Essay on "Montejo v. Louisiana, 556 U.S"

Essay 3 pages (1180 words) Sources: 2

[EXCERPT] . . . .

This ruling leaves it up to the states to decide whether being advised of a Sixth Amendment right to counsel is sufficient to trigger Edwards.

However, the Court is aware that the Montejo majority opinion significantly changes the legal rules regarding the Sixth Amendment right to counsel and therefore views Montejo as having acted as though the Jackson rule was in effect at the time of his arraignment (U.S. Supreme Court, 2009). For this reason, the Court remanded Montejo to allow the defendant to pursue claims that the waiver was involuntary and unknowing.

Dissenting Opinion

The dissenting opinion interpreted Jackson as providing prophylactic protection against police-initiated contact for the purposes of interrogation once representation has been requested or assigned by the court, whether or not the defendant knowingly invoked his or her Sixth Amendment right (U.S. Supreme Court, 2009). The dissenters wrote that the authors of the majority opinion failed to uphold stare decisis for seemingly arbitrary and unsupportable reasons. In essence, the dissenters found that overturning Jackson violates the intent of the Sixth Amendment to provide a barrier between the defendant and the state.

Discussion

The majority decision in Montejo to overturn Jackson represents a major shift in the procedural rules governing the Sixth Amendment right to representation. Prior to this decision, once a criminal defendant was formally charged the police could not interact with him or her without first notifying defense counsel of their intentions (Bretz, 2010-2011). Any post-arraignment waivers would therefore be held invalid under the Sixth Amendment and represent a violation of substantive law. Under Montejo, whether a Jackson-like procedural rule applies will depend on how states decide to manage this area of jurisprudence.

Regardless of the majority opinion in Montejo, there seems to be a consensus that Montejo's Sixth Amendment protections may have been violated even under Montejo (U.S. Supreme Court, 2009). The remand order supports this argument. There are other troubling details about the interaction between the police and Montejo, before and after the arraignment. The first interrogation, which took place on the day of his arrest, lasted a lengthy eight hours that culminated in a confession (Bretz, 2010-2011, p 223). 72 hours later during the arraignment, Montejo stood silent while the judge assigned counsel. Having already confessed to the murder, one has to wonder whether Montejo had decided not to fight the charges being brought against him. Just hours after the arraignment, the police visited Montejo in jail and convinced him to sign a Miranda waiver. They then went on a trip to find the murder weapon, during which Montejo wrote and signed a letter of apology to the victim's widow. This pattern of behavior seems consistent with a defendant who has given up defending himself, and is being led towards the gallows by police detectives. It seems unlikely under Jackson that the murder weapon would have been recovered so easily or the letter of apology written.

Without Jackson, therefore, the adversarial nature of criminal proceedings will no longer be so adversarial if counsel is not required to be present during interrogations. The Sixth Amendment protections afforded the accused has been weakened considerably under Montejo.

References

Bretz, Emily. (2010-2011). Don't answer the door: Montejo v. Louisiana relaxes police restrictions for questioning non-custodial defendants. Michigan Law Review, 109, 221-256.

U.S. Supreme Court. (2009). Montejo v. Louisiana: certiorari to the Supreme Court of Louisiana. FindLaw.com. Retrieved 10 July… READ MORE

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