Coleman v. Singletary

• Decision Date: 08 September 1994
• Docket Number: No. 92-3317,92-3317
• Citation: 30 F.3d 1420
• Parties: Gerald Anthony COLEMAN, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Harry K. SINGLETARY, Robert A. Butterworth, Respondents-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1420

30 F.3d 1420

63 USLW 2170

Gerald Anthony COLEMAN, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Harry K. SINGLETARY, Robert A. Butterworth, Respondents-Appellees.

No. 92-3317.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

Sept. 8, 1994.

Mark Allan Pizzo, Asst. Federal Public Defender, Tampa, FL, for appellant.

Peggy Ann Quince, Stephen A. Baker, Asst. Attys. Gen., Tampa, FL, for appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Before CARNES, Circuit Judge, FAY and JOHNSON, Senior Circuit Judges.

CARNES, Circuit Judge:

Gerald Anthony Coleman appeals from the district court's order denying his petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2254. At Coleman's trial, the evidence against him included statements he made to two detectives shortly after his arrest. On appeal, Coleman raises two issues that merit discussion. First, he contends that the detectives continued to interrogate him after he invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, and that his subsequent statements were therefore inadmissible. Second, he contends that his waiver of his Miranda rights was ineffective because of his youth and mental illness. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

Coleman was convicted by a Sarasota County jury of the second-degree murder of his ten-year-old sister, a crime committed when he was fifteen years old. He was sentenced to forty years imprisonment. The Second District Court of Appeal affirmed Coleman's conviction and sentence. Coleman v. State, 515 So.2d 313 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App.1987). His writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court of Florida was denied. Coleman v. State, 523 So.2d 576 (Fla.1988).

Coleman filed a petition for habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, arguing that his confession was obtained in violation of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). The district court denied the petition.

The facts in this case are undisputed. On January 18, 1984, when Coleman returned home from school, he decided to kill his father. He therefore asked his sister to leave the house; she declined to do so and instead went to her bedroom to play with a stuffed animal. Coleman picked up a knife and followed his sister into her bedroom, telling her he was going to kill her. After backing her into a closet with the knife, Coleman strangled her with his hands for a few minutes. She started to breath again after he relaxed his grip, so he strangled her again until his hands grew tired. Then he knotted a belt around her neck. When he was finished, he wrapped her dead body in a blanket and placed it in the closet next to the teddy bear with which she had been playing. He then rode his bicycle to a store where he bought himself candy and a soft drink.

Upon his return, Coleman called a suicide counseling center and reported that he had killed his sister. He then went out again. A police officer found him in the neighborhood, arrested him, and read him the Miranda warnings, after which Coleman told the officer that he had strangled his sister. Coleman was taken to the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office, where he was questioned by Detective Paul Rigney and Detective-Sergeant Dario Valente. Rigney advised Coleman of his Miranda rights again; Coleman responded that he understood his rights and that he was willing to talk; he then confessed for the second time that he had killed his sister.

Rigney and Valente then turned on a tape recorder to record the interrogation. At the beginning of the recorded segment, they informed Coleman of his Miranda rights once more, which was the third time he had heard them that day. Coleman again expressed his willingness to talk, and for the third time confessed that he had strangled his sister. A few minutes later, the interrogation was interrupted when the detectives received a telephone call from Freda Pflaum, a public defender who was notified of Coleman's arrest by the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services. The detectives told Coleman that the public defender asked them to "cease any further interview at this time"; they then turned off the tape recorder.

The detectives put public defender Pflaum in contact with Assistant State Attorney Douglas Spangler. When Pflaum said that she intended to instruct Coleman not to answer any more questions, Spangler told her that she could not talk to Coleman on the telephone, but that she could see him if she drove to the station. Pflaum declined to do so. Coleman was not informed that Pflaum had said she intended to instruct him not to answer any more questions.

Rigney and Valente then turned the tape recorder back on and resumed their interrogation. Shortly afterwards, the following exchange took place:

Valente: "And what you're saying, or what you're about to say you're going to do of your own free will; is that correct?"

Coleman: "Yes. Unless, what about that one guy, though?"

Valente: "What guy?"

Coleman: "The guy--"

Rigney: "Public defender."

Coleman: "Yeah."

Valente: "Okay."

Rigney: "I explained to him what the public defender was--"

Valente: "Okay. Tony, do you feel that you want to have a public defender?"

Coleman: "I don't know. But if he said to stop it I don't want to do what he said not to do."

Valente: "All right. Well, do you have any objections to talking to us? It's up to you. Now, again, you know what our job is. We need to know what happened, and that's basically it. But we don't want to do anything, we don't want to force you to do anything that you don't want to do.

If you want to talk to [us], fine, we'll continue with the conversation. You can stop any time you want to stop. You can ask us any questions, but it's up to you. If you want to talk to us we'll listen. If you want us to stop asking you any questions, we'll do that."

Coleman: "I guess if that guy thinks it's all right, I don't care."

The detectives asked Coleman no more questions about the killing for the next several minutes. Instead, they asked him whether he wanted to continue the interrogation. At no point did Coleman say either that he wanted to stop talking or to speak to an attorney. Finally, when Valente asked, "Do you want to talk to us alone, or do you want to have somebody with you?", Coleman said, "I want to talk." Valente asked Coleman if he was sure; Coleman said that he was. The detectives resumed asking questions about the killing. Coleman then admitted that he knew the difference between right and wrong, and that what he had done to his sister was "terribly wrong."

At trial, Coleman raised the insanity defense. Three psychiatrists testified that they thought he was sane when he killed his sister; two testified that they thought he was insane at the time of the killing. The taped confession was played for the jury. During closing argument, the prosecutor pointed to Coleman's admission that his actions were "terribly wrong" and argued that that indicated he was sane. Coleman had made that admission only during his third confession, and only after he had made the comment in question about whether to invoke his Miranda rights.

Coleman's motion to suppress the confession was denied. In his habeas petition, he argued that the failure to suppress was in error because his confession was involuntary, and because the interrogating officers continued to question him, in violation of Miranda, after he indicated that he wished to remain silent. The federal magistrate disagreed, and the district court adopted the magistrate's recommendation as the opinion of the court. Coleman appeals, raising the same issues.

II. DISCUSSION

We first address Coleman's contention that the interrogating officers ignored his invocation of his Miranda rights, and consider whether Coleman's statement was sufficient to invoke his right to remain silent. We then discuss Coleman's argument that he never voluntarily and intelligently waived his Miranda rights.

A. WHETHER THE POLICE VIOLATED COLEMAN'S RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT

The Supreme Court, in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 473-74, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1627-28, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), held that under the Fifth Amendment when a person undergoing a custodial interrogation "indicates in any manner, at any time prior to or during questioning, that he wishes to remain silent, the interrogation must cease." On appeal, Coleman argues that his response to Valente's question about whether he wanted to have a public defender constituted an unequivocal invocation of his right to remain silent. His exact words were: "I don't know. But if he said to stop it I don't want to do what he said not to do." Reviewing de novo the district court's application of the law to the undisputed facts of this case, United States v. Mendoza-Cecelia, 963 F.2d 1467, 1471 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 113 S.Ct. 436, 121 L.Ed.2d 356 (1992), we disagree with Coleman's contention. Coleman's statement was insufficiently clear to invoke his right to remain silent.

Before the Supreme Court's recent decision in Davis v. United States, --- U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 2350, 129 L.Ed.2d 362 (1994), the rule in this Circuit was that: "When a defendant makes an equivocal request for an attorney during a custodial interrogation, 'the scope of that interrogation is immediately narrowed to one subject and one only. Further questioning thereafter must be limited to clarifying that request until it is clarified.' " Owen v. Alabama, 849 F.2d 536, 539 (11th Cir.1988) (quoting Thompson v. Wainwright, 601 F.2d 768, 771 (5th Cir.1979) (emphasis in original)); accord Mendoza-Cecelia, 963 F.2d at 1472. We applied the same rule to equivocal invocations of the right to cut off questioning: "[W]here an individual in custody makes an equivocal invocation of his right to remain silent, further questioning must be restricted to clarifying that request until it in fact is clarified, and no statement taken after the request...