 (Jewell v. State) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related

Salvador A. Jones v. State of Indiana
Indiana Court of Appeals, 2025
Victoria v. Arrowood v. State of Indiana
Indiana Court of Appeals, 2020
Mark Leonard v. State of Indiana
86 N.E.3d 406 (Indiana Court of Appeals, 2017)
State v. Prieto-Rubio
376 P.3d 255 (Oregon Supreme Court, 2016)
Benjamen Benjamen v. State of Indiana
Indiana Court of Appeals, 2013
Thomas A. Dexter v. State of Indiana
Indiana Court of Appeals, 2013
Ronald Rostochak v. State of Indiana
Indiana Court of Appeals, 2012
Kenneth Meer v. State of Indiana
Indiana Court of Appeals, 2012
Chappell v. State
966 N.E.2d 124 (Indiana Court of Appeals, 2012)
Shamir Chappell v. State of Indiana
Indiana Court of Appeals, 2012