COLUMBUS (LN) — The Ohio Supreme Court on Thursday reversed a lower court’s suppression of a defendant’s confession, holding that the state constitution’s right to counsel does not extend to preindictment police interrogations and that the defendant failed to unambiguously invoke his Sixth Amendment right to counsel during the interview.
Isaiah Morris was arrested for his involvement in several shootings and charged with felonious assault and weapon offenses. After his initial appearance, where a judge informed him of the charges, appointed counsel, and set bail, Morris was taken to the Hamilton County Justice Center for an interview with Cincinnati police detectives.
Morris waived his Miranda rights and signed a notification of rights form before the nearly two-hour interrogation began. For the first 40 minutes, detectives questioned Morris about an April 2022 shooting, during which he confessed to the crime and admitted the gun used was his.
The detectives then shifted focus to a February 2022 shooting at a pizza shop, alleging Morris’s gun was involved. Morris denied involvement, insisting he had only obtained the gun in April. Frustrated by the line of questioning, Morris asked, “Like, I can’t talk to a lawyer?”
Detective Gleckler responded, “Anybody can talk to a lawyer,” and repeated the statement after Morris shook his head. Morris then made a statement that the lower courts interpreted as an invocation of his right to counsel, though the Supreme Court found the remark ambiguous.
The trial court suppressed all statements Morris made during the interrogation, ruling that Article I, Section 10 of the Ohio Constitution provided a broader right to counsel than the Sixth Amendment. The First District Court of Appeals affirmed, relying exclusively on the state constitution and reasoning that it prohibited police from interrogating a represented defendant without counsel present, even if the defendant waived that right.
Writing for the majority, Justice DeWine rejected that interpretation, focusing on the text of Article I, Section 10, which guarantees the right to counsel “[i]n any trial, in any court.”
“We don’t ordinarily understand a preindictment police interrogation—conducted in a police interview room—to be part of a trial in any court,” DeWine wrote. “Nor is there any reason to think that a competent speaker of the English language at the time that Article I, Section 10 was adopted would have understood ‘trial’ to include the kind of police interrogation at issue in this case.”
The court noted that the term “trial” has historically referred to a formal judicial examination of evidence before a neutral decisionmaker, a definition that excludes police interrogations where evidence is being acquired rather than presented.
On the federal issue, the court held that Morris did not unambiguously invoke his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, a suspect must make an unambiguous and unequivocal request for counsel to require police to cease questioning.
The majority found Morris’s response to the detective’s statement about talking to a lawyer was ambiguous. Even crediting the lower courts’ interpretation that Morris said, “[Y]eah cause that’s—we goin’ to do that because I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the court ruled the statement did not clearly indicate a present desire for an attorney.
“That response is both ambiguous and equivocal. It’s not clear what ‘that’ is or when they are ‘goin’ to do’ it,” DeWine wrote. “The test is whether a reasonable officer, under the totality of the circumstances, would have understood Morris’s statement to be an unambiguous and unequivocal request for a lawyer in that moment.”
Chief Justice Kennedy dissented, arguing the court lacked jurisdiction to address the Sixth Amendment issue because the court of appeals had not ruled on it in the first instance. Kennedy agreed with the majority’s conclusion on the Ohio Constitution but would have remanded the case to the First District to resolve the federal question.
Morris is charged with 14 counts, including felonious assault and carrying a concealed weapon, stemming from the April shooting and a separate drug deal that resulted in a phone theft.