Maine v. Moulton

*181Chief Justice Burger,

with whom Justice White and Justice Rehnquist join, and with whom Justice O’Con-nor joins as to Parts I and III, dissenting.

Today the Court holds that the Sixth Amendment prohibits the use at trial of postindictment statements made to a government informant, even where those statements were recorded as part of a good-faith investigation of entirely separate crimes. Nothing whatever in the Constitution or our prior opinions supports this bizarre result, which creates a new “right” only for those possibly habitual offenders who persist in criminal activity even while under…