Fellers v. United States

An indictment initiates the adversarial process. From that moment onward, the government is prohibited from deliberately eliciting incriminating information from a defendant unless the defendant waives his right to assistance of counsel (Sixth Amendment). The Court had no doubt that the government deliberately elicited information from the defendant at his home. In fact, the officers told the defendant that they wanted to speak to him about his involvement in the crime for which he had been indicted. These statements were taken in violation of the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to have counsel present.

As for the defendant’s statements made at the jailhouse, the Court noted that it had not had the occasion to consider whether the Fifth Amendment’s Elstad taint rule (from Oregon v. Elstad (1985)) was applicable to a Sixth Amendment violation. The Court sent this issue back to the appellate court for further review.