Supreme Court opens 2009 term with oral arguments in interrogation, discovery cases

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Supreme Court opens 2009 term with oral arguments in interrogation, discovery cases

Jaclyn Belczyk | JURIST Executive Editor

October 5, 2009 01:05:00 pm

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] officially opened its 2009 term Monday, hearing oral arguments [day call, PDF; merit briefs] in two cases. In Maryland v. Shatzer [oral arguments transcript, PDF; JURIST report], the Court heard arguments on whether the Edwards v. Arizona [opinion text] prohibition against interrogation of a suspect who has invoked the Fifth Amendment right to counsel is inapplicable if, after the suspect asks for counsel, there is a break of more than two years before commencing reinterrogation. The Court of Appeals of Maryland ruled [opinion, PDF] that there was no break in custody and that the Edwards prohibition against interrogation was still applicable. At oral arguments, counsel for the state of Maryland said the state's position is "that a break in custody from custodial interrogation should be the bright line that this Court adopts in order to end the irrebuttable presumption that this Court created in the Edwards case." Counsel for the US government supported Maryland's position, arguing:

This Court has repeatedly made clear that Edwards v. Arizona is a prophylactic rule designed to implement the protections of Miranda v. Arizona, and it does so by operating as an anti-badgering rule. On the facts of this case, I don't think there is any colorable argument that Mr. Shatzer was badgered into waiving his Sixth Amendment rights.

Counsel for Shatzer responded that "[c]reating exceptions to the rule of Edwards means a clear rule is lost. It introduces uncertainty into the determinations of what constitutes custody and what length of time might be adequate to excuse the protection."

In Mohawk Industries v. Carpenter [oral arguments transcript, PDF], the Court heard arguments on whether a party may immediately appeal a discovery order to disclose materials that party believes are covered by the attorney-client privilege. The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled [opinion, PDF] that there is no such right to an immediate appeal. The Court granted certiorari to resolve a circuit split on the issue. Counsel for the petitioner distinguished information protected by the attorney-client privilege from other protected information such as trade secrets by emphasizing "the central and important role that the privilege plays in the administration of justice." Counsel for the respondent argued, "[b]efore 1997, no circuit held that there was appeal as of right for privilege or waiver, and most of the circuits continue that approach. That is the right approach…" Counsel for the US government supported respondents, arguing:

In the last 15 years, this Court … has repeatedly stressed that a necessary requirement is that the order involved and the issues implicated be important and, particularly, that the issues be so important as to outweigh the values served by the important and usual rule of a final judgment requirement. In our view, the denial of an assertion of attorney-client privilege in an individual case does not rise to that level…

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.