No. 22-6649

Dee Walter Mitchell, Jr. v. Christian Pfeiffer, Warden

Lower Court: Ninth Circuit
Docketed: 2023-01-27
Status: Denied
Type: IFP
Response WaivedIFP
Tags: coerced-confession coerced-testimony due-process fifth-amendment fourteenth-amendment juvenile-interrogation juvenile-rights miranda-rights police-interrogation
Latest Conference: 2023-02-24
Question Presented (from Petition)

1. Where police interrogators induce an unwilling 15-year-old murder suspect to
incriminate another by (1) omitting to advise him of his Miranda rights, (2)
interrogating him for hours in the middle of the night, (3) explaining who it is
they want him to incriminate and suggesting to him a factual scenario they will
accept, (4) threatening that if he does not cooperate, the other person will
certainly incriminate him, and the police and the courts will accept that other
person's statements, and the juvenile will have to spend the rest of his life in
prison; whereas, if he does cooperate, his cooperation will show the court that he
is worthy of rehabilitation instead of life imprisonment, have the juvenile
suspect's statements been coerced and made unreliable, so that the use of his trial
testimony against petitioner at his trial violated his Fifth and Fourteenth
Amendment right to due process of law?

2. Where, following such coercion by the police, the prosecution enters into a
written agreement with the juvenile that if he testifies against the person he has
incriminated in his coerced statements, he will be allowed to plead guilty to
voluntary manslaughter with a guaranteed maximum of 13 years, instead of life
imprisonment, and the juvenile testifies that he believes he must testify
consistently with what he said in the coerced statements in order to keep the
benefit of his agreement with the prosecution, is his testimony so unreliable that
its admission in evidence violates the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment due
process rights of the person incriminated by the testimony?

Question Presented (AI Summary)

Where police interrogation of a juvenile murder suspect violates due process

Docket Entries

2023-02-27
Petition DENIED.
2023-02-09
DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 2/24/2023.
2023-02-07
Waiver of right of respondent Christian Pfeiffer, Warden to respond filed.
2023-01-17
Petition for a writ of certiorari and motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis filed. (Response due February 27, 2023)

Attorneys

Christian Pfeiffer, Warden
David Andrew EldridgeCalifornia Department of Justice, Respondent
Dee W. Mitchell
Dee Walter Mitchell — Petitioner