The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday reversed a murder conviction and life sentence for a man interrogated by police after invoking his right to remain silent.

When police officers asked Michael Grant if he wanted to waive his Miranda rights and talk to them without an attorney present, he clearly said no, according to the unanimous opinion authored by Justice Keith Blackwell.

“I'm not waiving nothing,” Grant answered, based on the transcript Blackwell quoted. But police wore him down, telling him they wanted to hear his side and explain why he'd been arrested, and eventually he talked. According to the court, it seemed he was trying to help his cousin, Matthew Goins—whom Grant said had nothing to do with the crime and was just trying to get a ride home when the third man in Grant's car, Richard Davidson, got out and fatally shot another man, Christopher Walker, while attempting to steal a gold chain.

But police and prosecutors used Grant's statement against him, and both Grant and Davidson were convicted of murder in separate Fulton County Superior Court trials. Goins was acquitted in a trial with Grant.

“We find no harmful error with respect to Davidson,” Blackwell said. “We conclude, however, that the trial court erred when it admitted a statement against Grant that law enforcement officers elicited from him in a custodial interrogation after he unequivocally invoked his right to remain silent, and the state has failed to show that this error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Defense attorney Ben Goldberg said Monday: “In this case, the prosecution argued for what would have been an unprecedented narrowing of one of our most important constitutional rights. We are thankful for the Georgia Supreme Court's careful consideration in forcefully rejecting that argument.”

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said Monday evening by email, “We will definitely retry this case again. It is a murder.”

“As for as any comments about the court's decision, we can only add our general practice is to follow the facts and to leave the 'criticizing' and 'journalism' to others,” Howard continued. “We have represented the State and Fulton County in hundreds of matters before this court, with overwhelming success. In fact, our decisions outnumber other jurisdictions by a wide margin. It is my hope that readers of the opinion will keep these facts in mind when considering what was said in this single case.”

Assistant District Attorney Stephany Luttrell argued on behalf of Howard's office at oral arguments, during which the justices revealed their concerns.

“Counsel, it is incomprehensible to me that the state of Georgia is standing here making this argument,” Justice Nels Peterson told Luttrell, who had just argued that officers were not required to assume a suspect who said he didn't want to talk understood his right to remain silent under the landmark Miranda v. Arizona decision from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Presiding Justice David Nahmias chimed in that it was “scary that the largest county in Georgia has counsel and police officers that apparently believe what you are saying.”

A few minutes later, Blackwell urged Luttrell to shift to the state's claim that the defendant's incriminating statements were admissible because they came after he agreed to speak with one officer only if his partner wasn't in the room.

“I don't know that that one's a winner,” Blackwell said, “but it does have the virtue of not being completely frivolous.”

Luttrell pleaded, “If I could, Justice Blackwell, just one more thing,” before Peterson interrupted with, “That's a very bad idea.”

Christopher Walker died on March 12, 2013. According to Blackwell's opinion, Walker and his friend, Alberto Rodriguez, went out to eat at a Taco Bell in Alpharetta. Rodriguez later testified that, as he and Walker entered the restaurant, they passed three men who were outside talking to one another, later identified as Grant, Davidson and Goins. Rodriguez said he thought he noticed Goins eyeing the gold chain Walker wore around his neck. Later, when he and Walker came out of the restaurant, Rodriguez noticed that Grant's car had moved across the street and was now facing the Taco Bell. Three people were in the car, one of whom Rodriguez recognized as the same man who had been eyeing Walker's chain, but he said he didn't “think too much of it” at the time. He and Walker then proceeded to drive to Walker's home in Milton.

As Walker and Rodriguez were getting out of the car at home, they were approached by someone later identified as Davidson, who asked Walker and Rodriguez if they knew where to get some marijuana, according to the court. When they said no, Davidson at first started to walk away but returned and told Walker he liked his gold chain. Davidson then pulled out a gun and demanded Walker's chain. When Walker refused, Davidson held the gun to Walker's head and, following a brief struggle, shot him, the court said. As Rodriguez ran to call for help, he saw Davidson flee to Grant's car, and Grant then drove Davidson away from the scene “at a high rate of speed.” Walker died later that night.

A detective with the Milton Police Department posted information about the case, including surveillance footage from the Taco Bell, on “Crime Stoppers,” a service used by law enforcement to obtain help from the public in tracking down criminals. A woman who lived with Grant's brother saw the post and told police that the men in the Taco Bell video were Grant, Goins and Davidson, the court said. She also provided the tag number of a vehicle registered to Grant.

Grant was brought to the Roswell Police Department, where he was interrogated by Milton police. The interrogation was recorded on audio and video and played for the jury at trial. Following are excerpts from the transcript that Blackwell quoted in the opinion.

Detective: Do you want to waive your Miranda rights and let us tell you what this is about?

Defendant: Do I want to waive my rights? No.

Detective: You don't? So you don't know what it's about?

Defendant: I'm not waiving nothing.

Detective: So you don't, you don't want us to tell you?

Defendant: Not if it causes me to give up my rights, no … (Grant then asked the detective if he was under arrest, and the detective said he was.)

Defendant: Then I don't got nothing to say …

Then the officers told Grant he was under arrest for murder and other charges, left the interview room and returned 10 minutes later, at which time they read Grant his Miranda rights.

Detective: Want to hear your side of it, but we can't unless …

Defendant: If I'm already under arrest, then I've got nothing to say about nothing.

However, when one of the detectives again asked, “so you don't—you don't want to sign this and waive your rights,” Grant relented and agreed to sign, according to the opinion. Eventually he agreed to speak to the other detective, and he acknowledged being at the scene and driving the vehicle. He denied knowing about Davidson's plan to rob Walker and said he was only following Davidson's instruction to follow Walker and Rodriguez when they left the Taco Bell. When Davidson returned to the car, he said he had accidentally shot someone, according to Grant. However, in defending Goins, his cousin, Grant made an incriminating statement, saying that Goins “didn't know we was doing none of that; he didn't know we was going to do that; he didn't know we planned on doing nothing; he was just trying to get home.”

Blackwell's 22-page opinion had a lot to say in footnotes.

“We note that, in this case, not only would a reasonable police officer have understood Grant to have invoked his right to remain silent, but the record shows that the police officers conducting the custodial interrogation of Grant actually understood that he had done so yet continued to badger him to change his mind,” Blackwell said in footnote 8.

But it is Blackwell's footnote 9 that the defense attorney, Goldberg, said goes to the heart of the case. The footnote takes up nearly an entire page. “On appeal, the prosecution has continued to urge (as it did in the trial court) that the investigators were not obligated to respect the invocations of the right to remain silent until they had satisfied themselves that Grant understood those rights, and they could satisfy themselves only by reading the Miranda warnings. To begin, it was the investigators who first made reference to 'Miranda,' Grant unequivocally said that he understood his 'Miranda rights' in response to that reference and prior to the reading of the Miranda warnings, and he said nothing that gave reason to doubt that he understood the nature of his right to remain silent.”

Blackwell went on to say that police had no excuse to believe Grant didn't know what he meant when he said he had nothing to say.

“Nor is it surprising that an ordinary citizen might know of his 'Miranda rights' prior to the reading of Miranda warnings; the warnings are now deeply ingrained in our popular culture, and virtually anyone who has watched more than a couple of episodes of Law & Order could probably recite the Miranda warnings,” Blackwell said. “More important, however, the Miranda warnings are a shield for persons in police custody; they cannot be interrogated until they have been advised of their rights and have then voluntarily relinquished them. The warnings are not a sword for the police, a means for police to deny the right of a citizen to remain silent—a right that exists independent of the Miranda decision and is secured by the Fifth Amendment itself (and the Georgia Constitution).”

Blackwell went on to say that, even after officers had “broken the will to resist Interrogation,” still Grant “again unequivocally invoked the right to remain silent after the Miranda warnings were read. The position of the prosecution is baseless.”