Escobedo v. Illinois

Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478 (1964), was a United States Supreme Court case holding that criminal suspects have a right to counsel during police interrogations under the Sixth Amendment. The case was decided a year after the court held in Gideon v. Wainwright, that indigent criminal defendants had a right to be provided counsel at trial.

Background
Danny Escobedo's brother-in-law, Manuel, a convict from Chicago, was shot and killed on the night of January 19, 1960. The police detained Danny Escobedo early the next morning, tried without success to interrogate him, and eventually released him that afternoon. Ten days later, on January 30, the police interrogated Benedict DiGerlando, who told them that Escobedo fired the fatal shots. The police arrested and interrogated Escobedo that evening. Escobedo asked to speak to an attorney. His attorney went to police headquarters and tried to talk to Escobedo during the interrogation. Both requests were refused. When the police told Escobedo about DiGerlando's claim, Escobedo asked to confront him. When this happened, Escobedo implicated himself as an accessory in the murder, later confessed the same to a prosecuting attorney, and was eventually convicted for aiding and abetting.

Escobedo appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court, which initially held the confession inadmissible and reversed the conviction. Illinois petitioned for rehearing and the court then affirmed the conviction. Escobedo appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The ACLU argued before the Court as amicus curiae favoring Escobedo.

The Court's decision
The Supreme Court overturned Escobedo's conviction and recognized a suspect's right to an attorney during police interrogation. Writing for the majority, Justice Arthur Goldberg viewed the police interrogation in this case as more of an interrogation of a specific suspect than a general questioning of witnesses. As such, he held the distinction between pre- and post-indictment to be immaterial, since the police and prosecutor elicited a confession after they had already gotten the damning statement necessary to indict Escobedo. To hold otherwise, wrote Goldberg, would be to "exalt form over substance". The court had already recognized a right to counsel after indictment in Gideon v. Wainwright. Extending that precedent, it interpreted the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a right to counsel as applying to defendants from the time they become primary suspects.

Dissenting Opinions
Justice Potter Stewart's dissent essentially accused of majority of conflating the formal difference between pre and post-indictment questioning. Justice Byron White's dissent began with his disagreement about the applicability of cited precedent. He also criticized the majority's Constitutional interpretation, insisting that the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination elucidated the full intent of the framers to provide protection to suspects during police interrogation. All the dissenting opinions stressed the adverse impact the court's decision would have on combating crime and such.

Later developments
This holding was later overruled by Miranda v. Arizona, and the Supreme Court held that pre-indictment interrogations violates the Fifth Amendment, not the Sixth Amendment. As Escobedo was questioned during a custodial interrogation, the result for the appellant would have been the same.