Howes v. Fields

• Decision Date: 21 February 2012
• Docket Number: No. 10–680.,10–680.
• Parties: Carol HOWES, Warden, Petitioner v. Randall Lee FIELDS.
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

565 U.S. 499

132 S.Ct. 1181

182 L.Ed.2d 17

Carol HOWES, Warden, Petitioner

v.Randall Lee FIELDS.

No. 10–680.

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued Oct. 4, 2011.

Decided Feb. 21, 2012.

John J. Bursch, Solicitor General, for Petitioner.

Ginger D. Anders, for the United States, as amicus curiae, by special leave of the Court, supporting the Petitioner.

Elizabeth L. Jacobs, Detroit, MI, for Respondent.

Bill Schuette, Attorney General, John J. Bursch, Michigan Solicitor General, Counsel of Record, Lansing, MI, Richard A. Bandstra, Chief Legal Counsel, B. Eric Restuccia, Michigan Deputy Solicitor General, Brian O. Neill, Assistant Attorney General, for Petitioner.

Elizabeth L. Jacobs, Counsel for Respondent, Detroit, MI, for Respondent.

Justice ALITO delivered the opinion of the Court.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that our precedents clearly establish that a prisoner is in custody within the meaning of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), if the prisoner is taken aside and questioned about events that occurred outside the prison walls. Our decisions, however, do not clearly establish such a rule, and therefore the Court of Appeals erred in holding that this rule provides a permissible basis for federal habeas relief under the relevant provision of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). Indeed, the rule applied by the court below does not represent a correct interpretation of our Miranda case law. We therefore reverse.

I

While serving a sentence in a Michigan jail, Randall Fields was escorted by a corrections officer to a conference room where two sheriff's deputies questioned him about allegations that, before he came to prison, he had engaged in sexual conduct with a 12–year–old boy. In order to get to the conference room, Fields had to go down one floor and pass through a locked door that separated two sections of the facility . See App. to Pet. for Cert. 66a, 69a. Fields arrived at the conference room between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.¹ and was questioned for between five and seven hours.²

At the beginning of the interview, Fields was told that he was free to leave and return to his cell. See id., at 70a. Later, he was again told that he could leave whenever he wanted. See id., at 90a. The two interviewing deputies were armed during the interview, but Fields remained free of handcuffs and other restraints. The door to the conference room was sometimes open and sometimes shut. See id., at 70a–75a.

About halfway through the interview, after Fields had been confronted with the allegations of abuse, he became agitated and began to yell. See id., at 80a, 125a. Fields testified that one of the deputies, using an expletive, told him to sit down and said that "if [he] didn't want to cooperate, [he] could leave." Id., at 89a; see also id., at 70a–71a. Fields eventually confessed to engaging in sex acts with the boy. According to Fields' testimony at a suppression hearing, he said several times during the interview that he no longer wanted to talk to the deputies, but he did not ask to go back to his cell prior to the end of the interview. See id., at 92a–93a.

When he was eventually ready to leave, he had to wait an additional 20 minutes or so because a corrections officer had to be summoned to escort him back to his cell, and he did not return to his cell until well after the hour when he generally retired.³ At no time was Fields given Miranda warnings or advised that he did not have to speak with the deputies.

The State of Michigan charged Fields with criminal sexual conduct. Relying on Miranda , Fields moved to suppress his confession, but the trial court denied his motion. Over the renewed objection of defense counsel, one of the interviewing deputies testified at trial about Fields' admissions. The jury convicted Fields of two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct, and the judge sentenced him to a term of 10 to 15 years of imprisonment. On direct appeal, the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed, rejecting Fields' contention that his statements should have been suppressed because he was subjected to custodial interrogation without a Miranda warning. The court ruled that Fields had not been in custody for purposes of Miranda during the interview, so no Miranda warnings were required. The court emphasized that Fields was told that he was free to leave and return to his cell but that he never asked to do so. The Michigan Supreme Court denied discretionary review.

Fields then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in Federal District Court, and the court granted relief. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, holding that the interview in the conference room was a "custodial interrogation" within the meaning of Miranda because isolation from the general prison population combined with questioning about conduct occurring outside the prison makes any such interrogation custodial per se . The Court of Appeals reasoned that this Court clearly established in Mathis v. United States, 391 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1503, 20 L.Ed.2d 381 (1968), that "Miranda warnings must be administered when law enforcement officers remove an inmate from the general prison population and interrogate him regarding criminal conduct that took place outside the jail or prison."

617 F.3d 813, 820 (C.A.6 2010) ; see also id., at 818 ("The central holding of Mathis is that a Miranda warning is required whenever an incarcerated individual is isolated from the general prison population and interrogated, i.e. [,] questioned in a manner likely to lead to self-incrimination, about conduct occurring outside of the prison"). Because Fields was isolated from the general prison population and interrogated about conduct occurring in the outside world, the Court of Appeals found that the state court's decision was contrary to clearly established federal law as determined by this Court in Mathis . 617 F.3d, at 823.

We granted certiorari. 562 U.S. ––––, 131 S.Ct. 1047, 178 L.Ed.2d 862 (2011).

II

Under AEDPA, a federal court may grant a state prisoner's application for a writ of habeas corpus if the state-court adjudication pursuant to which the prisoner is held "resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). In this context, "clearly established law" signifies "the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of this Court's decisions." Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000).

In this case, it is abundantly clear that our precedents do not clearly establish the categorical rule on which the Court of Appeals relied, i.e., that the questioning of a prisoner is always custodial when the prisoner is removed from the general prison population and questioned about events that occurred outside the prison. On the contrary, we have repeatedly declined to adopt any categorical rule with respect to whether the questioning of a prison inmate is custodial.

In Illinois v. Perkins, 496 U.S. 292, 110 S.Ct. 2394, 110 L.Ed.2d 243 (1990), where we upheld the admission of un-Mirandized statements elicited from an inmate by an undercover officer masquerading as another inmate, we noted that "[t]he bare fact of custody may not in every instance require a warning even when the suspect is aware that he is speaking to an official, but we do not have occasion to explore that issue here ." Id. , at 299, 110 S.Ct. 2394 (emphasis added). Instead, we simply "reject[ed] the argument that Miranda warnings are required whenever a suspect is in custody in a technical sense and converses with someone who happens to be a government agent." Id. , at 297, 110 S.Ct. 2394.

Most recently, in Maryland v. Shatzer, 559 U.S. ––––, 130 S.Ct. 1213, 175 L.Ed.2d 1045 (2010), we expressly declined to adopt a bright-line rule for determining the applicability of Miranda in prisons. Shatzer considered whether a break in custody ends the presumption of involuntariness established in Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 68 L.Ed.2d 378 (1981), and, if so, whether a prisoner's return to the general prison population after a custodial interrogation constitutes a break in Miranda custody. See 559 U.S., at ––––, 130 S.Ct., at 1218–1219. In considering the latter question, we noted first that "[w]e have never decided whether incarceration constitutes custody for Miranda purposes, and have indeed explicitly declined to address the issue." Id. , at ––––, 130 S.Ct., at 1224 (citing Perkins,supra, at 299, 110 S.Ct. 2394; emphasis added). The answer to this question, we noted, would "depen[d] upon whether [incarceration] exerts the coercive pressure that Miranda was designed to guard against—the 'danger of coercion [that] results from the interaction of custody and official interrogation.' " 559 U.S., at ––––, 130 S.Ct., at 1224 (quoting Perkins, supra, at 297, 110 S.Ct. 2394).

In concluding that our precedents establish a categorical rule, the Court of Appeals placed great weight on the decision in Mathis, but the Court of Appeals misread the holding in that case. In Mathis, an inmate in a state prison was questioned by an Internal Revenue agent and was subsequently convicted for federal offenses. The Court of Appeals held that Miranda did not apply to this interview for two reasons: A criminal investigation had not been commenced at the time of the interview, and the prisoner was incarcerated for an "unconnected offense." Mathis v .United States,

376 F.2d 595, 597 (C.A.5 1967). This Court rejected both of those grounds for distinguishing Miranda, 391 U.S., at 4, 88 S.Ct. 1503, and thus the holding in Mathis is simply that a prisoner who otherwise meets the requirements for Miranda custody is not taken outside the scope of Miranda by either of the two factors on which the Court of Appeals had relied. Mathis did not hold that imprisonment, in and...