The Second Circuit issued a published opinion today in a habeas case answering that question in the negative. And Musladin provided the answer.
The case is called Georgison v. Donelli, 05-5885-pr, available here. The panel was Miner, Wesley and Stanceu, a judge from the Court of International Trade. Stanceu wrote the opinion affirming the lower court's denial of habeas.
Petitioner was in prison upstate on a robbery conviction when investigators came and spoke to him about an unrelated case. No Miranda warnings were given and the investigators obtained an inculpatory statement.
Petitioner argued that his incarceration meant that he was per se in custody for Miranda purposes. He relied upon the Supreme Court decision in Mathis v. United States, 391 U.S. 1 (1968), in which the Court concluded that a defendant's constitutional rights were violated when a tax inspector obtained a statement from him while he was incarcerated without first giving Miranda warnings. Petitioner also relied on Estelle v. Smith, , which also held that an incarcerated habeas petitioner had been in custody.
The Second Circuit concluded that the Supreme Court had never clearly established the rule that incarceration meant per se in custody under Miranda. It distinguished Estelle v. Smith and said that it was not clear from Mathis whether it had established a per se rule. The court discussed a Supreme Court case which kind of rejected petitioner's per se approach and a one-judge dissent from denial of certiorari that stated that it was an open question whether the "bare fact" of incarceration was enough to trigger Miranda warnings. That dissent had also stated that the Court had yet to clarify what in custody meant in a prison setting.
Judge Stanceu concludes, "Because the per se rule urged by Georgison is not clearly established federal law, the state courts here did not unreasonably decline to apply it. See Carey v. Musladin, 549 U.S. 70, 77 (2006) (“Given the lack of holdings from this Court regarding the [issue in question] . . . it cannot be said that the state court ‘unreasonably applied clearly established Federal law.’” (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1))).
To its credit, the court did not end the inquiry there but goes on to see whether the state courts unreasonably applied the general "in custody" law. The court concluded that the facts show that petitioner was not in custody. The denial of habeas was affirmed.
I cannot decide whether I agree with this application of Musladin. It seems a little problematic too. I am not sure whether a Musladin question should be answered by relying so heavily on a single-judge dissent from a denial of certiorari. I haven't seen that before. It's not much of a precedent. And I get this funny feeling that the question was probably more clearly established than how it was presented in the opinion.
In any event, the end result is that the Musladin monster ate another petition.
Intermediate appellate courts in New York often cite People v. Alls,83 N.Y.2d 94 (1993), for the proposition that prisoners are not "in custody" for Miranda purposes, even when being interrogated by police officers about crimes committed outside the prison. However, Alls dealt with interrogation by correction officers about prison-related incidents. In Alls, the Court likened certain correction officer-inmate exchanges to "on-the-scene" exchanges between the police and free citizens, such as traffic and Terry stops, which do not require Miranda warnings. The Court of Appeals never suggested the Alls "cusody" test ("added constraint") applies to one-on-one police dominated questioning of inmates as part of criminal investigations. These interrogations are not analogous to traffic or Terry stops. They are analogous to stationhouse interrogations, which are quintessentially within the purview of Miranda.
A case argued in the U.S. Supreme Court in October, Maryland v. Shatzer, may provide some guidance on the applicability of Miranda to prison interrogations. There, the police sought to question Shatzer in prison and he invoked his right to counsel upon receving Miranda warnings. Almost three years later, different investigators returned to the prison and questioned Shatzer in connection with the same investigation. After a fresh set of Miranda warnings, Shatzer agreed to speak and made damaging admissions.
The issue before the Supreme Court is whether the rule of Edwards v. Arizona barred reinterrogation of Shatzer after he had invoked his right to counsel at the earlier interrogation. The State and the United States (as amicus curiae) conceded that Shatzer was "in custody" for Miranda purposes on both occasions.
Posted by: Al O'Connor | December 07, 2009 at 08:54 AM