Because Shatzer experienced a break in Miranda custody lasting more than two weeks between the first and second attempts at interrogation, Edwards does not mandate suppression of his 2006 statements.
- MARYLAND v . SHATZER (opinion by Justice Scalia)
Miranda is the well known Supreme Court ruling that required suspects be advised of their constitutional rights, including the right to remain silent and to a lawyer, before being questioned. This eminently reasonable judgment that a confession made without a knowledgeable understanding of one's rights is tainted was controversial at the time, but became well settled law.
Exceptions and confusions on just how to truly honor it continue to bedevil the courts as shown by a recent ruling on the proper wording of the warnings. Shatzer deals with an accepted principle arising from Miranda -- once someone declares they want an attorney, the interrogation must cease until they are able to see one. This provides a chance for them to get counsel on the proper path to take. The police cannot repeatedly "ask" them again and again beforehand, trying to wear down the person (often in jail) to waive his/her constitutional rights.
These rules are not expressly found in the Constitution, but are set up by the courts to insure that the basic rules, e.g., the right to remain silent and to have an attorney, are truly honored in practice. Such "judge made law," therefore is in effect a pragmatic means to insure that the government has clear rules to follow, even if in the process somewhat arbitrary rules are in effect as applied to various situations.
Shatzer expanded on this. It determined a "14 day rule" -- even in respect to someone in custody, if a person is questioned again after two weeks, a previous request for an attorney does not block re-questioning. Scalia explains the need to what some (including Thomas/Stevens* from in effect opposite directions) deemed an artificial time limit:
It is impractical to leave the answer to that question for clarification in future case-by-case adjudication; law enforcement officers need to know, with certainty and beforehand, when renewed interrogation is lawful.
Thus, following his desire for "bright line rules" but still sounding more like Breyer than himself, he justifies the new rule on what sounds like pragmatic grounds:
The 14-day limitation meets Shatzer’s concern that a break-in-custody rule lends itself to police abuse. He envisions that once a suspect invokes his Miranda right to counsel, the police will release the suspect briefly (to end the Edwards presumption) and then promptly bring him back into custody for reinterrogation. But once the suspect has been out of custody long enough (14 days) to eliminate its coercive effect, there will be nothing to gain by such gamesmanship—nothing, that is, except the entirely appropriate gain of being able to interrogate a suspect who has made a valid waiver of his Miranda rights.
That is, you have a basic principle, and 14 days is a reasonable means to practice it in the real world. Seven justices accepted this judgment in full. Putting aside the strength of Stevens' concurrence (the two 1/2 year span involved in the case is long enough even if 14 days might not be), it is a useful reminder of how Scalia works in practice. Sometimes, it is okay to follow precedent and create judge made rules to honor basic constitutional principles, originalist principles not really appearing to factor into the analysis much at all.
---
* As is his wont, Scalia takes time to answer Stevens' solo concurrence, adding to the long term Scalia/Stevens back and forth. For some reason, Thomas' concurrence is not as worthy of comment.