Escobedo v. Illinois
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 29, 1964 Decided June 22, 1964
Full case name: Escobedo v. Illinois Citations: 378 U.S. 478; 84 S. Ct. 1758; 12 L. Ed. 2d 977; 1964 U.S. LEXIS 827; 4 Ohio Misc. 197; 32 Ohio Op. 2d 31 Prior history: Defendant convicted in Cook County criminal court; Illinois Supreme Court held statement inadmissible and reversed, February 1, 1963; on petition for rehearing, Illinois Supreme Court affirmed conviction, 28 Ill. 2d 41; cert. granted, 375 U.S. 902 Subsequent history: reversed and remanded
Holding
Where a police investigation begins to focus on a particular suspect who has been refused counsel and not Mirandized, his statements to police are excluded.
Court membership
Chief Justice: Earl Warren Associate Justices: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Tom C. Clark, John Marshall Harlan II, William J. Brennan, Potter Stewart, Byron White, Arthur Joseph Goldberg
Case opinions
Majority by: Goldberg Joined by: Warren, Black, Douglas, Brennan Dissent by: Harlan Dissent by: Stewart Dissent by: White Joined by: Stewart, Clark
Laws applied
U.S. Const., Amends. VI and XIV

Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478 (1964),^[1] was a United States Supreme Court case holding that criminal suspects have a right to counsel during police interrogations. The case was decided a year after the court held, in Gideon v. Wainwright 372 U.S. 335 (1963), that indigent criminal defendants had a right to be provided counsel at trial.

Background

Danny Escobedo's brother-in-law Manuel, a Chicago convict, was shot and killed on the night of January 19, 1960. The police arrested Danny Escobedo early the next morning, tried without success to interrogate him, and eventually released him. Ten days later, on January 30, the police interrogated Benedict DiGerlando, who told them that Escobedo fired the fatal shots. The police arrested and interrogated Escobedo that evening. Escobedo asked to speak to an attorney. His attorney went to police headquarters and tried to talk to Escobedo during the interrogation. Both requests were refused. When the police told Escobedo about DiGerlando's claim, Escobedo asked to confront him. When this happened, Escobedo implicated himself as an accessory in the murder, later confessed the same to a prosecuting attorney, and was eventually convicted.

Escobedo appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court, which initially held the confession inadmissible and reversed the conviction. Illinois petitioned for rehearing and the court then affirmed the conviction. Escobedo appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The ACLU argued before the court as amicus curiae favoring Escobedo.

The court's decision

The Supreme Court overturned Escobedo's conviction and recognized a suspect's right to an attorney during police interrogation. Writing for the majority, Justice Arthur Goldberg viewed the police interrogation in this case as more of an interrogation of a specific suspect than a general questioning of witnesses. As such, he held the distinction between pre- and post-indictment to be immaterial, since the police and prosecutor elicited a confession after they'd already gotten the damning statement necessary to indict Escobedo. To hold otherwise, wrote Goldberg, would be to "exalt form over substance". The court had already recognized a right to counsel after indictment in Gideon v. Wainwright. Extending that precedent, it interpreted the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a right to counsel as applying to defendants from the time they become primary suspects.

Dissenting Opinions

Justice Potter Stewart's dissent essentially accused the majority of conflating the formal difference between pre and post-indictment questioning. Justice Byron White's dissent began with his disagreement about the applicability of cited precedent. He also criticized the majority's Constitutional interpretation, insisting that the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination elucidated the full intent of the framers to provide protection to suspects during police interrogation. All the dissenting opinions stressed the adverse impact the court's decision would have on combatting crime.

See also

• Danny Escobedo

References

Donate to Wikimedia