Missouri v. Seibert: Difference between revisions

Missouri v. Seibert
Missouri v. Seibert
	Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 9, 2003; Decided June 28, 2004
Full case name	Missouri, Petitioner v. Patrice Seibert
Citations	542 U.S. 600 (more) 124 S. Ct. 2601; 159 L. Ed. 2d 643; 2004 U.S. LEXIS 4578; 72 U.S.L.W. 4634; 2004 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 476
Case history
Prior	Defendant convicted of second-degree murder, Circuit Court, Pulaski County; affirmed, State v. Seibert, 2002 WL 114804 (Mo. App. S.D.); reversed and remanded for a new trial, State v. Seibert, 93 S.W.3d 700 (Mo. 2002); cert. granted, Missouri v. Seibert, 538 U.S. 1031 (2004).
Holding
	Missouri's practice of interrogating suspects without reading them a Miranda warning, then reading them a Miranda warning and asking them to repeat their confession is unconstitutional.
Court membership
	Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor; Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy; David Souter · Clarence Thomas; Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer
Case opinions
Plurality	Souter, joined by Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer
Concurrence	Breyer
Concurrence	Kennedy (in judgment)
Dissent	O’Connor, joined by Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas
Laws applied
	U.S. Const. amends. V, XIV

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Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600 (2004), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that struck down the police practice of first obtaining an inadmissible confession without giving Miranda warnings, then issuing the warnings, and then obtaining a second confession. Justice David Souter announced the judgment of the Court and wrote for a plurality of four justices that the second confession was admissible only if the intermediate Miranda warnings were "effective enough to accomplish their object." Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in a concurring opinion that the second confession should be inadmissible only if "the two-step interrogation technique was used in a calculated way to undermine the Miranda warning."

Background

Patrice Seibert, a suspect in a fatal arson, was arrested and taken to the police station. There, a police officer decided to interrogate her using a method he had been taught: to question the suspect, obtain a confession, then give Miranda warnings and repeat the questioning until the confession was obtained again. Accordingly, Seibert was not informed of her Miranda rights before the interrogation began. After about 40 minutes of questioning, Seibert made an incriminating statement. She was given a 20-minute break. When the questioning resumed, she was given her Miranda warnings, and reminded of what she had admitted before the break. She then repeated her confession.

The trial court (Missouri Circuit Court) suppressed the first statement because it was given before the Miranda warnings, but admitted the second. Seibert was convicted of second-degree murder. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a split among the Circuit Courts of Appeal on this issue.

Plurality opinion

Souter, writing for the plurality, focused on the actual effectiveness of Miranda warnings given after an earlier unwarned confession. Just giving the warnings is not necessarily good enough. Instead, a court must ask, "Could the warnings effectively advise the suspect that he had a real choice about giving an admissible statement at that juncture? Could they reasonably convey that he could choose to stop talking even if he had talked earlier?"

The plurality opinion gives some guidance on when an intermediate warning should be considered to be effective. Such a warning is likely to mislead a defendant about his rights when it is made "in the midst of coordinated and continuing interrogation." Courts should therefore consider "the completeness and detail of the questions and answers in the first round of interrogation, the overlapping content of the two statements, the timing and setting of the first and the second, the continuity of police personnel, and the degree to which the interrogator's questions treated the second round as continuous with the first."

Concurrences

Justice Breyer concurred. He set forth a different test for whether the second confession should be admissible: "Courts should exclude the 'fruit' of the initial unwarned questioning unless the failure to warn was in good faith." The term "fruit" refers to the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine, which provides that in criminal trials, courts may not admit evidence obtained as an indirect result of a search that violated the Fourth Amendment. Justice Breyer's proposed rule would extend that doctrine to evidence obtained as an indirect result of an interrogation that violated the Fifth Amendment. Although this test was different from Justice Souter's, Breyer also joined with the Souter's plurality opinion because he thought that the two tests would yield the same result in practice.

Justice Kennedy also concurred, and proposed yet another test. He wrote that he "would apply a narrower test applicable only in the infrequent case, such as we have here, in which the two-step interrogation technique was used in a calculated way to undermine the Miranda warning." If a two-step procedure was deliberately used, the subsequent statement would be inadmissible unless the police "cured" the problem by taking measures that would enable the suspect to distinguish the first interrogation from the second "and appreciate that the interrogation has taken a new turn." Kennedy suggested that a long break between the two interrogations would usually be sufficient, as would an explanation to the suspect that the first statement would probably be inadmissible in court.

Dissent

Justice O'Connor wrote for the dissent. She criticized the majority for not being faithful to the Court's earlier opinions involving two-stage interrogations, especially Oregon v. Elstad, a 1985 case involving a two-stage interrogation. The dissent stated that under the precedent of Elstad, it did not matter whether the police failed to give Miranda warnings before the first confession, so long as the confession was not coerced. Even if the first confession were coerced, "the court must examine whether the taint dissipated through the passing of time or a change in circumstances." To make that determination, O'Connor would have courts look to many of the same factual considerations identified by the plurality: "the time that passes between confessions, the change in place of interrogations, and the change in identity of the interrogators."

The dissent would thus have allowed police to continue to use the question-first, warn-later approach, so long as they could show that the first confession was voluntary and that the "taint" of the first confession had worn off.

Effect

Seibert was a split decision. The general rule is that when there is no majority opinion in a Supreme Court case, the narrowest rationale agreed upon by at least five Justices controls. But lower courts have disagreed about what that rationale is in Seibert: some have adopted the "effects" test from the plurality opinion; others have adopted the "intent" test from Kennedy's opinion. As Gerald Uelmen has written, "The fractured opinions" in Seibert "have left lower courts in limbo." Midstream Miranda Warnings After Seibert, Champion, July, 2005.

According to Justice Souter's opinion, the two-step interrogation practice was becoming increasingly popular among police departments. Given the confusion about Seibert's meaning, it remains to be seen whether that changes.

In State v. O'Neill, 936 A.2d 438, 193 N.J. 148 (2007), the New Jersey Supreme court determined that based on New Jersey's greater protections than the US Constitution, that question first, mirandize later was not constitutional. While an "entirety of the circumstances" test still applies, O'Neill essentially held that the test is failed by this particular interrogation process.^[1]

References

^ "State v. O'neill".

External links

Works related to Missouri v. Seibert at Wikisource
Text of Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600 (2004) is available from: Findlaw Justia Oyez (oral argument audio)

[1] "State v. O'neill".

[1]

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
+{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2023}}
-{{SCOTUSCase
+{{Infobox SCOTUS case
   |Litigants=Missouri v. Seibert
   |ArgueDate=December 9
@@ Line 8: / Line 9: @@
   |USVol=542
   |USPage=600
-  |Citation=124 S. Ct. 2601; 159 L. Ed. 2d 643; 2004 U.S. LEXIS 4578; 72 U.S.L.W. 4634; 2004 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 476
+  |ParallelCitations=124 S. Ct. 2601; 159 [[L. Ed. 2d]] 643; 2004 [[U.S. LEXIS]] 4578; 72 U.S.L.W. 4634; 2004 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 476
-  |Prior=Defendant convicted of second-degree murder, [[Missouri Circuit Court|Circuit Court, Pulaski County]]; affirmed, ''State v. Seibert'', 2002 WL 114804 (Mo. App. S.D.); reversed and remanded for a new trial, ''State v. Seibert'', 93 S.W.3d 700 (Mo. 2002); certiorari granted, ''Missouri v. Seibert'', 538 U.S. 1031 (2003)
+  |Prior=Defendant convicted of second-degree murder, [[Missouri Circuit Court|Circuit Court]], [[Pulaski County, Missouri|Pulaski County]]; affirmed, ''State v. Seibert'', 2002 WL 114804 (Mo. App. S.D.); reversed and remanded for a new trial, ''State v. Seibert'', 93 S.W.3d 700 (Mo. 2002); [[certiorari|cert.]] granted, ''Missouri v. Seibert'', {{ussc|538|1031|2004|el=no}}.
   |Subsequent=
   |Holding=Missouri's practice of interrogating suspects without reading them a [[Miranda warning|''Miranda'' warning]], then reading them a ''Miranda'' warning and asking them to repeat their confession is unconstitutional.
-  |SCOTUS=1994-2005
   |Plurality=Souter
   |JoinPlurality=Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer
   |Concurrence=Breyer
-  |Concurrence2=Kennedy
+  |Concurrence2=Kennedy (in judgment)
   |Dissent=O’Connor
   |JoinDissent=Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas
   |LawsApplied=[[Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution|U.S. Const. amends. V]], [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|XIV]]
 }}
-'''''Missouri v. Seibert''''', {{ussc|542|600|2004}}, is a decision by the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] that struck down the police practice of first obtaining an inadmissible confession without giving [[Miranda warning]]s, then issuing the warnings, and then obtaining a second confession.  Justice [[David Souter]] announced the judgment of the Court and wrote for a plurality of four justices that the second confession was admissible only if the intermediate ''Miranda'' warnings were "effective enough to accomplish their object."  Justice [[Anthony Kennedy]] wrote in a concurring opinion that the second confession should be inadmissible only if "the two-step interrogation technique was used in a calculated way to undermine the ''Miranda'' warning."
+'''''Missouri v. Seibert''''', 542 U.S. 600 (2004), is a decision by the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] that struck down the police practice of first obtaining an inadmissible confession without giving [[Miranda warning]]s, then issuing the warnings, and then obtaining a second confession.  Justice [[David Souter]] announced the judgment of the Court and wrote for a plurality of four justices that the second confession was admissible only if the intermediate ''Miranda'' warnings were "effective enough to accomplish their object."  Justice [[Anthony Kennedy]] wrote in a concurring opinion that the second confession should be inadmissible only if "the two-step interrogation technique was used in a calculated way to undermine the ''Miranda'' warning."
 ==Background==
 Patrice Seibert, a suspect in a fatal arson, was arrested and taken to the police station.  There, a police officer decided to interrogate her using a method he had been taught: to question the suspect, obtain a confession, then give ''Miranda'' warnings and repeat the questioning until the confession was obtained again.  Accordingly, Seibert was not informed of her ''Miranda'' rights before the interrogation began.  After about 40 minutes of questioning, Seibert made an incriminating statement.  She was given a 20-minute break.  When the questioning resumed, she was given her ''Miranda'' warnings, and reminded of what she had admitted before the break.  She then repeated her confession.
 The [[trial court]] ([[Missouri Circuit Courts|Missouri Circuit Court]]) suppressed the first statement because it was given before the ''Miranda'' warnings, but admitted the second.  Seibert was convicted of second-degree murder.  The Supreme Court granted [[certiorari]] to resolve a split among the Circuit Courts of Appeal on this issue.
-==Plurality Opinion==
+==Plurality opinion==
 Souter, writing for the [[plurality opinion|plurality]], focused on the actual effectiveness of ''Miranda'' warnings given after an earlier unwarned confession.  Just giving the warnings is not necessarily good enough.  Instead, a court must ask, "Could the warnings effectively advise the suspect that he had a real choice about giving an admissible statement at that juncture?  Could they reasonably convey that he could choose to stop talking even if he had talked earlier?"
 The plurality opinion gives some guidance on when an intermediate warning should be considered to be effective.  Such a warning is likely to mislead a defendant about his rights when it is made "in the midst of coordinated and continuing interrogation."  Courts should therefore consider "the completeness and detail of the questions and answers in the first round of interrogation, the overlapping content of the two statements, the timing and setting of the first and the second, the continuity of police personnel, and the degree to which the interrogator's questions treated the second round as continuous with the first."
@@ Line 35: / Line 35: @@
 ==Concurrences==
-Justice Breyer concurred.  He set forth a different test for whether the second confession should be admissible: "Courts should exclude the "fruit" of the initial unwarned questioning unless the failure to warn was in good faith."  The term "fruit" refers to the [[fruit of the poisonous tree]] doctrine, which provides that in criminal trials, courts may not admit evidence obtained as an indirect result of a search that violated the Fourth Amendment.  Justice Breyer's proposed rule would extend that doctrine to evidence obtained as an indirect result of an interrogation that violated the Fifth Amendment.  Although this test was different from Justice Souter's, Breyer also joined with the Souter's plurality opinion because he thought that the two tests would yield the same result in practice.
+Justice Breyer concurred.  He set forth a different test for whether the second confession should be admissible: "Courts should exclude the 'fruit' of the initial unwarned questioning unless the failure to warn was in good faith."  The term "fruit" refers to the [[fruit of the poisonous tree]] doctrine, which provides that in criminal trials, courts may not admit evidence obtained as an indirect result of a search that violated the Fourth Amendment.  Justice Breyer's proposed rule would extend that doctrine to evidence obtained as an indirect result of an interrogation that violated the Fifth Amendment.  Although this test was different from Justice Souter's, Breyer also joined with the Souter's plurality opinion because he thought that the two tests would yield the same result in practice.
 Justice Kennedy also concurred, and proposed yet another test.  He wrote that he "would apply a narrower test applicable only in the infrequent case, such as we have here, in which the two-step interrogation technique was used in a calculated way to undermine the ''Miranda'' warning."  If a two-step procedure was deliberately used, the subsequent statement would be inadmissible unless the police "cured" the problem by taking measures that would enable the suspect to distinguish the first interrogation from the second "and appreciate that the interrogation has taken a new turn."  Kennedy suggested that a long break between the two interrogations would usually be sufficient, as would an explanation to the suspect that the first statement would probably be inadmissible in court.
 ==Dissent==
-Justice O'Connor wrote for the dissent.  She criticized the majority for not being faithful the Court's earlier opinions involving two-stage interrogations, especially ''[[Oregon v. Elstad]]'', a 1985 case involving a two-stage interrogation.  The dissent stated that under the precedent of ''Elstad'', it did not matter whether the police failed to give Miranda warnings before the first confession, so long as the confession was not coerced.  Even if the first confession was coerced, "the court must examine whether the taint dissipated through the passing of time or a change in circumstances."  To make that determination, O'Connor would have courts look to many of the same factual considerations identified by the plurality: "the time that passes between confessions, the change in place of interrogations, and the change in identity of the interrogators."
+Justice O'Connor wrote for the dissent.  She criticized the majority for not being faithful to the Court's earlier opinions involving two-stage interrogations, especially ''[[Oregon v. Elstad]]'', a 1985 case involving a two-stage interrogation.  The dissent stated that under the precedent of ''Elstad'', it did not matter whether the police failed to give Miranda warnings before the first confession, so long as the confession was not coerced.  Even if the first confession were coerced, "the court must examine whether the taint dissipated through the passing of time or a change in circumstances." To make that determination, O'Connor would have courts look to many of the same factual considerations identified by the plurality: "the time that passes between confessions, the change in place of interrogations, and the change in identity of the interrogators."
 The dissent would thus have allowed police to continue to use the question-first, warn-later approach, so long as they could show that the first confession was voluntary and that the "taint" of the first confession had worn off.
@@ Line 46: / Line 46: @@
 ==Effect==
 Seibert was a split decision.  The general rule is that when there is no majority opinion in a Supreme Court case, the narrowest rationale agreed upon by at least five Justices controls.  But lower courts have disagreed about what that rationale is in Seibert: some have adopted the "effects" test from the plurality opinion; others have adopted the "intent" test from Kennedy's opinion.  As [[Gerald Uelmen]] has written, "The fractured opinions" in Seibert "have left lower courts in limbo."  ''Midstream Miranda Warnings After Seibert'', Champion, July, 2005.
 According to Justice Souter's opinion, the two-step interrogation practice was becoming increasingly popular among police departments.  Given the confusion about Seibert's meaning, it remains to be seen whether that changes.
+In State v. O'Neill, 936 A.2d 438, 193 N.J. 148 (2007), the New Jersey Supreme court determined that based on New Jersey's greater protections than the US Constitution, that question first, mirandize later was not constitutional.  While an "entirety of the circumstances" test still applies, O'Neill essentially held that the test is failed by this particular interrogation process.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=9833511178606064743 | title=State v. O'neill }}</ref>
-In [http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/opinions/a0147-04.pdf State v. O’Neill (N.J. Super. Crt. App. Div. 2006) (case #14-2-5143)] the New Jersey Appellate Court held that the defendant's statements given to police after a so-called, "question-first, warn-later" interrogation were admissible.  From reading the NJ Court's opinion, the court bases their ruling on the length of time between the first, non-mirandized interrogation and the second, mirandized interrogation, which was about 1 hour and 15 minutes; that the questioning during the first interrogation were unrelated to the questioning during the second interrogation; that the statements that O'Neill made were different during the first and second interrogation; and that the first interrogation took place at one location (jail cell) while the second interrogation had taken place at another (patrol commander's office).  In terms of ''Seibert'', the NJ Appellate Court endorses the reasoning contained in the concurring opinion of Justice Kennedy.
 ==See also==
 *[[List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 542]]
+*[[List of United States Supreme Court cases]]
+==References==
+{{Reflist}}
 ==Further reading==
-*{{ cite journal | last = Brooks | first = Peter | authorlink = | coauthors = | year = 2005 | month = | title = The Future of Confession | journal = Law, Culture and the Humanities | volume = 1 | issue = 1 | pages = 53&ndash;74 | doi = 10.1191/1743872105lw005oa | url = | accessdate = | quote = }}
+*{{ cite journal | last = Brooks | first = Peter | year = 2005 | title = The Future of Confession | journal = Law, Culture and the Humanities | volume = 1 | issue = 1 | pages = 53&ndash;74 | doi = 10.1191/1743872105lw005oa | s2cid = 145543657 }}
-*{{ cite journal | last = Moreno | first = Joëlle Anne | authorlink = | coauthors = | year = 2005 | month = | title = Faith-Based ''Miranda'': Why the New ''Missouri v. Seibert'' Police Bad Faith Test is a Terrible Idea | journal = Arizona Law Review | volume = 47 | issue = 2 | pages = 395 | id = | url = http://www.law.arizona.edu/journals/ALR/ALR2005/vol472/Moreno%20Final%20Article.pdf | accessdate = | quote = }}
+*{{cite journal | last = Moreno | first = Joëlle Anne | year = 2005 | title = Faith-Based ''Miranda'': Why the New ''Missouri v. Seibert'' Police Bad Faith Test is a Terrible Idea | journal = Arizona Law Review | volume = 47 | issue = 2 | pages = 395 | url = http://www.law.arizona.edu/journals/ALR/ALR2005/vol472/Moreno%20Final%20Article.pdf | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20060909053703/http://www.law.arizona.edu/Journals/ALR/ALR2005/vol472/Moreno%20Final%20Article.pdf | archive-date = 2006-09-09 }}
-*{{ cite journal | last = Nooter | first = Daniel S. | authorlink = | coauthors = | year = 2005 | month = | title = Is ''Missouri v. Seibert'' Practicable? Supreme Court Dances the ‘Two-Step’ around ''Miranda'' | journal = American Criminal Law Review | volume = 42 | issue = | pages = | id = | url = | accessdate = | quote = }}
+*{{ cite journal | last = Nooter | first = Daniel S. | year = 2005 | title = Is ''Missouri v. Seibert'' Practicable? Supreme Court Dances the 'Two-Step' around ''Miranda'' | journal = American Criminal Law Review | volume = 42 }}
-*{{ cite journal | last = Weiss | first = Stewart J. | authorlink = | coauthors = | year = 2005 | month = | title = ''Missouri v. Seibert'': Two-Stepping towards the Apocalypse | journal = Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology | volume = 95 | issue = | pages = | id = | url = | accessdate = | quote = }}
+*{{ cite journal | last = Weiss | first = Stewart J. | year = 2005 | title = ''Missouri v. Seibert'': Two-Stepping towards the Apocalypse | journal = Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology | volume = 95 }}
 ==External links==
+* {{wikisource-inline}}
-* [http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=02-1371 Decision as reported on ''Findlaw For Legal Prefessionals'' (free site)]
+* {{caselaw source
-* [http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/1674/resources Audio file of oral argument on Oyez.org]
+ | case = ''Missouri v. Seibert'', {{ussc|542|600|2004|el=no}}
+ | courtlistener =
+ | findlaw = https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/542/600.html
+ | googlescholar =
+ | justia =https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/542/600/
+ | oyez =https://www.oyez.org/cases/2003/02-1371
+ }}
+{{US5thAmendment crimpro|self}}
-{{wikisource}}
-[[Category:2003 in law]]
 [[Category:United States Supreme Court cases]]
-[[Category:United States Fifth Amendment case law]]
+[[Category:United States Fifth Amendment self-incrimination case law]]
-[[Category:United States rights of the accused case law]]
+[[Category:2004 in United States case law]]
+[[Category:Arson in Missouri]]
+[[Category:Legal history of Missouri]]
+[[Category:United States Supreme Court cases of the Rehnquist Court]]