## Facts

- A fire occurred at an apartment building in Lynn, Massachusetts, where responders found a shattered glass door panel, multiple small fires inside, and an apparent Molotov cocktail in a third-floor hallway.
- Witnesses reported a Black male in a distinctive Nissan sports car with a T-roof yelling toward a third-floor apartment and entering and exiting the building shortly before smoke was detected.
- Police issued a BOLO; officers soon located Edward Coker nearby in a matching Nissan with a straw hat and a silver baseball bat visible in the front seat.
- A search of the vehicle revealed rubber gloves and a butane lighter.
- Police arranged a show-up identification; two witnesses identified Coker as the person seen at the building immediately before the fire.
- Coker was arrested and charged in Massachusetts state court; he retained counsel for the state prosecution.
- After ATF became involved, ATF agents—aware Coker had counsel in the state case—interviewed him, administered Miranda warnings, obtained a written waiver, and elicited a confession to setting the fires.
- Coker was federally indicted for attempted arson under 18 U.S.C. § 844(i); the district court denied his motion to suppress the confession, a jury convicted him, and he appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether federal agents violated the Sixth Amendment right to counsel by interrogating a defendant about the same underlying conduct after counsel had been obtained in a related state prosecution.
2. If admission of the confession violated the Sixth Amendment, whether the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.

## Decision

- The First Circuit affirmed the conviction.
- The court assumed, without deciding, that the interrogation and resulting confession could have violated the Sixth Amendment under the most defendant-favorable theory (including potential limits on dual sovereignty in this setting).
- Any error in admitting the confession was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt because substantial independent evidence supported guilt, including eyewitness observations, show-up identifications, and corroborating physical items found in Coker’s car.

## Legal Principles

- An assumed Sixth Amendment right-to-counsel violation in obtaining or admitting a confession does not require reversal if the government proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant would have been convicted even without the confession.
- The Sixth Amendment right to counsel is offense-specific; questions may arise when overlapping state and federal prosecutions concern the same conduct under the dual sovereignty doctrine.
- A “sham prosecution” or collusion-based exception to dual sovereignty was treated as, at most, a theoretical possibility and did not warrant relief on the record presented.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Coker’s attempted arson conviction because, even assuming the confession was obtained in violation of the Sixth Amendment due to questioning without counsel after related state charges, the remaining evidence was strong enough to make any constitutional error harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.


United States v. Coker, 433 F.3d 39 (1st Cir. 2005)