On Thursday, a divided 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco found that homicide detectives should have stopped questioning a criminal suspect who said his father had advised him to ask for a lawyer. The court found that Tio Dinero Sessoms had sufficiently asserted his right to an attorney when he informed the detectives of his father’s advice. The ruling now requires police to honor even ambiguous requests for counsel made by a suspect before informing the suspect of his/her right to an attorney.
The instant case involves a home burglary committed in 1999 in Sacramento, California. During the burglary, one of Sessom’s accomplices committed a murder. Sessoms fled to Oklahoma, where his father urged him to surrender to the police.
A video recording of the interrogation following Sessom’s surrender shows Sessom saying, “There wouldn’t be any possible way that I could have a…a lawyer present while we do this? … My dad asked me to ask you guys…uh, give me a lawyer.”
 |
|||
 |
|
Get JD Journal in Your Mail
Subscribe to our FREE daily news alerts and get the latest updates on the most happening events in the legal, business, and celebrity world. You also get your daily dose of humor and entertainment!! |
|
However, the homicide detectives told him that a lawyer would only hurt his case and bringing in a lawyer would be pointless as his accomplices had already divulged everything. After convincing him that asking for a lawyer was futile, the homicide detectives proceeded to read him his Miranda rights, which he waived and proceeded to implicate himself. He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
Upon appeal, a California state appeals court, and a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit did not find any violation of Sessom’s right to a lawyer. The lower court and the three-judge panel, both held Sessom’s requests for a lawyer to be ambiguous. However, the 11-judge panel of the 9th Circuit disagreed 6-5.
Writing for the majority, Judge Betty Fletcher wrote, “Although it was couched in a polite and diffident manner, the meaning of Sessoms’s request was clear: he wanted a lawyer then and there.” The court also noted that suspects are held to a lower standard of clarity before they waive their Miranda rights.
Five judges dissented and held requests for an attorney must be unambiguous both before and after the Miranda rights warning. Judge Mary Murguia wrote in dissent, “A reasonable jurist could conclude that telling a detective ‘My dad told me to ask for a lawyer’ is different than saying ‘I want an attorney.”
The case was sent down for retrial or release of Sessom.
Posted by EmploymentCrossing
on August 17, 2012. Filed under Legal News.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Attorney Career Resources is sponsored by BCG Attorney Search, the nation's leading placement firm, specializing in law firm placements.
Here at BCG we get no small number of inquiries from attorneys who have recently (e.g., within the past year) switched firms but, for a wide variety of reasons, find themselves wanting and/or needing to move again and thus want to resume their job search. The reasons for this most often include the following – sometimes a spouse receives a job offer in another market. Sometimes a group of partners makes an untimely departure, leading to business in your new practice group drying up and you sitting at the mercy of a first-in-first-out policy when the inevitable downsizing occurs. Sometimes the firm turns out not to be quite what you expected in terms of opportunity, professionalism, or personality, and you soon find yourself realizing that you may have [...]
June 6, 2013 Read More
 |
||
| Search Thousands of Legal Jobs | ||
|
Job Type: |
||
 |
||
|
Browse Jobs by Location: |
||
|
||
| Keyword Search: | ||
|
||
Recent comments