Facts
- Federal agents received information that Winston Massiah would transport narcotics aboard a U.S. vessel arriving in New York.
- Agents searched the ship and found multiple packages of cocaine in a location and under circumstances linking Massiah to the drugs.
- Massiah was arrested, arraigned, and indicted; he retained counsel, pleaded not guilty, and was released on bail.
- A superseding indictment charged Massiah and a codefendant, Colson, with substantive narcotics offenses and multiple conspiracy counts.
- After indictment, Colson agreed to cooperate with the government without Massiah’s knowledge.
- A federal agent installed a radio transmitter in Colson’s car, allowing agents to overhear conversations remotely.
- While seated in Colson’s parked car, Massiah made incriminating statements that agents overheard through the transmitter.
- At trial, the government introduced an agent’s testimony recounting Massiah’s statements; Colson did not testify.
- Massiah was convicted on a conspiracy count; the conviction was affirmed on appeal.
Issues
- Whether the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is violated when the government, after indictment, deliberately elicits incriminating statements from a defendant in the absence of counsel and introduces those statements at trial.
Decision
- The Supreme Court reversed.
- The Court held that Massiah’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel had attached after indictment and retention of counsel.
- The government’s use at trial of Massiah’s statements—deliberately elicited through a cooperating codefendant and electronic monitoring in counsel’s absence—violated the Sixth Amendment.
- The Court noted that continuing to investigate an indicted defendant is permissible, but the prosecution may not introduce at trial statements obtained through deliberate elicitation in counsel’s absence.
Legal Principles
- After formal charges, the Sixth Amendment bars the government from deliberately eliciting incriminating statements from the accused outside the presence of counsel for use at trial.
- The rule applies to indirect and surreptitious interrogation techniques, including the use of informants and electronic monitoring, not only to formal custodial questioning.
- The constitutional violation is the prosecution’s use of such deliberately elicited statements as trial evidence after the right to counsel has attached.
Conclusion
The Court held that once adversarial proceedings have begun, the government may not use an informant and electronic monitoring to deliberately obtain incriminating statements from a represented defendant outside counsel’s presence and then introduce those statements at trial.