Michigan v. Mosley

423 U.S. 96, 96 S. Ct. 321, 46 L. Ed. 2d 313, 1975 U.S. LEXIS 100

Opinions

Mr. Justice Stewart

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The respondent, Richard Bert Mosley, was arrested in Detroit, Mich., in the early afternoon of April 8, 1971, in connection with robberies that had recently occurred at the Blue Goose Bar and the White Tower Restaurant on that city’s lower east side. The arresting officer, Detective James Cowie of the Armed Robbery Section of the Detroit Police Department, was acting on a tip implicating Mosley and three other men in the robberies.¹ After effecting the arrest, Detective Cowie brought Mosley to the Robbery, Breaking and Entering Bureau of the Police Department, located on the fourth floor of the departmental headquarters building. The officer advised Mosley of his rights under this Court’s decision in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, and had him read and sign the department’s constitutional rights notification certificate. After filling out the necessary arrest papers, Cowie began questioning Mosley about the robbery of the White Tower Restaurant. When Mosley said he did not want to answer any questions about the robberies, Cowie promptly ceased the interrogation. The completion of the arrest papers and the questioning of Mosley together took approximately 20 minutes. At no time during the questioning did Mosley indicate a desire to consult with a lawyer, and there is no claim that the procedures followed to this point did not fully comply with the strictures of the Miranda opinion. Mosley was then taken to a ninth-floor cell block.

Shortly after 6 p. m., Detective Hill of the Detroit Police Department Homicide Bureau brought Mosley from the cell block to the fifth-floor office of the Homicide Bureau for questioning about the fatal shooting of a man named Leroy Williams. Williams had been killed on January 9, 1971, during a holdup attempt outside the 101 Ranch Bar in Detroit. Mosley had not been arrested on this charge or interrogated about it by Detective Cowie.² Before questioning Mosley about this homicide, Detective Hill carefully advised him of his “Miranda rights.” Mosley read the notification form both silently and aloud, and Detective Hill then read and explained the warnings to him and had him sign the form. Mosley at first denied any involvement in the Williams murder, but after the officer told him that Anthony Smith had confessed to participating in the slaying and had named him as the “shooter,” Mosley made a statement impheating himself in the homicide.³ The interrogation by Detective Hill lasted approximately 15 minutes, and at no time during its course did Mosley ask to consult with a lawyer or indicate that he did not want to discuss the homicide. In short, there is no claim that the procedures followed during Detective Hill’s interrogation of Mosley, standing alone, did not fully comply with the strictures of the Miranda opinion.⁴

Mosley was subsequently charged in a one-count information with first-degree murder. Before the trial he moved to suppress his incriminating statement on a number of grounds, among them the claim that under the doctrine of the Miranda case it was constitutionally impermissible for Detective Hill to question him about the Williams murder after he had told Detective Cowie that he did not want to answer any questions about the robberies.⁵ The trial court denied the motion to suppress after an evidentiary hearing, and the incriminating statement was subsequently introduced in evidence against Mosley at his trial. The jury convicted Mosley of first-degree murder, and the court imposed a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment.

On appeal to the Michigan Court of Appeals, Mosley renewed his previous objections to the use of his incriminating statement in evidence. The appellate court reversed the judgment of conviction, holding that Detective Hill’s interrogation of Mosley had been a per se violation of the Miranda doctrine. Accordingly, without reaching Mosley’s other contentions, the Court remanded the case for a new trial with instructions that Mosley’s statement be suppressed as evidence. 51 Mich. App. 105, 214 N. W. 2d 564. After further appeal was denied by the Michigan Supreme Court, 392 Mich. 764, the State filed a petition for certiorari here. We granted the writ because of the important constitutional question presented. 419 U. S. 1119.

In the Miranda case this Court promulgated a set of safeguards to protect the there-delineated constitutional rights of persons subjected to custodial police interrogation. In sum, the Court held in that case that unless law enforcement officers give certain specified warnings before questioning a person in custody,⁶ and follow certain specified procedures during the course of any subsequent interrogation, any statement made by the person in custody cannot over his objection be admitted in evidence against him as a defendant at trial, even though the statement may in fact be wholly voluntary. See Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U. S. 433, 443.

Neither party in the present case challenges the continuing validity of the Miranda decision, or of any of the so-called guidelines it established to protect what the Court there said was a person’s constitutional privilege against compulsory self-incrimination. The issue in this case, rather, is whether the conduct of the Detroit police that led to Mosley’s incriminating statement did in fact violate the Miranda “guidelines,” so as to render the statement inadmissible in evidence against Mosley at his trial. Resolution of the question turns almost entirely on the interpretation of a single passage in the Miranda opinion, upon which the Michigan appellate court relied in finding a per se violation of Miranda:

“Once warnings have been given, the subsequent procedure is clear. If the individual indicates in any manner, at any time prior to or during questioning, that he wishes to remain silent, the interrogation must cease. At this point he has shown that he intends to exercise his Fifth Amendment privilege; any statement taken after the person invokes his privilege cannot be other than the product of compulsion, subtle or otherwise. Without the right to cut off questioning, the setting of in-custody interrogation operates on the individual to overcome free choice in producing a statement after the privilege has been once invoked.” 384 U. S., at 473-474.⁷

This passage states that “the interrogation must cease” when the person in custody indicates that “he wishes to remain silent.” It does not state under what circumstances, if any, a resumption of questioning is permissible.⁸ The passage could be literally read to mean that a person who has invoked his “right to silence” can never again be subjected to custodial interrogation by any police officer at any time or place on any subject. Another possible construction of the passage would characterize “any statement taken after the person invokes his privilege” as “the product of compulsion” and would therefore mandate its exclusion from evidence, even if it were volunteered by the person in custody without any further interrogation whatever. Or the passage could be interpreted to require only the immediate cessation of questioning, and to permit a resumption of interrogation after a momentary respite.

It is evident that any of these possible literal interpretations would lead to absurd and unintended results. To permit the continuation of custodial interrogation after a momentary cessation would clearly frustrate the purposes of Miranda by allowing repeated rounds of questioning to undermine the will of the person being questioned. At the other extreme, a blanket prohibition against the taking of voluntary statements or a permanent immunity from further interrogation, regardless of the circumstances, would transform the Miranda safeguards into wholly irrational obstacles to legitimate police investigative activity, and deprive suspects of an opportunity to make informed and intelligent assessments of their interests. Clearly, therefore, neither this passage nor any other passage in the Miranda opinion can sensibly be read to create a per se proscription of indefinite duration upon any further questioning by any police officer on any subject, once the person in custody has indicated a desire to remain silent.⁹

A reasonable and faithful interpretation of the Miranda opinion must rest on the intention of the Court in that case to adopt “fully effective means ... to notify the person of his right of silence and to assure that the exercise of the right will be scrupulously honored . . . 384 U. S., at 479. The critical safeguard identified in the passage at issue is a person’s “right to cut off questioning.” Id., at 474. Through the exercise of his option to terminate questioning he can control the time at which questioning occurs, the subjects discussed, and the duration of the interrogation. The requirement that law enforcement authorities must respect a person’s exercise of that option counteracts the coercive pressures of the custodial setting. We therefore conclude that the admissibility of statements obtained after the person in custody has decided to remain silent depends under Miranda on whether his “right to cut off questioning” was “scrupulously honored.” ¹⁰

A review of the circumstances leading to Mosley’s confession reveals that his “right to cut off questioning” was fully respected in this case. Before his initial interrogation, Mosley was carefully advised that he was under no obligation to answer any questions and could remain silent if he wished. He orally acknowledged that he understood the Miranda warnings and then signed a printed notification-of-rights form. When Mosley stated that he did not want to discuss the robberies, Detective Cowie immediately ceased the interrogation and did not try either to resume the questioning or in any way to persuade Mosley to reconsider his position. After an interval of more than two hours, Mosley was questioned by another police officer at another location about an unrelated holdup murder. He was given full and complete Miranda warnings at the outset of the second interrogation. He was thus reminded again that he could remain silent and could consult with a lawyer, and was carefully given a full and fair opportunity to exercise these options. The subsequent questioning did not undercut Mosley’s previous decision not to answer Detective Cowie’s inquiries. Detective Hill did not resume the interrogation about the White Tower Restaurant robbery or inquire about the Blue Goose Bar robbery, but instead focused exclusively on the Leroy Williams homicide, a crime different in nature and in time and place of occurrence from the robberies for which Mosley had been arrested and interrogated by Detective Cowie. Although it is not clear from the record how much Detective Hill knew about the earlier interrogation, his questioning of Mosley about an unrelated homicide was quite consistent with a reasonable interpretation of Mosley’s earlier refusal to answer any questions about the robberies.¹¹

This is not a case, therefore, where the police failed to honor a decision of a person in custody to cut off questioning, either by refusing to discontinue the interrogation upon request or by persisting in repeated efforts to wear down his resistance and make him change his mind. In contrast to such practices, the police here immediately ceased the interrogation, resumed questioning only after the passage of a significant period of time and the provision of a fresh set of warnings, and restricted the second interrogation to a crime that had not been a subject of the earlier interrogation.

The Michigan Court of Appeals viewed this case as factually similar to Westover v. United States, 384 U. S. 436, a companion case to Miranda. But the controlling facts of the two cases are strikingly different.

In Westover, the petitioner was arrested by the Kansas City police at 9:45 p. m. and taken to the police station. Without giving any advisory warnings of any kind to Westover, the police questioned him that night and throughout the next morning about various local robberies. At noon, three FBI agents took over, gave advisory warnings to Westover, and proceeded to question him about two California bank robberies. After two hours of questioning, the petitioner confessed to the California crimes. The Court held that the confession obtained by the FBI was inadmissible because the interrogation leading to the petitioner’s statement followed on the heels of prolonged questioning that was commenced and continued by the Kansas City police without preliminary warnings to Westover of any kind. The Court found that “the federal authorities were the beneficiaries of the pressure applied by the local in-custody interrogation” and that the belated warnings given by the federal officers were “not sufficient to protect” West-over because from his point of view “the warnings came at the end of the interrogation process.” Id., at 497, 496.

Here, by contrast, the police gave full “Miranda warnings” to Mosley at the very outset of each interrogation, subjected him to only a brief period of initial questioning, and suspended questioning entirely for a significant period before beginning the interrogation that led to his incriminating statement. The cardinal fact of West-over — the failure of the police officers to give any warnings whatever to the person in their custody before embarking on an intense and prolonged interrogation of him — was simply not present in this case. The Michigan Court of Appeals was mistaken, therefore, in believing that Detective Hill’s questioning of Mosley was “not permitted” by the Westover decision. 51 Mich. App., at 108, 214 N. W. 2d, at 566.

For these reasons, we conclude that the admission in evidence of Mosley’s incriminating statement did not violate the principles of Miranda v. Arizona. Accordingly, the judgment of the Michigan Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

1 The officer testified that information supplied by an anonymous caller was the sole basis for his arrest of Mosley.

2 The original tip to Detective Cowie had, however, implicated Mosley in the Williams murder.

3 During cross-examination by Mosley’s counsel at the evidentiary hearing, Detective Hill conceded that Smith in fact had not confessed but had “denied a physical participation in the robbery.”

4 But see n. 5, injra.

5 In addition to the claim that Detective Hill’s questioning violated Miranda, Mosley contended that the statement was the product of an illegal arrest, that the statement was inadmissible because he had not been taken before a judicial officer without unnecessary delay, and that it had been obtained through trickery and promises of leniency. He argued that these circumstances, either independently or in combination, required the suppression of his incriminating statement.

6 The warnings must inform the person in custody “that he has a right to remain silent, that any statement he does make may be used as evidence against him, and that he has a right to the presence of an attorney, either retained or appointed.” 384 U. S., at 444.

7 The present case does not involve the procedures to be followed if the person in custody asks to consult with a lawyer, since Mosley made no such request at any time. Those procedures are detailed in the Miranda opinion as follows:

“If the individual states that he wants an attorney, the interrogation must cease until an attorney is present. At that time, the individual must have an opportunity to confer with the attorney and to have him present during any subsequent questioning. If the individual cannot obtain an attorney and he indicates that he wants one before speaking to police, they must respect his decision to remain silent.

“This does not mean, as some have suggested, that each police station must have a 'station house lawyer’ present at all times to advise prisoners. It does mean, however, that if police propose to interrogate a person they must make known to him that he is entitled to a lawyer and that if he cannot afford one, a lawyer will be provided for him prior to any interrogation. If authorities conclude that they will not provide counsel during a reasonable period of time in which investigation in the field is carried out, they may refrain from doing so without violating the person’s Fifth Amendment privilege so long as they do not question him during that .time.” Id., at 474.

8 The Court did state in a footnote:

“If an individual indicates his desire to remain silent, but has an attorney present, there may be some circumstances in which further questioning would be permissible. In the absence of evidence of overbearing, statements then made in the presence of counsel might be free of the compelling influence of the interrogation process and might fairly be construed as a waiver of the privilege for purposes of these statements.” Id., at 474 n. 44.

This footnote in the Miranda opinion is not relevant to the present case, since Mosley did not have an attorney present at the time he declined to answer Detective Cowie’s questions, and the officer did not continue to question Mosley but instead ceased the interrogation in compliance with Miranda’s dictates.

9 It is instructive to note that the vast majority of federal and state courts presented with the issue have concluded that the Miranda opinion does not create a per se proscription of any further interrogation once the person being questioned has indicated a desire to remain silent. See Hill v. Whealon, 490 F. 2d 629, 630, 635 (CA6 1974); United States v. Collins, 462 F. 2d 792, 802 (CA2 1972) (en banc); Jennings v. United States, 391 F. 2d 512, 515-516 (CA5 1968); United States v. Choice, 392 F. Supp. 460, 466-467 (ED Pa. 1975); McIntyre v. New York, 329 F. Supp. 9, 13-14 (EDNY 1971); People v. Naranjo, 181 Colo. 273, 277-278, 509 P. 2d 1235, 1237 (1973); People v. Pittman, 55 Ill. 2d 39, 54-56, 302 N. E. 2d 7, 16-17 (1973); State v. McClelland, 164 N. W. 2d 189, 192-196 (Iowa 1969); State v. Law, 214 Kan. 643, 647-649, 522 P. 2d 320, 324-325 (1974); Conway v. State, 7 Md. App. 400, 405-411, 256 A. 2d 178, 181-184 (1969); State v. O’Neill, 299 Minn. 60, 70-71, 216 N. W. 2d 822, 829 (1974); State v. Godfrey, 182 Neb. 451, 454-457, 155 N. W. 2d 438, 440-442 (1968); People v. Gary, 31 N. Y. 2d 68, 69-70, 286 N. E. 2d 263, 264 (1972); State v. Bishop, 272 N. C. 283, 296-297, 158 S. E. 2d 511, 520 (1968); Commonwealth v. Grandison, 449 Pa. 231, 233-234, 296 A. 2d 730, 731 (1972); State v. Robinson, 87 S. D. 375, 378, 209 N. W. 2d 374, 375-377 (1973); Hill v. State, 429 S. W. 2d 481, 486-487 (Tex. Crim. App. 1968); State v. Estrada, 63 Wis. 2d 476, 486-488, 217 N. W. 2d 359, 365-366 (1974). See also People v. Fioritto, 68 Cal. 2d 714, 717-720, 441 P. 2d 625, 626-628 (1968) (permitting the suspect but not the police to initiate further questioning).

Citation of the above cases does not imply a view of the merits of any particular decision.

10 The dissenting opinion asserts that Miranda established a requirement that once a person has indicated a desire to remain silent, questioning may be resumed only when counsel is present. Post, at 116-117. But clearly the Court in Miranda imposed no such requirement, for it distinguished between the procedural safeguards triggered by a request to remain silent and a request for an attorney and directed that “the interrogation must cease until an attorney is present” only “[i]f the individual states that he wants an attorney.” 384 U. S., at 474.

11 Detective Cowie gave the only testimony at the suppression hearing concerning the scope of Mosley’s earlier refusal to answer his questions:

“A. I think at that time he declined to answer whether he had been involved.

“Q. He declined to answer?

“A. Yes. Anything about the robberies.”

At the suppression hearing, Mosley did not in any way dispute Cowie’s testimony. Not until trial, after the judge had denied the motion to suppress the incriminating statement, did Mosley offer a somewhat different version of his earlier refusal to answer Detective Cowie’s questions. The briefs submitted by Mosley’s counsel to the Michigan Court of Appeals and to this Court accepted Detective Cowie’s account of the interrogation as correct, and the Michigan Court of Appeals decided the case on that factual premise. At oral argument before this Court, both counsel discussed the case solely in terms of Cowie’s description of the events.