High Court Strengthens Miranda Ruling : Law: The justices order that all police questioning must cease after a suspect asks for legal counsel. The decision overturns a Mississippi murder case.

The Supreme Court strengthened the Miranda doctrine Monday, ruling that police may not question a suspect without his attorney present after he has asked for legal counsel.

The 6-2 ruling overturns the murder conviction and death sentence of Robert Minnick, a Mississippi man who was arrested and questioned in a San Diego jail after he had consulted a lawyer. Minnick will be retried.

The Mississippi courts allowed the use of Minnick’s confession because he had voluntarily talked to police after he talked to his lawyer.

But the Supreme Court instead announced a strict rule that makes a confession invalid if it grows out of police questioning after the suspect has asked for an attorney.

“We now hold that when counsel is requested, interrogation must cease,” said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in writing for the majority in the case (Minnick vs. Mississippi, 89-6332). Moreover, “officials may not reinitiate interrogation without counsel present,” he declared.

In most instances, police already stop all questioning of a suspect once he asks for a lawyer. However, FBI agents are instructed to seek a “second interview” with a suspect after he has spoken with his attorney, and they will be forced to change that tactic.

Kennedy’s opinion Monday was supported by two other conservative justices, Sandra Day O’Connor and Byron R. White, and by the court’s three remaining liberals: Justices Harry A. Blackmun, Thurgood Marshall, and John Paul Stevens. The newest justice, David H. Souter, did not take part in the ruling.

The decision comes as a surprise from a court that had often undercut the Miranda doctrine.

“They have nibbled away at it (Miranda) for years,” said Georgetown University law professor William Greenhalgh, a criminal law expert. “It’s certainly a surprise to see one go the other way.”

In 1966, the court ruled in the Miranda case that police must tell a suspect of his rights, including his right to speak with a lawyer, before they ask him questions. Until today’s decision, the law was unclear about whether police could speak to the suspect alone after he had consulted an attorney.

Repeatedly, the court in the last five years has carved out exceptions to the Miranda rule to allow the use of confessions. For example, the court last year upheld the use of police “trickery” to gain a confession by putting an informant in the suspect’s jail cell, even though the Miranda opinion said that suspects must “knowingly” waive their rights.

Some conservatives and law enforcement officials hoped that the Supreme Court would go further and eventually overturn the Miranda doctrine. Before, confessions could be used as long as they were not “compelled” by the police.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia dissented from Monday’s ruling, calling it “misguided.” Scalia wrote: “We should rejoice at an honest confession, rather than pity the ‘poor fool’ who made it.”

On April 26, 1986, the day after Minnick and another man escaped from a county jail, the two allegedly invaded a mobile home and shot two men. Two young women saw the pair flee. Four months later, Minnick was arrested in Lemon Grove, Calif., and held in a San Diego jail.

Minnick initially refused to talk to FBI agents and consulted with a public defender. But a few days later, a local sheriff arrived from Mississippi, and Minnick told him that he had been at the mobile home but only killed one of the men at the urging of his accomplice. When Minnick is retried, that statement can’t be used against him.

In another action, the court let stand a ruling that limits the amounts of federally subsidized water that can go to farmers and water districts in California’s Central and Solano valleys. Congress limited the water subsidies in 1982, but the water districts contended the move violated their contractual and constitutional rights. (Peterson vs. U.S. Department of Interior, 90-357).