| 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
References
- ^ 378 U.S. 478 (Full text of the opinion courtesy of Findlaw.com)
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