United States v. Gouveia

467 U.S. 180, 104 S. Ct. 2292, 81 L. Ed. 2d 146, 1984 U.S. LEXIS 91, 52 U.S.L.W. 4659

Opinions

Justice Rehnquist

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Respondents William Gouveia, Robert Ramirez, Adolpho Reynoso, and Philip Segura were convicted of murdering a fellow inmate at a federal prison in Lompoc, Cal. Respondents Robert Mills and Richard Pierce were convicted of a later murder of another inmate at the same institution. Prison officials placed each respondent in administrative detention shortly after the murders, and they remained there for an extended period of time before they were eventually indicted on criminal charges. On appeal of respondents’ convictions, the en banc Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held by divided vote that they had a Sixth Amendment right to an attorney during the period in which they were held in administrative detention before the return of indictments against them, and that because they had been denied that right, their convictions had to be overturned and their indictments dismissed. 704 F. 2d 1116 (1983). We granted cer-tiorari to review the Court of Appeals’ novel application of our Sixth Amendment precedents, 464 U. S. 913 (1983), and we now reverse.

On November 11, 1978, Thomas Trejo, an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Lompoc, Cal., was found dead from 45 stab wounds in the chest. Prison officials and agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation began independent investigations of the murder. Prison officials immediately suspected respondents Reynoso and Gouveia and placed them in the Administrative Detention Unit (ADU) at Lompoc. They were released back into the general prison population on November 22, 1978, but after officials obtained further information about the murder, on December 4, 1978, they returned Reynoso and Gouveia to the ADU, and placed respondents Segura and Ramirez in the ADU as well. Later in December, prison officials held disciplinary hearings, determined that all four respondents had participated in the murder of inmate Trejo, and ordered their continued confinement in the ADU. While in the ADU, respondents were separated from the general prison population and confined to individual cells. Although their participation in various prison programs was curtailed, they were still allowed regular visitation rights, exercise periods, access to legal materials, and unmonitored phone calls. 704 F. 2d, at 1118; see generally 28 CFR §§541.19, 541.20(d) (1983). Respondents remained in the ADU without appointed counsel for approximately 19 months. On June 17, 1980, a federal grand jury returned an indictment against respondents on charges of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in violation of 18 U. S. C. §§1111 and 1117 respectively. On July 14, 1980, respondents were arraigned in federal court, at which time a Federal Magistrate appointed counsel for them.

Before trial respondents filed a motion to dismiss their indictments, arguing that the delay of approximately 19 months between the commission of the crime and the return of the indictments violated their due process rights under the Fifth Amendment or, alternatively, their Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial, and that their confinement in the ADU without appointment of counsel during that period violated their Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The District Court for the Central District of California denied their motion, and respondents proceeded to trial. Their first trial, which lasted approximately four weeks, ended in a mistrial. On retrial, respondents were convicted on both counts and were sentenced to consecutive life and 99-year terms of imprisonment.

The scenario is much the same in the case of Mills and Pierce. Inmate Thomas Hall was stabbed to death at Lom-poc on August 22, 1979. Immediately afterwards Mills and Pierce were examined by a prison doctor and questioned by FBI agents regarding the murder. Prison officials suspected them of involvement in the murder and placed them in the ADU pending further investigation. On September 13, 1979, prison officials conducted a disciplinary hearing, concluded that respondents had murdered inmate Hall, and ordered their continued confinement in the ADU where they remained for the next eight months. On March 27, 1980, a federal grand jury returned an indictment against Mills and Pierce on charges of first-degree murder in violation of 18 U. S. C. §1111 and of conveyance of a weapon in prison in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 1792, and against Pierce on a charge of assault in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 113(c). At the time of their arraignment on April 21, 1980, Mills and Pierce were appointed counsel and were released from the ADU.

Before trial Mills and Pierce also filed a motion to dismiss their indictments, alleging that the 8-month preindictment delay violated their Fifth Amendment due process rights and their Sixth Amendment speedy trial right, and that their confinement without counsel for that period violated their Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The District Court for the Central District of California granted the motion to dismiss. A panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded for trial, holding that respondents’ Sixth Amendment rights were not triggered during their administrative segregation because they had not yet been arrested and accused, and that respondents had made an insufficient showing of actual prejudice from the preindictment delay so as to justify dismissal of the indictments on due process grounds. United States v. Mills, 641 F. 2d 785, cert. denied, 454 U. S. 902 (1981). Respondents Mills and Pierce were then convicted on all counts and sentenced to life imprisonment.

The Court of Appeals, proceeding en banc, consolidated the appeals of all six respondents and addressed only the issue of whether the Sixth Amendment requires the appointment of counsel before indictment for indigent inmates confined in administrative detention while being investigated for criminal activities. 704 F. 2d, at 1119.¹ The Court of Appeals majority recognized that a plurality of this Court had concluded in Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U. S. 682 (1972), that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel attaches only when formal judicial proceedings are initiated against an individual by way of indictment, information, arraignment, or preliminary hearing. The majority recognized that no such proceedings had been initiated against respondents during the period of time for which they asserted a right to appointed counsel in this case.

The majority went on to note, however, that Kirby is not a prison case and that the point at which the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is triggered is different in the prosecution of prison crimes. 704 F. 2d, at 1120. In so holding the majority analogized to Sixth Amendment speedy trial cases, where this Court has held that the Sixth Amendment speedy trial right is triggered when an individual is arrested and held to answer criminal charges. See United States v. Marion, 404 U. S. 307, 320 (1971). The en banc majority reasoned that just as such an arrest constitutes an “accusation” for Sixth Amendment speedy trial purposes, the administrative detention of an inmate for more than 90 days because of a pending felony investigation constitutes an “accusation” for Sixth Amendment right to counsel purposes.² Thus, according to the Court of Appeals’ holding, an indigent inmate isolated in administrative detention while the subject of a felony investigation must be afforded counsel after 90 days, or else be released back into the prison population, in order to ensure that he or his lawyer will be able to take preindictment investigatory steps to preserve his defense at trial. 704 F. 2d, at 1124.

Applying its test to the facts of this case, the Court of Appeals majority held that each respondent had been denied his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. It concluded that the record showed that each respondent had been held in administrative detention longer than 90 days, that each had been held at least in part because of a pending felony investigation,³ and that each had requested and had been denied counsel during his confinement in the ADU. The majority went on to conclude that the appropriate remedy for redressing the Sixth Amendment violations in this case was reversal of respondents’ convictions and dismissal of the indictments against them.⁴

Five judges dissented from the en banc majority’s Sixth Amendment holding. Relying on Kirby v. Illinois, supra, the dissent concluded that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is triggered by the initiation of formal criminal proceedings even in the prison context, and that the majority’s conclusion to the contrary shows a misunderstanding of the purpose of the counsel guarantee. 704 F. 2d, at 1127-1129. We agree with the dissenting judges’ application of our precedents to this situation, and, accordingly, we reverse the en banc majority’s holding that respondents had a Sixth Amendment right to the appointment of counsel during their preindictment segregation.

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.” As the Court of Appeals majority noted, our cases have long recognized that the right to counsel attaches only at or after the initiation of adversary judicial proceedings against the defendant. In Kirby v. Illinois, supra, a plurality of the Court summarized our prior cases as follows:

“In a line of constitutional cases in this Court stemming back to the Court’s landmark opinion in Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, it has been firmly established that a person’s Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment right to counsel attaches only at or after the time that adversary judicial proceedings have been initiated against him. See Powell v. Alabama, supra; Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458; Hamilton v. Alabama, 368 U. S. 52; Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335; White v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 59; Massiah v. United States, 377 U. S. 201; United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218; Gilbert v. California, 388 U. S. 263; Coleman v. Alabama, 399 U. S. 1.

. . [Wjhile members of the Court have differed as to the existence of the right to counsel in the contexts of some of the above cases, all of those cases have involved points of time at or after the initiation of adversary judicial criminal proceedings — whether by way of formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information, or arraignment.” Id., at 688-689 (emphasis in original).

The view that the right to counsel does not attach until the initiation of adversary judicial proceedings has been confirmed by this Court in cases subsequent to Kirby. See Estelle v. Smith, 451 U. S. 454, 469-470 (1981); Moore v. Illinois, 434 U. S. 220, 226-227 (1977); Brewer v. Williams, 430 U. S. 387, 398-399 (1977); United States v. Mandujano, 425 U. S. 564, 581 (1976) (opinion of Burger, C. J.).⁵

That interpretation of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is consistent not only with the literal language of the Amendment, which requires the existence of both a “criminal prosecutio[n]” and an “accused,” but also with the purposes which we have recognized that the right to counsel serves. We have recognized that the “core purpose” of the counsel guarantee is to assure aid at trial, “when the accused [is] confronted with both the intricacies of the law and the advocacy of the public prosecutor.” United States v. Ash, 413 U. S. 300, 309 (1973). Indeed the right to counsel

“embodies a realistic recognition of the obvious truth that the average defendant does not have the professional legal skill to protect himself when brought before a tribunal with power to take his life or liberty, wherein the prosecution is presented by experienced and learned counsel.” Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 462-463 (1938).

Although we have extended an accused’s right to counsel to certain “critical” pretrial proceedings, United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218 (1967), we have done so recognizing that at those proceedings, “the accused [is] confronted, just as at trial, by the procedural system, or by his expert adversary, or by both,” United States v. Ash, supra, at 310, in a situation where the results of the confrontation “might well settle the accused’s fate and reduce the trial itself to a mere formality.” United States v. Wade, supra, at 224.

Thus, given the plain language of the Amendment and its purpose of protecting the unaided layman at critical confrontations with his adversary, our conclusion that the right to counsel attaches at the initiation of adversary judicial criminal proceedings “is far from a mere formalism.” Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U. S., at 689. It is only at that time “that the government has committed itself to prosecute, and only then that the adverse positions of government and defendant have solidified. It is then that a defendant finds himself faced with the prosecutorial forces of organized society, and immersed in the intricacies of substantive and procedural criminal law.” Ibid.

The Court of Appeals departed from our consistent interpretation of the Sixth Amendment in these cases, and in so doing, fundamentally misconceived the nature of the right to counsel guarantee. We agree with the dissent that the majority’s analogy to Sixth Amendment speedy trial cases is inapt. Our speedy trial cases hold that that Sixth Amendment right may attach before an indictment and as early as the time of “arrest and holding to answer a criminal charge,” United States v. MacDonald, 456 U. S. 1, 6-7 (1982); United States v. Lovasco, 431 U. S. 783, 788-789 (1977); Dillingham v. United States, 423 U. S. 64 (1975) (per curiam); United States v. Marion, 404 U. S., at 320, but we have never held that the right to counsel attaches at the time of arrest. This difference is readily explainable, given the fact that the speedy trial right and the right to counsel protect different interests. While the right to counsel exists to protect the accused during trial-type confrontations with the prosecutor, the speedy trial right exists primarily to protect an individual’s liberty interest, “to minimize the possibility of lengthy incarceration prior to trial, to reduce the lesser, but nevertheless substantial, impairment of liberty imposed on an accused while released on bail, and to shorten the disruption of life caused by arrest and the presence of unresolved criminal charges.” United States v. MacDonald, supra, at 8. See Barker v. Wingo, 407 U. S. 514, 532-533 (1972); United States v. Marion, supra, at 320. Thus, the majority’s attempt to draw an analogy between an arrest and an inmate’s administrative detention pending investigation may have some relevance in analyzing when the speedy trial right attaches in this context, but it is not relevant to a proper determination of when the right to counsel attaches.⁶

The Court of Appeals’ holding also confuses the purpose of the right to counsel with purposes that are served by the Fifth Amendment due process guarantee and the statutes of limitations applicable to the particular crime being investigated. The majority concludes that the extension of the right to counsel to this prison context is necessary to protect against the possibility that the Government may delay the initiation of formal charges, thus delaying the appointment of counsel, while it develops its case against the isolated and unaided inmate. 704 F. 2d, at 1122. By the time the Government decides to bring charges, the majority felt, witnesses’ memories could have dimmed, alibi witnesses could have been transferred to other facilities, and physical evidence could have deteriorated. Id., at 1126.

Those concerns, while certainly legitimate ones, are simply not concerns implicating the right to counsel, and we reaffirm that the mere “possibility of prejudice [to a defendant resulting from the passage of time] ... is not itself sufficient reason to wrench the Sixth Amendment from its proper context.” United States v. Marion, supra, at 321-322. In holding that the appointment of counsel or the release of the inmate from segregation could remedy its concerns, the Court of Appeals must have concluded, quite illogically we believe, that the presence of the inmate in the general prison population or the appointment of a lawyer could somehow prevent the deterioration of physical evidence, or that the inmate or his counsel could begin an effective investigation of the crime within the restricted prison walls before even being able to discover the nature of the Government’s case. Of course, both inside and outside the prison, it may well be true that in some cases preindictment investigation could help a defendant prepare a better defense. But, as we have noted, our cases have never suggested that the purpose of the right to counsel is to provide a defendant with a preindictment private investigator, and we see no reason to adopt that novel interpretation of the right to counsel in this case.

Thus, at bottom, the majority’s concern is that because an inmáte suspected of a crime is already in prison, the prosecution may have little incentive promptly to bring formal charges against him, and that the resulting preindictment delay may be particularly prejudicial to the inmate, given the problems inherent in investigating prison crimes, such as the transient nature of the prison population and the general reluctance of inmates to cooperate. But applicable statutes of limitations protect against the prosecution’s bringing stale criminal charges against any defendant, United States v. Lovasco, supra, at 788-789; United States v. Marion, supra, at 322, and, beyond that protection, the Fifth Amendment requires the dismissal of an indictment, even if it is brought within the statute of limitations, if the defendant can prove that the Government’s delay in bringing the indictment was a deliberate device to gain an advantage over him and that it caused him actual prejudice in presenting his defense. United States v. Lovasco, supra, at 789-790; United States v. Marion, supra, at 324.⁷ Those protections apply to criminal defendants within and without the prison walls, and we decline to depart from our traditional interpretation of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel in order to provide additional protections for respondents here.

We conclude that the Court of Appeals was wrong in holding that respondents were constitutionally entitled to the appointment of counsel while they were in administrative segregation and before any adversary judicial proceedings had been initiated against them. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

1 The narrow issue before the Court of Appeals and before us today is whether the Sixth Amendment requires the appointment of counsel for indigent inmates in respondents’ situation. Respondents have not contended that they were denied the opportunity to retain their own private counsel while they were in administrative segregation. 704 F. 2d, at 1119. As the Court of Appeals noted, respondents had visitation privileges and the opportunity to make unmonitored phone calls to attorneys while in the ADU. Ibid. See 28 CFR §§ 541.19(c)(10), 541.20(d) (1983). Respondents also have not asserted a Sixth Amendment ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim nor have they questioned our holding in Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U. S. 539, 570 (1974), that inmates have no right to retained or appointed counsel at prison disciplinary proceedings. See Baxter v. Palmigiano, 425 U. S. 308, 315 (1976).

2 The majority arrived at the 90-day figure based on its own interpretation of the current federal prison regulations as allowing detention for up to 90 days for disciplinary reasons. See 28 CFR § 641.20(c) (1983).

3 Relying on his interpretation of current prison regulations, the Solicitor General vehemently argues that, whatever additional reasons legitimately may have contributed to the decision to confine respondents in the ADU, the primary reason for their confinement was to ensure the security of the institution. Thus he argues that that security-related detention cannot be equated with an arrest or accusation for Sixth Amendment purposes. Brief for United States 23-27; Tr. of Oral Arg. 9-12. But our holding today makes the reason for the detention irrelevant for purposes of the only issue before us, the point at which the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is triggered. Respondents have not challenged “the legitimacy of administrative detention in general or its appropriateness” in their particular cases. 704 F. 2d, at 1121.

4 The Solicitor General argues here that dismissal of the indictments is an inappropriate remedy absent a showing of actual and specific prejudice to respondents and that they have not made that showing in this case. Brief for United States 44-60. Given our holding on the substantive Sixth Amendment issue, however, we have no occasion to address the remedy question.

5 The only arguable deviations from that consistent line of cases are Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), and Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U. S. 478 (1964). Although there may be some language to the contrary in United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218 (1967), we have made clear that we required counsel in Miranda and Escobedo in order to protect the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination rather than to vindicate the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. See Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U. S. 291, 300, n. 4 (1980); Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U. S., at 689; Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U. S. 719, 729-730 (1966).

6 Of course we express no view as to when the Sixth Amendment speedy-trial right attaches in this context because that issue is not before us. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, like several other Circuits, see, e. g., United States v. Daniels, 698 P. 2d 221, 223 (CA4 1983); United States v. Blevins, 593 F. 2d 646, 647 (CA5 1979) (per curiam), however, has held that the segregation of an inmate from the general population pending criminal charges does not constitute an “arrest” for purposes of the speedy trial right. United States v. Clardy, 540 F. 2d 439, 441, cert. denied, 429 U. S. 963 (1976). Given its own Clardy holding, the Court of Appeals’ analogy here seems somewhat strained.

7 We have of course rejected the arguments that prosecutors are constitutionally obligated to file charges against a suspect as soon as they have probable cause but before they believe that they can establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, United States v. Lovasco, 431 U. S., at 791, and that prosecutors must file charges as soon as they marshal enough evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt but before their investigations are complete. Id., at 792-795.