Berghuis v. Thompkins, 560 U.S. 370 (2010), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that, unless and until a criminal suspect explicitly states that they are relying on their right to remain silent, their voluntary statements may be used in court and police may continue to question them. The mere act of remaining silent is not sufficient to imply the suspect has invoked their rights even when the suspect actually intended their silence to have that effect. Furthermore, a voluntary reply even after lengthy silence can be construed as waiving the right to remain silent..
The Court was split, 5–4. The dissent, authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, argued that Miranda v. Arizona and other previous cases had required the waiver of a constitutional right to be much clearer, especially because of the "compelling influence" that an interrogation causes after police have spent several hours pressuring a suspect.
Many considered Berghuis the latest in a line of cases eroding Miranda. At least one scholar argued that Berghuis effectively gutted Miranda.Charles Weisselberg and Stephanos Bibas, "The Right to Remain Silent", 159 U. Pa. L. Rev. PENNumbra 69 (2010), Available at: http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/facpubs/2181 (Retrieved May 2, 2016) The opinion is commonly criticized as giving police permission to compromise vulnerable citizens in interrogation and, in effect, making it easier for the police to work around the theoretical existence of those citizens' rights.
Background of the case Legal background Under U.S. law and with rare exceptions,Three examples of potential exceptions are: Grand jury witnesses may be given a grant of immunity and compelled to give testimony under oath. A grant of immunity removes the possibility of the jeopardy of self incrimination, and therefore removes the right to remain silent to avoid self incrimination. The right against self-incrimination does not prevent a self-regulatory organization (SRO), such as the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), from imposing otherwise valid sanctions when the privilege is validly asserted, since these organizations are generally not considered as state actors. In Raffel v. United States, 271 U.S. 494 (1926), the U.S. Supreme Court indicated that a criminal defendant who voluntarily testifies in his own behalf waives completely his privilege under the Fifth Amendment. ("The safeguards against self-incrimination are for the benefit of those who do not wish to become witnesses in their own behalf and not for those who do. There is a sound policy in requiring the accused who offers himself as a witness to do so without reservation") people (whether criminal suspects or defendants or not) have the right to remain silent as part of their right not to incriminate themselves under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Remaining silent is optional—they may speak or be silent as they wish. The Miranda warning concerns the duty of the police or other formal questioners to make sure that the suspect is aware they have that right prior to questioning, in case they want to be silent at some point or the suspect later pleads ignorance that they had the right (and would have relied upon it had they been aware). Miranda v. Arizona, , and related cases contemplate that a suspect might invoke their rights (make clear they wish to rely on them), waive their rights (make clear they do not wish to rely on them), or do neither of these. A number of cases such as the present one, refine Miranda by addressing when and at what point a suspect, who is aware that they have the right to remain silent, is said to have begun to rely on that right, as opposed to when they were aware of the right but were not choosing to rely on it.
Interrogation and conviction Police considered Van Chester Thompkins a suspect in a fatal shooting on January 10, 2000, in Southfield, Michigan. After advising Thompkins of his Miranda rights, police officers interrogated him. Thompkins did not state at any time that he wanted to rely on his right to remain silent, that he refused to talk to the police, or that he wanted an attorney. The court record suggested that he had been almost completely silent during the three-hour interrogation and the few sporadic comments he made had no bearing on the caseBerghuis, dissent, p.17 ("nearly silent for 2 hours and 45 minutes"). (police described it as "nearly a monologue"). Towards the end, detectives tried a "spiritual" approach to "appeal to his conscience and religious beliefs". The police asked Thompkins three questions: did he believe in God, did he pray to God, and did he pray to God to forgive him for shooting the victim. He answered "yes" to each of these.
Thompkins made a motion to suppress the statements, claiming that he had invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent by remaining silent, that he had not waived that right, and that his incriminating statements were involuntary. The trial court denied his motion, a jury found Thompkins guilty, and the court sentenced Thompkins to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Of note, there had been significant other evidence of guilt corroborating the conviction.Berghuis, p.19.
State court appeal and federal court habeas corpus proceedings Thompkins appealed his conviction on grounds that included suppression of his admission—that he had invoked and not waived his right to remain silent—and deficient representation related to improper jury instructions, but the Michigan Court of Appeals rejected Thompkins' Miranda claim. Thompkins then filed a writ of habeas corpus in federal District Court but it denied his request. However, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed the District Court's decision, holding that the state court was unreasonable in finding an implied waiver of Thompkins' right to remain silent.
Petition to the U.S. Supreme Court The state's petition to the Supreme Court said the questioning in the case had not been coercive, and the state offered the Court theories to support the idea that extended silence should not be construed as an invocation. For example, it said that initial reluctance to talk was not inherently a communication by the suspect to the officer that they were terminating the interview, which is what an exercise of the right to silence is. If the suspect was terminating the interview, then the suspect would not be able to hear any of the evidence against them before making a decision. In other words, the state asserted that requiring the suspect to explicitly invoke the right to silence was actually in the suspect's best interest.
Opposing the state's position, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and American Civil Liberties Union filed a joint Amicus Curiae brief that argued the police officers strategically chose not to ask Thompkins if he would willingly waive his Miranda rights because that would have invited him to do so explicitly. In their view, a so-called "waiver-first" rule where the police must ask for a waiver was "the most effective way to avoid the very evil that [Miranda] sought to address, namely that the highly coercive and intimidating custodial environment compels unwilling suspects to speak." They warned that, if the Court embraced a so-called "waiver by confession" rule, Miranda would be directly undermined because the coercive effect of hours of pressure in the interrogation environment could be ignored by courts just because the police heard what they wanted to hear.
The Court's decision
On June 1, 2010, by a vote of 5–4, the Supreme Court reversed the Sixth Circuit's decision. In the Opinion of the Court, written by Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court ruled that Thompkins's silence during the interrogation did not invoke his right to remain silent and that he had waived his right to remain silent when he knowingly and voluntarily made a statement to police.
The Court quickly dismissed Thompkins's ineffective assistance of counsel claim with the test from Strickland v. Washington: Thompkins needed to show that his lawyer's performance was objectively deficient and that he was prejudiced by the result. The Court said that it was "doubtful" that the lawyer's performance was objectively deficient because the lawyer neglected to request a jury instruction informing the jury of the acquittal of Thompkins's alleged accomplice. But, even if it had been deficient, the Court said there was enough other evidence of guilt corroborating the conviction that it was unlikely the jury instruction would have made a difference, so there was no prejudice..
Majority opinion The Court reasoned as follows on Thompkins' various arguments:
There was no good reason why the standard for invoking the Miranda right to remain silent and the Miranda right to counsel should differ because both require the interrogation to end when the right is explicitly invoked. Making either of these statements would have ended the questions but Thompkins made neither of them.Berghuis, p.10.
The Court further concluded (in line with previous cases such as Davis v. United States) that there was good reason why invoking Miranda rights should require an unambiguous act of the accused and that courts should not look for implied invocations in the words of actions of the accused. These reasons included certainty for the police, the prosecutors, and the accused. The Court also cited social benefits from law enforcement.
The Court then considered whether the accused had taken action that waived those rights. Waiver must be a free choice with full awareness (Moran v. Burbine).Citing Moran v. Burbine, , 421 Miranda v. Arizona (the Miranda ruling) states that "[A] heavy burden rests on the government to demonstrate that the defendant knowingly and intelligently waived his privilege against self-incrimination and his right to retained or appointed counsel."The "heavy burden" had been clarified by past cases as "the burden to establish waiver by a preponderance of the evidence"—citing Colorado v. Connelly, , 168. It was noted that the accused had read and expressed understanding of the rights, and had them read aloud, he had not pleaded lack of understanding, was given time, and therefore knew his rights. Specifically, having read the 5th warning ("you have the right to decide at any time before or during questioning to use your right to remain silent and your right to talk with a lawyer while you are being questioned") he was aware this right was enduring and could be applied at any time in the questioning if he chose, and the police would have to honor the invocation if he did so.Citing Mosley, , 103, quoting Miranda at 474, 479 The Court observed that "[p]olice are not required to rewarn suspects from time to time". That a question is linked to religious beliefs does not cause the reply to be "involuntary". The accused, understanding his rights and that they were capable of invocation at any point, had not chosen to invoke them.
The custodial interview ended about 15 minutes after the following. "Q: Do you believe in God. A: Yes Q: Do you pray to God? A: Yes Q: Do you pray to God to forgive you for shooting that boy down? A: Yes." {Berghuis v. Thompkins, 560 U.S. 370, 376, 130 S. Ct. 2250, 2257 L. Ed. 2d. 1098 (2010).}