Massiah v. United States

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is orphaned as few or no other articles link to it.
Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. (October 2006)

Massiah v. United States

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued March 3, 1964
Decided May 18, 1964

Full case name:	Winston Massiah v. United States

Citations:	377 U.S. 201; 84 S. Ct. 1199; 12 L. Ed. 2d 246; 1964 U.S. LEXIS 1277

Prior history:	307 F.2d 62 (2d cir.) reversed

Holding

Once criminal proceedings have begun, the government cannot bypass the defendant's lawyer and try to elicit statements from the defendant.

Court membership

Chief Justice: Earl Warren
Associate Justices: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Tom C. Clark, John Marshall Harlan II, William J. Brennan, Jr., Potter Stewart, Byron White, Arthur Goldberg

Case opinions

Majority by: Stewart
Joined by: Goldberg, Brennan, Douglas, Black, Warren
Dissent by: White
Joined by: Clark, Harlan

Laws applied

U.S. Const. amend. VI

Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201 (1964),^[1] was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the government from eliciting statements about the defendant from him or herself after the point at which the Sixth Amendment right to counsel attaches.

In Massiah, the defendant had been indicted on a federal narcotics charge. He retained a lawyer, pled not guilty, and was released on bail. A co-defendant, after deciding to cooperate with the government, invited Massiah to sit in his car and discuss the crime he was indicted on, during which the government listened in via a radio transmitter. During the conversation, Massiah made several incriminating statements, and those statements were introducted at trial to be used against him.

Massiah appealed his conviction, which was affirmed in part by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 307 F.2d 62. The Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed holding that the statements made by the defendant outside the presence of his attorney must be suppressed.