Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-06-02798/USCOURTS-ca8-06-02798-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Robert Lee Phillips
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

1

The HONORABLE GEORGE HOWARD, JR., United States District Judge

for the Eastern District of Arkansas, now deceased, adopting the Proposed Findings

and Recommendations of the HONORABLE JERRY W. CAVANEAU, United States

Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of Arkansas. 

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 06-2798

___________

United States of America, *

*

Plaintiff - Appellee, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the

* Eastern District of Arkansas.

Robert Lee Phillips, *

* [PUBLISHED]

Defendant - Appellant. *

___________

Submitted: June 11, 2007

Filed: October 29, 2007

___________

Before LOKEN, Chief Judge, ARNOLD and COLLOTON, Circuit Judges.

___________

PER CURIAM.

Robert Lee Phillips was arrested after a shooting at the Brown Sugar Club in

Altheimer, Arkansas. He made inculpatory statements during two police interviews

conducted many hours after the arrest. Phillips was charged with being a felon in

possession of a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Following an

evidentiary hearing, the district court1

 denied Phillips’s motion to suppress the

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statements, rejecting the contention that his waiver of Miranda rights was not knowing

and intelligent because he was intoxicated from ecstasy and brandy consumed prior

to his arrest. Phillips appeals his conviction and 110-month sentence, challenging the

denial of his motion to suppress and the district court’s determination of his advisory

guidelines sentencing range. We affirm.

I. The Suppression Issue

 

Officers dispatched to investigate the shooting were told to watch for a certain

car. They stopped that vehicle after a high-speed chase at 12:53 a.m. and arrested the

four occupants, including Phillips, who matched a description of the shooter. At 6:45

that morning, Investigator Gary Young awakened Phillips for an interview. Young

began the interview by having Phillips read and sign a Miranda waiver form. Phillips

then admitted that he went to the Brown Sugar Club with a handgun and fired the gun

into the air. He provided a description of the handgun. After Young reduced

Phillips’s statement to writing, Phillips read and initialed each page. At 2:35 p.m. the

following day, more than thirty-six hours after the arrests, Young conducted a second,

audio-taped interview after officers learned that Phillips had prior felony convictions

and found the handgun he described along a highway near where the shooting

occurred. Again, Young advised Phillips of his Miranda rights, and Phillips signed

a waiver form. Again, Phillips made incriminating statements. 

At the suppression hearing, the officers present during and after the arrests

testified that Phillips followed their directions, talked normally, denied knowing about

the shooting, and showed no signs of intoxication or drug impairment. Investigator

Young testified that Phillips appeared lucid and not intoxicated at each interview.

Phillips appeared to understand his rights when he signed the waiver forms and when

he initialed the written statement at the end of the first interview. Young noted that,

while Phillips made incriminating statements regarding the felon-in-possession

charge, he evidenced a “selective memory” whenever Young asked questions about

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the shooting. Phillips testified that he took four ecstasy pills and drank a large cup of

brandy in the hours before his arrest, that four ecstasy pills was an unusually large

dose for him, and that he had no recollection of events after he arrived at the Brown

Sugar Club, including the two interviews by Investigator Young many hours later.

Indeed, Phillips testified, the large dose of ecstacy caused him to sleep “about four

days” without eating or using the restroom. Based on this testimony, Phillips argued

to the district court and on appeal that he did not knowingly waive the rights protected

by Miranda warnings when he signed waiver forms at the start of the interviews. We

review the district court’s factual findings for clear error and its ultimate conclusion

that Phillips’s waiver was knowing and intelligent de novo. United States v.

Garlewicz, 493 F.3d 933, 935 (8th Cir. 2007). The court’s decisions as to witness

credibility “can almost never be clear error.” United States v. Contreras, 372 F.3d

974, 977 (8th Cir. 2004) (quotation omitted), cert. denied, 546 U.S. 902 (2005). 

A criminal suspect may waive the constitutional rights protected by Miranda

v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966). But the waiver must be voluntary, knowing, and

intelligent, that is, it must be “the product of a free and deliberate choice rather than

intimidation, coercion, or deception,” and the suspect must have a “full awareness of

both the nature of the right being abandoned and the consequences of the decision to

abandon it.” United States v. Jones, 23 F.3d 1307, 1313 (8th Cir. 1994), quoting

Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412, 421 (1986). Here, as Phillips does not claim that he

was intimidated, coerced, or deceived, the question is whether he sufficiently

understood the nature and consequences of his waivers. 

To determine whether Phillips was “sober and in control of his faculties” at the

time of his inculpatory statements, the district court had to weigh the credibility of

Phillips, Investigator Young, and the police officers present during and after Phillips’s

arrest. See Contreras, 372 F.3d at 977. The court found that Phillips’s testimony at

the suppression hearing that he was drug impaired and therefore could not remember

waiving his Miranda rights at interviews conducted six and thirty-eight hours after his

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arrest was simply incredible. The court found that this testimony was implausible

because thirty-eight hours “was surely adequate time for any impairment to dissipate,”

and because the testimony contradicted prior statements in which Phillips was able to

recall what happened on the night in question. Instead, the court believed the

testimony of the officers who arrested and interviewed Phillips that he was lucid and

cooperative and did not appear to be so intoxicated that he was unaware of his rights

and the consequences of waiving those rights. These findings are not clearly

erroneous. See United States v. Turner, 157 F.3d 552, 555-56 (8th Cir. 1998). The

motion to suppress was properly denied. 

II. Sentencing Issues

Adopting the recommendations of the Presentence Investigation Report, the

district court determined an advisory guidelines sentencing range of 110 to 120

months in prison and sentenced Phillips to 110 months, the bottom of that range. On

appeal, Phillips raises two sentencing issues. First, he argues that the district court

committed impermissible double counting when it used his two prior violent felony

convictions to increase both his base offense level under U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(2) and

his criminal history points under U.S.S.G. § 4A1.1(a). We disagree. “Double

counting is permissible if the Sentencing Commission intended that result and each

section concerns conceptually separate notions relating to sentencing.” United States

v. Rohwedder, 243 F.3d 423, 427 (8th Cir. 2001). The Guidelines in effect when

Phillips committed this offense expressly provided that “[p]rior felony conviction(s)

resulting in an increased base offense level under [§ 2K2.1(a)(2)] are also counted for

purposes of determining criminal history points pursuant to Chapter Four, Part A

(Criminal History).” U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1, comment. (n.15) (Nov. 2003), now U.S.S.G.

§ 2K2.1, comment. (n.10). These base offense level and criminal history provisions

address conceptually separate sentencing notions. One addresses the gravity of the

particular offense. The other addresses the need to deter future criminal activity by

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this defendant. See United States v. Wyckoff, 918 F.2d 925, 927 (11th Cir. 1990).

Thus, the district court did not engage in impermissible double counting.

Second, Phillips argues that the district court violated the Sixth Amendment as

construed in United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005), and in Apprendi v. New

Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), by imposing a four-level enhancement for use of a

firearm in connection with another felony offense without submitting that issue to the

jury. See U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(b)(5) (Nov. 2003), now U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(b)(6). This

contention is without merit. Because the sentencing guidelines are advisory under

Booker, enhancements to the advisory guidelines range may be based upon facts

found by the sentencing court by a preponderance of the evidence. See, e.g., United

States v. Pirani, 406 F.3d 543, 551 & n.4 (8th Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, 546 U.S.

909 (2005). When the proposed enhancement is based upon an offense for which

there was no prior conviction, as in this case, “the government must prove at

sentencing (by a preponderance of the evidence) that the defendant committed it.”

United States v. Raglin, No. 06-3432, slip op. at 3 (8th Cir. Sept. 4, 2007). Here,

Phillips does not challenge the district court’s finding that he committed the prior

offense in question. Accordingly, the enhancement was proper. 

The judgment of the district court is affirmed. 

____________________

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