Jones v. Harrington, No. 13-56360 (9th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseDefendant was convicted of charges related to his involvement in a gang shooting that left one person dead and two injured. Defendant contends that officers were wrong to continue to interrogate him after he invoked his right to remain silent, and that his incriminating statements should not have been used against him. The court held that any reasonable jurist would have to conclude that when defendant said he did not want to talk “no more,” he meant it; the California Court of Appeal’s decision is both contrary to and an unreasonable application of clearly established Supreme Court law, and it is based on an unreasonable determination of the facts; by allowing the state to use defendant's post-invocation statements against him, even to argue that his initial invocation was ambiguous, is contrary to clearly established Supreme Court case law; and, given the pivotal role defendant’s statements played at trial, the trial court’s error was not harmless. Accordingly, the court reversed the judgment of the district court and remanded with instructions to grant the writ.
Court Description: Habeas Corpus. The panel reversed the district court’s judgment denying California state prisoner Kevin Jones’s habeas corpus petition challenging his murder conviction, and remanded with instructions to grant the writ, in a case in which Jones, after hours of police questioning with little progress, told the officers “I don’t want to talk no more.” The panel held that any reasonable jurist would have to conclude that when Jones said he did not want to talk “no more,” he meant it, and that by continuing to interrogate Jones after his invocation of his right to remain silent, the officers squarely violated Miranda v. Arizona. The panel wrote that the government cannot use against Jones anything he said after his invocation, and held that allowing the state to use his post-invocation statements against him, even to argue that his initial invocation was ambiguous, is contrary to clearly established Supreme Court case law. Dissenting, Judge O’Scannlain wrote that whether one believes that the California courts’ determination that Jones’s statement was not unambiguous when considered in full context to be correct or not, that determination rests on a reasonable application of clearly established Supreme Court law to the facts of the case and must therefore stand under the deferential standard of review. JONES V. HARRINGTON 3
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.