SAN FRANCISCO — In a ruling laced with words like "misconduct" and "unconscionable," the California Supreme Court made it clear Monday that it would no longer tolerate the practice of some California police agencies of deliberately ignoring a suspect's right to remain silent.
In doing so, the justices overturned the conviction of a Tulare County man who had been convicted of strangling to death a 69-year-old man who had given him a home.
The defendant confessed, but only after being "badgered" by a detective even after he had asked for a lawyer nine times, the court said. Police not only denied the 18-year-old suspect, Kenneth Ray Neal, access to a lawyer, they locked him up overnight without food, water or a toilet until he asked to speak to a detective and confessed, the justices wrote.
The detective later testified that a supervisor had instructed him to ignore requests for lawyers in hope of getting confessions.
During the 1990s, a number of California police departments began training officers to ignore suspects' requests for lawyers and to continue interrogations in at least some cases. Some departments, including the Los Angeles Police Department, changed their policies in the last few years after losing lawsuits, but an undetermined number have continued.
That practice violates a person's rights under the U.S. Supreme Court's Miranda decision. The Miranda rule requires officers to tell people who have been arrested that they have the rights to remain silent and to have an attorney. It prohibits interrogating a suspect who asks for a lawyer until the lawyer is present.
The failure to comply with Miranda means prosecutors cannot directly use a defendant's statements in court. But those statements can still be used for other purposes. Because of that, many police agencies told detectives to go ahead with interrogations in some cases, gambling that the questioning would yield useful information despite the Miranda rules.In Neal's case, a trial judge allowed the jury to hear his confession on the grounds that he had voluntarily asked to talk with a detective. Neal was then convicted of murdering Donald Collins by choking him with an electrical cord in Collins' home.
Two lower courts upheld Neal's conviction, but the state's highest court disagreed unanimously even though the justices said there was sufficient evidence to prove his guilt. The confession cannot be used in any fashion in California courts, the court ruled.
