Suspect subjected to continued interrogation by officers
who deliberately decided to ignore his requests for a lawyer
and his right to remain silent could sue officers for violation
of constitutional rights; officers were not entitled to
qualified immunity when their deliberate intention was to
violate the suspect's rights in order to try to obtain a
confession inadmissible in prosecution's case in chief, but
possibly usable in impeachment.
A man was arrested under suspicion of rape. Pursuant to a
preexisting interrogation plan, members of the police
department and sheriff's department for four hours ignored his
repeated requests to speak with an attorney, "deliberately
infringed on his Constitutional right to remain silent, and
relentlessly interrogated him in an attempt to extract a
confession." Later, when his interrogators concluded that he
was not guilty, he was released. Two months later, the police
department publicly cleared him of all charges.
He sued employees of the sheriff's department and the
police department for violation of federal civil rights, as
well as defamation. The individual defendants moved for summary
judgment on the basis of qualified immunity, which the trial
court denied. A federal appeals court has upheld this result,
and the U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to review the
case.
A " Prime Time Rapist Task Force" had been formed by
officers investigating what was thought to be a series of
rapes. The core of the plan they created for interrogating any
suspect was to "ignore" the suspect's constitutional right to
remain silent, as well as any request he might make to speak
with an attorney. Although the officers knew that any
confession obtained in this manner would not be admissible in
evidence in a prosecutor's case in chief, they hoped that it
would be admissible for purposes of impeachment if the suspect
ever went to trial, thereby preventing the suspect from
testifying that he was innocent, and hindering any possible
insanity defense.
The fact that the suspect was never formally charged in
court and that none of his statements were ever used as
evidence was only relevant to the potential amount of damages,
and not to whether he had a federal civil rights claim. And the
court also noted that "physical torture" is not necessary to
make police conduct seeking a 3u3 confession "coercive." The
court rejected the argument that the plaintiff had not stated a
cause of action under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983.
It found that the defendants engaged in "premeditated
elimination" of the plaintiff's Fifth Amendment rights and
their conduct "unquestionably shocks the conscience, and thus
violates substantive due process."
Qualified, good-faith, immunity, only protects officials
from suits for violations of rights which are not "clearly
established" at the time--but in this case, the officers "knew
they were violating the Constitution."