Where Defendant Is Represented on a Pending Charge and Seeks Leniency by Cooperation with Police in the Investigation of An Unrelated Offense, the Police Cannot Question the Defendant About the Unrelated Offense in the Absence of Counsel Unless Defendant Affirmatively Waives His Right to Counsel In Counsel’s Presence

The Court of Appeals, in a full-fledged opinion by Judge Smith, over a dissent, determined that defendant, who was represented by counsel in a pending criminal matter, should not have been questioned in the absence of counsel about another crime.  Defendant, in an attempt to gain leniency, told the police he knew that a friend had committed a stabbing. The police met with the defendant to “wire him up” for a meeting with his friend.  Defendant's attorney, Schwarz, knew defendant was meeting with the police for that purpose.  During the meeting, the defendant was questioned about the stabbing and eventually he admitted he had committed that crime.  He was then read his Miranda rights, which he waived.  The Court of Appeals held that none of the questioning about defendant's involvement with the stabbing should have be done without defendant's affirmative waiver of his right to counsel, in the presence of defendant's attorney:

Defendant relies on the rule, long established in New York, that “[o]nce an attorney enters the proceeding, the police may not question the defendant in the absence of counsel unless there is an affirmative waiver, in the presence of the attorney, of the defendant's right to counsel” … . The People respond that this rule does not apply here because the “proceeding” in which the police questioned defendant on …—their investigation of the supermarket stabbing ——was one that no attorney had entered. Schwarz, in the People's view, represented defendant only in the burglary case, about which he was not questioned.

We do not find this a viable distinction. The stabbing investigation cannot be neatly separated from Schwarz's representation of defendant in the burglary case. Defendant had pinned his hopes for a favorable result in the burglary case on his cooperation with the police investigation of the stabbing. Under these circumstances, Schwarz's duty to his client required him to concern himself with both cases.

Schwarz was not, of course, retained to defend the stabbing case: before the April 19 meeting, defendant had not been charged with the stabbing, and no such charge seemed likely. But Schwarz's obligation in defending the burglary case included an obligation to be alert to, and to avert if he could, the possibility that defendant's cooperation would hurt rather than help him. No responsible lawyer in Schwarz's situation would concern himself with the burglary case alone, indifferent to the disaster that might strike defendant if he incriminated himself in the stabbing.

We therefore conclude that defendant's right to counsel encompassed his conversations with police about the stabbing, as long as those conversations were part of an effort to obtain leniency in the burglary case in which Schwarz represented him. Thus, unless the right to counsel was waived, the police should not have questioned defendant about the stabbing in his lawyer's absence. People v Johnson, 2014 NY Slip Op 08787, CtApp 12-17-14