Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201 (1964), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution does not allow the government to elicit statements from a person, without their attorney present, after their Sixth Amendment right to counsel is enlivened..
Case
Facts In Massiah, the defendant had been indicted on a federal narcotics charge. He retained a lawyer, pleaded not guilty, and was released on bail. A co-defendant, after deciding to cooperate with the government, invited Massiah to sit in his car and discuss the crime he was indicted on, during which the government listened in via a radio transmitter. During the conversation, Massiah made several incriminating statements, and those statements were introduced at trial to be used against him.
Decision Massiah appealed his conviction, which was affirmed in part by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed, holding that the statements made by the defendant outside the presence of his attorney must be suppressed.
Massiah rule The Massiah rule applies to the use of testimonial evidence in criminal proceedings deliberately elicited by the police from a defendant after formal charges have been filed. The events that trigger the Sixth Amendment safeguards under Massiah are (1) the commencement of adversarial criminal proceedings and (2) deliberate elicitation of information from the defendant by governmental agents.
The Sixth Amendment guarantees a defendant a right to counsel in all criminal prosecutions. The purposes of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel are to protect a defendant's right to a fair trial and to assure that our adversarial system of justice functions properly by providing competent counsel as an advocate for the defendant in his contest against the “prosecutorial forces” of the state.
The Sixth Amendment right “attaches” once the government has committed itself to the prosecution of the case by the initiation of adversarial judicial proceedings "by way of formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information or arraignment,".. "In a line of constitutional cases in this Court stemming back to the Court's landmark opinion in , 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; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ." ". . . [W]hile 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." Determining whether a particular event or proceeding constitutes the commencement of adversarial criminal proceedings requires both an examination of the rules of criminal procedure for the jurisdiction in which the crime is charged and the Supreme Court cases dealing with the issue of when formal prosecution begins.; see also . In Maine v. Moulton the court stated “By its very terms, it becomes applicable only when the government's role shifts from investigation to accusation. For it is only then that the assistance of one versed in the "intricacies . . . of law," ibid., is needed to assure that the prosecution's case encounters "the crucible of meaningful adversarial testing." The Sixth Amendment right to counsel does not attach until such time as the "government has committed itself to prosecute, and . . . the adverse positions of government and defendant have solidified ...'" . Once adversarial criminal proceedings commence the right to counsel applies to all critical stages of the prosecution and investigation. A critical stage is "any stage of the prosecution, formal or informal, in court or out, where counsel's absence might derogate from the accused's right to a fair trial."; see also Under the critical stage analysis, virtually every phase of the criminal trial is a critical stage. Additionally courts have generally held that pretrial hearings regarding conditions of pretrial release and suppression of evidence are considered critical stages. On the other hand courts have generally held that certain pre-trial post accusation investigative procedures are not critical stages. Analysis of fingerprints, blood samples, clothing, hair, handwriting, and voice samples have all been ruled to be noncritical stages. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, (2001)
Government attempts to obtain incriminating statement related to the offense charged from the defendant by overt interrogation or surreptitious means is a critical stage and any information thus obtained is subject to suppression unless the government can show that an attorney was present or the defendant knowingly, voluntarily and intelligently waived his right to counsel. ("That the incriminating statements were elicited surreptitiously in the Massiah case, and otherwise here, is constitutionally irrelevant. See ibid.; ; United States v. Crisp, 435 F.2d 354, 358 (CA7)").
Deliberate elicitation is defined as the intentional creation of circumstances by government agents that are likely to produce incriminating information from the defendant.. Clearly express questioning (interrogation) would qualify but the concept also extends to surreptitious attempts to acquire information from the defendant through the use of undercover agents or paid informants.Massiah does not prohibit the government's use of a cellmate as a "silent listening post" - a person who is simply placed in a position to hear any incriminating statements the defendant might make about the charged offense but who does not do anything to coax or induce the defendant to talk about the charged crime. .
Massiah rule versus Miranda rule The definition of "deliberate elicitation" is not the same as the definition of "interrogation" under the Miranda rule established in Miranda v. Arizona. Miranda interrogation includes express questioning and any actions or statements that an officer would reasonably foresee as likely to cause an incriminating response. Massiah applies to express questioning and any attempt to deliberately and intentionally obtain incriminating information from the defendant regarding the crime charged. The difference is purposeful creation of an environment likely to produce incriminating information (Massiah) and action likely to induce an incriminating response even if that was not the officer's purpose or intent (Miranda).
The Sixth Amendment right to counsel is offense specific—the right only applies to post commencement attempts to obtain information relating to the crime charged.. Lower federal courts has extended the Sixth Amendment right to counsel to factually related offenses. In Texas v. Cobb, the Supreme Court made clear that the right to counsel applied only to the crime charged and did not apply to attempts to gather information about "other offenses 'closely related factually' to the charged offense." . The right does not extend to uncharged offenses even those that are factually related to the charged crime..
Waiver As noted, information obtained in violation of the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel is subject to suppression unless the government can establish that the defendant waived his right to counsel. The waiver must be knowing, intelligent and voluntary.. A valid Miranda waiver operates as a waiver of Sixth Amendment right.
Massiah vs. Miranda
Massiah and the voluntariness standard
The Massiah rule is also to be contrasted with the voluntariness standard of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.The leading case is . The voluntariness standard applies to all police interrogations regardless of the custodial status of the suspect and regardless of whether the suspect has been formally charged. The remedy for a violation of the standard is complete suppression of the statement and any evidence derived from the statement. The statement cannot be used as either substantive evidence of guilt or to impeach the defendant's testimony.Originally Miranda was regarded as a “prophylactic” rule - the rule itself was not a constitutional right but a "judicially–created enforcement mechanism" devised to protect the underlying constitutional rights. In , the Court "constitutionalized" the Miranda rule - although the decision did not perforce change the rule concerning the use of a Miranda-defective statement for impeachment purposes. The reason for the strictness is the common law's aversion to the use of coerced confessions because of their inherent unreliability. Further the rights to be free from coerced confession cannot be waived nor is it necessary that the victim of coercive police conduct assert his right. In considering the voluntariness standard one must consider the Supreme Court's decision in Colorado v. Connelly.. Although federal courts' application of the Connelly rule has been inconsistent and state courts have often failed to appreciate the consequences of the case, Connelly clearly marked a significant change in the application of the voluntariness standard. Before Connelly the test was whether the confession was voluntary considering the totality of the circumstances.See ; ("Considering the totality of these circumstances, we do not think it credible that petitioner's statements were the product of his free and rational choice"); ("If [a defendant's will was overborne], the confession cannot be deemed `the product of a rational intellect and a free will"') "Voluntary" carried its everyday meaning - the confession had to be a product of the exercise of the defendant's free will rather than police coercion.See, e.g., ("[A]n extrajudicial confession, if it was to be offered in evidence against a man, must be the product of his own free choice") After Connelly the totality of circumstances test is not even triggered unless the defendant can show coercive police conduct.Bloom & Brodin, Criminal Procedure (Aspen 1996) at 247. Questions of free will and rational decision making are irrelevant to a due process claim unless police misconduct existed and a causal connection can be shown between the misconduct and the confession.Bloom & Brodin, Criminal Procedure (Aspen 1996)
See also McDade Amendment Miranda warning Miranda v. Arizona List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 377
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