The case arose from a second attempt to question Michael B. Shatzer, a Maryland man suspected of sexually abusing his young son. Mr. Shatzer, who was in prison for another sex crime, was first visited by a police detective in 2003. Mr. Shatzer invoked his rights under the 1966 decision in Miranda v. Arizona and refused to answer questions without a lawyer.
Two and a half years later, still in prison, Mr. Shatzer was approached by a different detective. This time, Mr. Shatzer waived his Miranda rights and made incriminating statements about abusing his son.
Mr. Shatzer’s lawyer moved to suppress those statements, relying on a 1981 Supreme Court decision, Edwards v. Arizona, which said that once a suspect had asked for a lawyer under Miranda, the authorities may not resume questioning.
The issue in Mr. Shatzer’s case, as Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for seven justices, was whether that prohibition on further questioning was “eternal.”
Justice Scalia said the main reason to forbid repeated attempts at questioning was to prevent badgering of a suspect held in custody while a crime was under investigation. He added that voluntary confessions were “an unmitigated good” and that suspects were always free to invoke their Miranda rights again when approached for further questioning.
Taken to an extreme, Justice Scalia added, the prohibition on further attempts at questioning would confer a sort of immunity on suspects who had once invoked their rights — even if the subsequent questioning concerned another crime in another jurisdiction.
The court could have answered only the question directly presented in Mr. Shatzer’s case — whether a gap of more than two years was sufficient to allow further efforts at questioning. In a concurrence endorsing the result but declining to adopt the majority’s reasoning, Justice John Paul Stevens said that was the route he would have taken.
But in a move that Justice Scalia conceded was “certainly unusual,” the justices in the majority picked a specific time period — 14 days after release from custody — after which the police could restart their efforts.
That ruling did not dispose of the case, Maryland v. Shatzer, No. 08-680, because Mr. Shatzer was, in one sense, in custody throughout. The majority ruled that a prison sentence was not custody in the relevant sense and that a return to the general prison population after questioning amounted to a break in custody for the purposes of Miranda and Edwards.
Justice Clarence Thomas joined only that last part of the decision. In his concurrence, Justice Thomas called the 14-day time limit arbitrary, saying that “0, 10 or 100 days” would have been equally plausible. He suggested that any break in custody was enough to let attempts at questioning resume.
Justice Scalia said that a bright-line 14-day rule provided valuable guidance to law enforcement officials. He added that two weeks provided “plenty of time for the suspect to get reacclimated to his normal life, to consult with friends and counsel, and to shake off any residual coercive effects of his prior custody.”
Justice Stevens, in his concurrence, was skeptical about those assertions. “The court gives no reason for that speculation,” he wrote, adding that it “may well prove inaccurate in many circumstances.”
The court also issued a Miranda-related decision on Tuesday. In Florida v. Powell, No. 08-1175, justices ruled that the police in Tampa, Fla., were entitled to give Miranda warnings that varied from the formula familiar to fans of television crime dramas. The alternative warnings used in Tampa told suspects about their right to consult a lawyer before questioning but did not in so many words tell them that they had a right to have the lawyer present during the questioning.