Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-12-56650/USCOURTS-ca9-12-56650-1/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Greg Lewis
Appellee
Adrian Reyes
Appellant

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

ADRIAN REYES,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

GREG LEWIS, Warden,

Respondent-Appellee.

No. 12-56650

D.C. No.

5:12-cv-00691-GAF-E

ORDER AND

AMENDED OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

Gary A. Feess, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted November 19, 2014

Pasadena, California

Filed August 14, 2015

Amended August 17, 2016

Before: William A. Fletcher and Jay S. Bybee, Circuit

Judges, and James K. Singleton, Senior District Judge.*

* The Honorable James K. Singleton, Senior District Judge for the U.S.

District Court for the District of Alaska, sitting by designation.

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2 REYES V. LEWIS

Order;

Concurrence in Order by Judge W. Fletcher;

Dissent to Order by Judge Callahan;

Dissent to Order by Judge Bea;

Opinion by Judge W. Fletcher;

Concurrence by Judge Singleton

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REYES V. LEWIS 3

SUMMARY**

Habeas Corpus

The panel issued an order replacing the opinion filed

August 14, 2015, with an amended opinion, and rejecting an

en banc call, in a case in which the panel reversed the district

court’s denial of a habeas corpus petition alleging that

petitioner’s state-court conviction rested on a confession

obtained in violation of Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600

(2004).

The panel held that Justice Kennedy’s Seibert

concurrence, based on a rationale narrowing the result

reached by the Seibert plurality, constitutes “clearly

established” Supreme Court law for the purpose of AEDPA

review. Under this concurrence, a post-Miranda-warning

statement must be suppressed if interrogating officers

deliberately use the two-step interrogation technique that was

used in Seibert, and if effective curative measures are not

taken to ensure that the suspect genuinely understood the

Miranda warnings. The two-step technique involves

interrogating in successive, unwarned and warned phases.

The panel held that under the circumstances of this

case ̄where police interrogated the fifteen-year-old

petitioner over the course of two days; where on the first day

at a police station they conducted a two-hour unwarned

interrogation; where on the second day at a sheriff’s station

they obtained a confession during an unwarned interrogation

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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4 REYES V. LEWIS

following an unwarned polygraph test; and where they

transported the petitioner back to the police station and

obtained a postwarning confession “clarifying” what he had

stated at the sheriff’s station ̄a Seibert analysis was clearly

required.

The panel held that the California Court of Appeal

applied a rule that was contrary to federal law as clearly

established by the Supreme Court in Seibert, and thus was

owed no deference, when it concluded that the petitioner’s

postwarning confession was admissible solely on the ground

that his unwarned custodial statement was voluntary, and that

his subsequent warned statement therefore was also

necessarily voluntary. 

The panel held that police officers deliberately employed

a two-step interrogation technique, and that they did not take

appropriate “curative measures,” in violation of Seibert. The

panel therefore held that the petitioner’s postwarning

confession should have been suppressed.

The panel remanded with instructions to grant the writ

unless the petitioner is tried within a reasonable time, not to

exceed 180 days.

Concurring, District Judge Singleton wrote that the

California Court of Appeal’s conclusions of law are in

conformity with Seibert and Justice Kennedy’s concurrence,

but its findings of fact are unreasonable in context.

Concurring in the denial of rehearing en banc, Judge W.

Fletcher, joined by Judge Bybee, made four points in

response to Judge Callahan’s dissent from the denial of the

petition for rehearing en banc.

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REYES V. LEWIS 5

Dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc, Judge

Callahan, joined by Judges O’Scannlain, Tallman, Bea, and

Ikuta, wrote that the panel wrongly concludes that Judge

Kennedy’s subjective-intent requirement in Seibert is clearly

established Supreme Court law, wrongly permits federal

courts to read the worst into state court decisions on habeas

review, and wrongly requires all courts to presume the worst

of police officers in applying Seibert. 

Dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc, Judge

Bea joins Judge Callahan’s dissent, but wrote separately to

reiterate his view that United States v. Davis, 2016 WL

3245043 (9th Cir. June 13, 2016) (en banc), which adopted a

reasoning-based approach when interpreting splintered

Supreme Court decisions rather than a results-based

approach, was wrongly decided.

COUNSEL

Elizabeth Armena Missakian (argued), SanDiego,California,

for Petitioner-Appellant.

Kevin Vienna (argued), Supervising Deputy Attorney

Genera; David Delgado-Rucci, and Daniel Rodgers, Deputy

Attorneys General; Julie L. Garland, Senior Assistant

Attorney General; Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General;

Office of the Attorney General San Diego, California, for

Respondent-Appellee

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6 REYES V. LEWIS

ORDER

The opinion filed August 14, 2015, and reported at

798 F.3d 815, is hereby amended, and is replaced by the

Amended Opinion attached hereto.

A judge requested a vote on whether to rehear the case en

banc. The case failed to receive a majority of the votes of the

non-recused active judges in favor of en banc consideration. 

See Fed. R. App. P. 35.

Future petitions for panel rehearing or rehearing en banc

will not be entertained.

W. FLETCHER, concurring in the denial of rehearing en

banc, joined by Judge BYBEE. Judge Singleton may not vote

on petitions for rehearing en banc, but he agrees with what is

written here.

We make four points in response to Judge Callahan’s

dissent from the denial of the petition for rehearing en banc.

First, the dissent begins:

Fifteen-year-old Adrian Reyes confessed

to killing sixteen-year-old Derek Ochoa in a

drive-by shooting. He first confessed after

acknowledging many times that he was not

under arrest and was not required to talk,

freely leaving two previous police interviews,

taking a polygraph that he and his parents not

only consented to but that Reyes initially

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REYES V. LEWIS 7

suggested, and then asking to speak with

detectives. After Reyes confessed, those

detectives drove him to another location

where they told him that he was no longer free

to leave and read him his Miranda rights. He

again confessed.

Dissent at 10.

An unsuspecting reader might conclude that Reyes was

not in custody when he “first confessed,” and that his first

confession was therefore not taken in violation of Miranda. 

The reader would be mistaken. The California Court of

Appeal explicitly held to the contrary. It wrote:

It is not disputed that defendant was in

custody after completion of the polygraph

exam, when [polygraph examiner] Heard told

defendant he had failed the polygraph test and

had lied about his nonparticipation in the

murder. Because defendant was not advised

of his Miranda rights at this point, his

statements made thereafter, while at the

sheriff’s station, were inadmissible under

Miranda v. Arizona[.]

People v. Reyes, No. D047521, 2010 WL 3026227, at *7

(Cal. Ct. App. Aug. 4, 2010).

Second, the dissent contends that Justice Kennedy’s

concurrence in Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600 (2004), does

not provide the controlling test in two-step interrogation

cases. We first concluded in 2006 that Justice Kennedy’s

concurrence provides the controlling test. See United States

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8 REYES V. LEWIS

v. Williams, 435 F.3d 1148 (9th Cir. 2006). Of the seven

circuits that have addressed the issue, six agree with us. See

United States v. Capers, 627 F.3d 470, 476 (2d Cir. 2010);

United States v. Torres-Lona, 491 F.3d 750, 758 (8th Cir.

2007); United States v. Street, 472 F.3d 1298, 1313 (11th Cir.

2006); United States v. Courtney, 463 F.3d 333, 338 (5th Cir.

2006); United States v. Kiam, 432 F.3d 524, 532 (3d Cir.

2006); United States v. Mashburn, 406 F.3d 303, 309 (4th

Cir. 2005). The seventh concludes that Justice Souter’s

plurality controls. See United States v. Ray, 803 F.3d 244,

272 (6th Cir. 2015). That conclusion cannot help the dissent

because Justice Souter’s test is less favorable to police

interrogators; an interrogation that fails Justice Kennedy’s

test will necessarily fail Justice Souter’s test. Three other

circuits have applied both Justice Kennedy and Justice

Souter’s tests without choosing between the two. See United

States v. Widi, 684 F.3d 216, 221 (1st Cir. 2012); United

States v. Lee, 618 F.3d 667, 678 (7th Cir. 2010); United

States v. Carrizales-Toledo, 454 F.3d 1142, 1151 (10th Cir.

2006).

Third, the dissent contends that our opinion “permits

federal courts to read the worst into state court decisions on

habeas review,” and that it “requires all courts to presume the

worst of police officers in applying Seibert.” Dissent at 11. 

We strongly disagree. We carefully provide AEDPA

deference to the decision of the California Court of Appeal,

and our opinion presumes the contrary.

Two of us, Judges Fletcher and Bybee, conclude that the

Court of Appeal misunderstood both Miranda and Seibert,

and that its decision was “contrary to” those cases, when it

tested the validity of Reyes’s confession based on whether it

had been voluntary. It has been clearly established Supreme

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REYES V. LEWIS 9

Court law, ever since Miranda, that the test for admissibility

of a confession is not whether it was voluntary. Rather, the

test is whether it was taken in violation of Miranda.

All three of us conclude that the Court of Appeal made an

“unreasonable determination of the facts” in concluding that,

in employing their two-step interrogation, the officers did not

deliberately undermine the effectiveness of the Miranda

warning that was eventually provided. We describe in

painstaking detail every interaction between the officers and

Reyes. We unanimously conclude that a court cannot

reasonably determine, based on the factual record, that the

officers did not deliberately undermine the effectiveness of

the Miranda warning.

Fourth, the dissent says that our decision “let[s] a

confessed murderer walk.” Dissent at 11. We are not as

confident as the dissent that Reyes is, in fact, a murderer. 

There is reason to believe that fifteen-year-old Reyes

confessed to a crime he did not commit.

Except for Reyes’s confession, the evidence at trial

pointed to Reyes’s cousin, Munoz, as the shooter. It is

undisputed that Reyes was a passenger in the back seat, and

that Munoz was the driver. Two witnesses testified that the

driver of the car shot the victim. One of those witnesses

identified Munoz as the driver and shooter. The other witness

testified that the driver was the shooter, but could not identify

Munoz. Two other witnesses testified that they heard shots,

but did not see the shooting. None of the witnesses testified

that the shooter had been a passenger in the back seat.

Reyes did not want to snitch on his older cousin. During

the interrogation, Reyes said, “Well, if I say something like

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10 REYES V. LEWIS

what’s going to happen with my cousin? Is he still gonna go

to jail? . . . He had nothing to do with it.” Further, Reyes may

well have thought that a confession would have limited

adverse consequences for him. Before Reyes made his incustody confession, Officer Heard had told him, “[Y]ou have

my word I won’t trick you,” and “Fifteen-year-olds don’t go

to state prison, Adrian.”

In sum, our opinion gives full deference under AEDPA to

the decision of the California Court of Appeal. After careful

consideration of the entire record and of the decision of the

Court of Appeal, we conclude that the decision was “contrary

to” Seibert, and that it was based on an unreasonable factual

determination that the interrogating officers did not

deliberately undermine the effectiveness of their belated

Miranda warning.

CALLAHAN, Circuit Judge, with whom, O’SCANNLAIN,

TALLMAN, BEA, and IKUTA, Circuit Judges, join,

dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc:

Fifteen-year-old Adrian Reyes confessed to killing

sixteen-year-old Derek Ochoa in a drive-byshooting. He first

confessed after acknowledging many times that he was not

under arrest and was not required to talk, freely leaving two

previous police interviews, taking a polygraph that he and his

parents not only consented to but that Reyes initially

suggested, and then asking to speak with detectives. After

Reyes confessed, those detectives drove him to another

location where they told him that he was no longer free to

leave and read him his Miranda rights. He again confessed. 

A jury found Reyes guilty of first-degree murder. The state

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REYES V. LEWIS 11

appellate court affirmed, the California Supreme Court denied

Reyes’s petition for review, and the U.S. Supreme Court

denied certiorari. In a supreme display of Ninth Circuit

legerdemain, the panel majority reviewed de novo, found that

Reyes’s confession was obtained in violation of Missouri v.

Seibert, 542 U.S. 600 (2004), and thus reversed the district

court’s denial of habeas relief. The panel truly conjured its

magic from nothing—the panel did not watch the videos of

the police interviews, Reyes argued to the state appellate

court that a deliberate Miranda violation was not at issue, and

Reyes never mentioned Seibert in federal court until the panel

told him to.

Like the district court and state court judges, I disagree

with the panel, which makes three errors of exceptional

importance. First, the panel wrongly concludes that Justice

Kennedy’s subjective-intent requirement in Seibert, which

seven other Justices rejected, is clearly established Supreme

Court law. Second, the panel wrongly permits federal courts

to read the worst into state court decisions on habeas review. 

Third, the panel wrongly requires all courts to presume the

worst of police officers in applying Seibert. The panel’s

decision not only misunderstands Seibert, conflicts with our

recent en banc decisions, and creates circuit splits, but also

threatens to interfere with reasonable police work and let a

confessed murderer walk.

I respectfully dissent from this court’s failure to rehear

this case en banc.

I.

This case’s background is important to understanding

how far the panel strayed from the scope of its review under

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12 REYES V. LEWIS

the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996

(AEDPA). While the panel’s coverage of this background is

incomplete in other respects, I will only supplement the

panel’s depiction of Reyes’s third police interview and this

case’s procedural history.

A. Factual background

Police officers questioned Reyes about Ochoa’s murder

on January 13, 2006, February 9, 2006, and February 10,

2006. Reyes was told that he was not under arrest at the first

two interviews, and he left both interviews free. At the

February 9th interview, Reyes offered to take a polygraph

test.

The following day, Reyes voluntarily returned to the San

Bernardino County Sheriff’s station to take the polygraph

test. Reyes’s parents consented to the test, which Robert

Heard, the San Bernardino Sheriff’s polygrapher,

administered. Heard first explained at great length that Reyes

was not under arrest, and Reyes responded that he

understood. Heard noted that Reyes’s parents had given

permission for Reyes to take the test but emphasized that

“[t]he decision on whether or not Adrian is gonna take a

polygraph exam is with Adrian. That’s your decision. 

Okay?” Heard reiterated, “After we talk or at any time you

can say you know what Bob? I ain’t spillin’, I don’t wanna

talk to you anymore. I wanna go. Just say so. You’re out a

here, you’re gone, you with me?” Reyes said he understood. 

Heard walked Reyes through a consent form in detail. Reyes

read part of the form aloud, stating “I understand that I cannot

be forced to take this test. And you know what? I have the

right at any time to leave . . . my examination room.” Reyes

confirmed that he understood the consent form and signed it.

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REYES V. LEWIS 13

After several “dry runs” during which Reyes contradicted

his previous narrative by placing himself in the silver Toyota

Camry involved in the shooting near the scene and time of

Ochoa’s murder, Reyes took the polygraph and denied

involvement in the murder. Heard told Reyes that he failed

the test. Heard continued questioning, appealed to the

importance of telling the truth, and suggested that Reyes tell

him if there were any mitigating circumstances. Reyes stated

a few times that he didn’t want to talk any more during the

questioning that followed, but he never sought to end the

interview and leave. Reyes asked what would happen if he

didn’t say anything. Heard responded that the investigation

would continue—“They’re gonna work it, and they’re gonna

put it together.” Reyes later said he didn’t want to talk “cause

even if I say anything or if I don’t, everybody[] that they got

on the list is gonna do 25 years prison.” Reyes asked, “So if

I say who the shooter was, I’m still gonna go to jail?” Heard

responded more than once that he did not have an answer to

that question, though Heard had previously stated that fifteenyear olds don’t go to state prison.

Reyes asked for some time and Heard offered to wait

outside, but Reyes then said “No, it’s alright.” After Heard

asked another question, Reyes responded “not that I know,

you know, so don’t ask any question.” Heard asked Reyes if

he wanted to be alone, and Reyes responded “No, it’s just,

just don’t ask any questions.” When Heard said he was not

just going to sit there and do nothing, Reyes asked, “Can we

just call the detectives?”

Shortly thereafter, in the same room, Detectives Brandt

and Medici questioned Reyes. When Brandt asked whether

Reyes was in the front passenger seat, Reyes stated “No, I’ll

say nothing, man.” Reyes refused to identify the other person

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14 REYES V. LEWIS

in the car and stated that “we’re still gonna do time in jail

anyway.” Detective Brandt responded that the jail time “may

be minimal or it, it may be a lot, but like we told you

yesterday, uh, people have, you have to tell the, the truth.” 

Detective Brandt later asked Reyes how many 15-year olds

he knew that went to jail for 25 years and why Reyes would

be any different. Later in the interrogation, however, Reyes

continued to acknowledge that he would do “25 years to life”

if he shot Ochoa.

Not long after the Detectives began questioning, Reyes

confessed that he shot Ochoa: “I just shot.” As Ochoa

approached the car, Reyes felt afraid and “got mad. [He]

opened the door so he would like back up.” Then he shot. As

the panel majority observes, “Reyes’s statement that he had

shot Ochoa came early in the interview, on the seventh page

of the transcript.” Maj. Op. 48. After this confession, the

detectives continued questioning and tried unsuccessfully to

determine who else was involved.

After the interview at the San Bernardino Sheriff’s station

concluded, Detective Brandt drove Reyes back to the

Riverside police station where Detectives Brandt and Medici

again questioned Reyes. It is unclear how much time passed,

but the panel states that the station was 15 miles away. At the

beginning of the interview, Brandt explained that Reyes was

no longer free to leave and thus Brandt was required to read

Reyes his Miranda rights. After reading him his rights,

Brandt then asked if they could “talk about stuff we talked

about earlier today?” Reyes said yes. In the interrogation

that followed, the detectives did not use the earlier interview

to impeach Reyes. The only reference back was to an earlier

statement by Reyes that Ochoa had thrown something at the

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REYES V. LEWIS 15

car. Reyes admitted to shooting Ochoa but said Ochoa

looked like he also had a gun.

B. Procedural background

Reyes was charged in California Superior Court with

first-degree murder. At the outset of the trial, Reyes sought

to suppress the statements he had made to law enforcement

on February 10, 2006. Following an evidentiary hearing, the

trial judge suppressed the statements Reyes made before

being advised of his Miranda rights, finding that Reyes had

been in custody. The trial judge did not suppress the postwarning statements. The jury found Reyes guilty of firstdegree murder with gang and firearm enhancements.

Reyes appealed, claiming, among other things, that the

trial court erred in admitting his post-warning confession. 

Reyes argued that “the coercive atmosphere of the

involuntary statements was never dissipated” and that the

“admonition of rights was too little, too late.” He did not

argue that the detectives deliberately violated Miranda. In

fact, Reyes argued at length in his reply brief in the state

appellate court that the State had incorrectly characterized

Seibert as requiring “coordinated interrogation tactics

designed to produce an unwarned confession.”1In other

1 The State had argued in its answering brief that there was no Miranda

violation and that Seibert was distinguishable because, among other

reasons, “[t]here was no evidence of a police policy of coordinated tactics

designed to produce an un-warned confession.” In one paragraph of his

state habeas petition, Reyes argued that some tactics that the officers used,

namely sneering and refusing to “respect petitioner’s efforts to end the

interrogation,” were “deliberate” and “flagrant” misconduct. But he did

not argue that the officers employed a two-part interrogation in deliberate

violation of Miranda, even after the State had addressed this issue.

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16 REYES V. LEWIS

words, according to Reyes, whether the officers deliberately

employed a two-part interrogation tactic designed to

undermine the import of subsequent Miranda warnings was

not at issue. Rather, the operative question, according to

Reyes himself, was whether “appellant’s post-polygraph

statements were voluntary,” and, if not, “whether the taint

from the involuntary admissions was dissipated before the

stationhouse admissions were made.”

The state appellate court affirmed in a lengthy, reasoned

decision. People v. Reyes, No. D047521, 2010 WL 3026227

(Cal. Ct. App. Aug. 4, 2010). Because it was uncontested that

the detectives did not violate Miranda in bad faith, the state

appellate court agreed with Reyes on the relevant legal

inquiry. The court explained, “[A]s defendant recognizes, the

fact the interrogation at the sheriff’s station was not

accompanied by Miranda advisals does not invalidate the

later Mirandized statements unless the later admissions were

in fact involuntary or the tainted product of the initial

statements or confession.” Id. at *12. Applying this

standard, the court determined that Reyes’s pre- and postwarning confessions were voluntary and thus the postwarning confession was admissible. The court distinguished

Seibert, explaining that “the circumstances in the instant case

need not ‘be seen as challenging the comprehensibility and

efficacy of the Miranda warnings to the point that a

reasonable person in the suspect’s shoes would not have

understood them to convey a message that [he] retained a

choice about continuing to talk.’” Id. at *13 (alteration in

original) (quoting Seibert, 542 U.S. at 616 (plurality

opinion)).

Reyes sought review of the state appellate court’s

decision by the California Supreme Court. In his briefs

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REYES V. LEWIS 17

before the California Supreme Court, Reyes did not mention

Seibert. The California Supreme Court denied his petitions. 

The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari.

Reyes then filed a petition for habeas corpus in federal

district court. In his briefs below, he again did not mention

Seibert. Magistrate Judge Eick issued a 53-page report and

recommendation that relief be denied. District Judge Feess

adopted the report in full. Consistent with Reyes’s

arguments, and like the state appellate court, the district court

focused on whether a reasonable jurist could conclude that

Reyes’s confessions were voluntary. However, the district

court raised and distinguished Seibert because “there is no

evidence that the law enforcement officers deliberately

applied a two-step method, and the state courts reasonably

concluded that Petitioner’s post-warning statements were

voluntarily made.”

Reyes then appealed to the Ninth Circuit. On appeal, he

did not cite Seibert or take issue with the district court’s

conclusion that the detectives had not employed a two-part

interrogation in deliberate violation of Miranda. The panel

nonetheless ordered “supplemental briefing on the

applicability of [Seibert] to this case.” Reyes’s supplemental

brief marked the first time that he clearly argued that the

officers’ “failure to warn . . . was not made in good faith and

was . . . a deliberate attempt to deprive him of his

constitutional rights.” The panel reviewed de novo the

Seibert argument that it directed Reyes to make and, after

engaging in appellate fact-finding on a record that did not

even include the videos of the police interviews, found it

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18 REYES V. LEWIS

persuasive.2 The panel thus reversed the district court’s

denial of habeas relief and ordered that relief be granted if

Reyes is not retried for Ochoa’s now ten-and-a-half-year-old

murder.

II.

In reversing the district court’s denial of habeas relief, the

panel committed three critical errors, any one of which should

have prompted en banc review.

A. The panel wrongly concluded that Justice Kennedy’s

lone concurrence in Seibert is clearly established

Supreme Court law.

The panel’s amended opinion holds that Justice

Kennedy’s lone concurrence in Seibert is clearly established

law under the reasoning-based approach to applying Marks v.

United States, 430 U.S. 188 (1977). We recently adopted the

reasoning-based or “common-denominator-of-the-reasoning

rule” in United States v. Davis, — F.3d —, 2016 WL

3245043 (9th Cir. June 13, 2016) (en banc). In Davis, we

concluded that Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence in Freeman

v. United States, 564 U.S. 522 (2011), was not controlling

under the reasoning-based rule because the Freeman plurality

and dissent explicitly rejected the concurrence’s reasoning. 

Davis, 2016 WL 3245043, at *6 (“The Freeman plurality

explicitly rejected the concurrence’s reasoning.”); id. at *9

(“The Freeman dissent is similarly critical of Justice

Sotomayor . . . .”); see also id. (emphasizing that “Justice

2 The state appellate court and district court referenced videos of the

interviews, but none was included in the record. Reyes, 2010 WL

3026227, at *6.

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REYES V. LEWIS 19

Sotomayor explicitly” rejected the dissent’s rule). We

concluded that “[t]his fundamental divergence in reasoning

is enough to demonstrate that Justice Sotomayor’s rationale

is not controlling Supreme Court law.” Id. at *6. We

explained that this conclusion is reinforced by the fact that

there may be cases where relief would be granted under the

concurrence’s rule but not the plurality’s rule. Id. at *6–7.

Applying the common-denominator-of-the-reasoning

Marks rule to Seibert, other circuit courts have found that

Justice Kennedy’s Seibert concurrence is “obviously not the

‘common denominator’ that Marks was talking about.” 

United States v. Heron, 564 F.3d 879, 883–87 (7th Cir. 2009);

see also United States v. Ray, 803 F.3d 244, 270–72 (6th Cir.

2015). Just as the plurality and dissent expressly rejected

elements of Justice Sotomayor’s reasoning in Freeman, the

plurality and dissent expressly (and even more emphatically)

rejected Justice Kennedy’s reasoning in Seibert. As the Sixth

Circuit explained,“three of the four Justices in the plurality

and the four dissenters decisively rejected any subjective

good faith consideration, based on deliberateness on the part

of the police.”3 Ray, 803 F.3d at 271 (quoting United States

3

See Seibert, 542 U.S. at 616 n.6 (plurality opinion) (“[T]he focus is on

facts apart from intent . . . .”); id. at 623 (O’Connor, J., dissenting) (“[T]he

plurality correctly declines to focus its analysis on the subjective intent of

the interrogating officer.”); id. at 624 (“The plurality’s rejection of an

intent-based test is also, in my view, correct.”); id. at 625–26

(“[R]ecognizing an exception to [Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. 298 (1985)]

for intentional violations would require focusing constitutional analysis on

a police officer’s subjective intent, an unattractive proposition that we all

but uniformly avoid.”); id. at 626–27 (“[T]he approach espoused by

Justice Kennedy is ill advised . . . . This approach untethers the analysis

from facts knowable to, and therefore having any potential directly to

affect, the suspect.”).

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v. Rodriguez-Preciado, 399 F.3d 1118, 1139–41 (9th Cir.

2005) (Berzon, J., dissenting)); see also United States v.

Carrizales-Toledo, 454 F.3d 1142, 1151 (10th Cir. 2006). 

Under the reasoning-based Marks rule, reasoning expressly

rejected by at least seven Justices cannot be elevated to the

status of controlling Supreme Court law.

As in Davis, this conclusion is reinforced by the fact that

there are likely to be cases where relief would be granted

under Justice Kennedy’s test but not the plurality’s test. The

plurality’s test is concerned with the effectiveness of the

belated Miranda warnings. The plurality looks to “the

completeness and detail of the questions and answers in the

first round of interrogation, the overlapping content of the

two statements, the timing and setting of the first and the

second, the continuity of police personnel, and the degree to

which the interrogator’s questions treated the second round as

continuous with the first.” Seibert, 542 U.S. at 615. These

and other objective facts are relevant to assessing whether “a

reasonable person in the suspect’s shoes would [] have

understood [the Miranda warnings] to convey a message that

she retained a choice about continuing to talk.” Id. at 617. 

By contrast, Justice Kennedy looks first to whether the police

deliberately violated Miranda and, if so, whether the officers

used “curative measures . . . before the postwarning statement

is made,” such as “an additional warning that explains the

likely inadmissibility of the prewarning custodial statement.” 

Id. at 622.

There are likely to be cases involving deliberate Miranda

violations where most of the plurality’s “effectiveness

factors” are met but, because no explanation of the prewarning statement’s inadmissibility or other “specific,

curative step” was taken, Justice Kennedy’s curative

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REYES V. LEWIS 21

measures requirement isn’t. Similarly, there are likely cases

involving deliberate violations where Justice Kennedy’s

curative-measures requirement is met because “specific,

curative steps” were taken, such as a warning that the preMiranda confession could not be used against the suspect, but

the plurality’s effectiveness requirement isn’t. For example,

the plurality’s effectiveness requirement may not be satisfied

because of “the completeness and detail of the questions and

answers in the first round of interrogation, the overlapping

content of the two statements, the timing and setting of the

first and the second, [and] the continuity of police personnel.” 

Id. at 615.

It is true that some courts have held that Justice

Kennedy’s concurrence is controlling. However, just as the

Davis opinion observed in distinguishing other circuits’

treatment of Freeman, all of these courts “engage with Marks

only superficially, quoting its language with no analysis,”

Davis, 2016 WL 3245043, at *8, and apparently applying a

results-based Marks rule.4It is clear that the panel’s amended

opinion creates an additional circuit split on how the

4 United States v. Carter, 489 F.3d 528, 535–36 (2d Cir. 2007) (without

mentioning Marks, summarily ruling that Seibert established an exception

to Elstad); United States v. Torres-Lona, 491 F.3d 750, 758 (8th Cir.

2007) (concluding without explanation that Justice Kennedy’s

concurrence is controlling because it is “narrower”); United States v.

Courtney, 463 F.3d 333, 338 (5th Cir. 2006) (same); United States v.

Street, 472 F.3d 1298, 1313 (11th Cir. 2006) (same); United States v.

Naranjo, 426 F.3d 221, 231–32 (3d Cir. 2005) (same); United States v.

Mashburn, 406 F.3d 303, 308–09 (4th Cir. 2005) (same).

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reasoning-based Marks rule applies to Seibert. See Ray,

803 F.3d at 267–73; Heron, 564 F.3d at 883–87.5

Evidently, the upshot of our en banc decision in Davis is

that fractured Supreme Court decisions like Seibert are

binding on state courts but not on us. But the panel’s

conclusion that Seibert is binding on state courts is even more

questionable under AEDPA. At the very least, the “fairminded disagreement” between circuit courts on whether

Seibert created any controlling rule, shows that Justice

Kennedy’s deliberateness requirement is not “clearly

established law” within the meaning of AEDPA.6See White

v. Woodall, 134 S. Ct. 1697, 1703 (2014); Harrington v.

Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 102–03 (2011).

B. The panel violated AEDPA by presuming that the

state appellate court did not understand and follow

clearly established law.

Even if Justice Kennedy’s concurrence were clearly

established Supreme Court law, the panel violated AEDPA. 

The panel majority deemed itself unfettered by AEDPA

5 The Tenth Circuit similarly questioned whether Seibert established a

controlling rule, but found it unnecessary to reach the issue. CarrizalesToledo, 454 F.3d at 1151. The First and D.C. Circuits have also expressed

skepticism. United States v. Straker, 800 F.3d 570, 617 (D.C. Cir. 2015);

United States v. Verdugo, 617 F.3d 565, 575 (1st Cir. 2010).

6 The panel’s statement that the Sixth Circuit found the Seibert plurality

opinion controlling in Ray is wrong. In Ray, the Sixth Circuit found that

Seibert did not establish a controlling rule, and then chose to adopt as

binding the rule articulated by the four-Justice plurality. Ray, 803 F.3d at

272. The panel fails to understand that a fractured Supreme Court

decision that did not establish a controlling rule is not clearly established

Supreme Court law under AEDPA.

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because, in its view, the state appellate court’s decision did

not expressly make a finding regarding the deliberateness

element of Justice Kennedy’s test in Seibert. However, the

state appellate court’s decision is readily reconciled with

Seibert.

First, several parts of the state appellate court’s decision

may be read to acknowledge expressly that the detectives did

not deliberately violate Miranda. The court found “no

evidence that defendant was coerced into waiving his rights,”

and explained that Detective Brandt “advise[d] [Reyes] of his

Miranda rights before questioning him further” at the police

station because Brandt no longer regarded Reyes as being

“free to leave.” Reyes, 2010 WL 3026227, at *6, 13. The

state appellate court also distinguished People v. Neal,

31 Cal. 4th 63, 80–81 (2003), “in which a police detective

intentionallycontinued interrogation in deliberate violation of

Miranda.” Id. at *9. Moreover, the state court’s decision

tacitly acknowledges, as the record confirms, that Reyes did

not even contend that the officers violated Miranda in bad

faith. The court explained that, accordingly, “as defendant

recognizes, the fact the interrogation at the sheriff’s station

was not accompanied byMiranda advisals does not invalidate

the later Mirandized statements unless the later admissions

were in fact involuntary or the tainted product of the initial

statements or confession.” Id. at *12 (emphasis added). This

is the correct inquiry under Justice Kennedy’s Seibert test in

cases where it is undisputed that the officers did not violate

Miranda in bad faith.7

7 The panel fundamentally misses the point of Seibert and Elstad in

arguing that “that the test for admissibility of a confession is not whether

it was voluntary [but] whether it was taken in violation of Miranda.” 

Concurrence at 3. Again, even where a pre-warning interview was

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24 REYES V. LEWIS

The panel does not attempt to address this textual

evidence that the state court correctly understood the law. In

any case, such parsing of sentences in the state court’s

decision takes us beyond our role under AEDPA. Even if the

decision were silent or ambiguous on whether the detectives

deliberately violated Miranda, de novo review is still

foreclosed. Under controlling Supreme Court precedent, we

must presume “state courts know and follow the law,” give

state courts “the benefit of the doubt,” and make an “effort to

reconcile” the reasoning of state courts with controlling

Supreme Court rules. Woodford v. Visciotti, 537 U.S. 19, 24

(2002); see also Renico v. Lett, 559 U.S. 766, 773 (2010);

Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320, 333, n.7 (1997); Poyson v.

Ryan, 743 F.3d 1185, 1199 (9th Cir. 2013), as amended

(Apr. 2, 2014) (“AEDPA does not allow us to presume from

an ambiguous record that the state court applied an

unconstitutional standard.”), overruled on other grounds by

McKinney v. Ryan, 813 F.3d 798 (9th Cir. 2015) (en banc). 

Like its first major error, the panel’s second error also

conflicts with a recent en banc decision of this court. The

panel majority’s reasoning is clearly irreconcilable with our

rule in Mann v. Ryan, — F.3d —, 2016 WL 3854234, at *11

(9th Cir. July 15, 2016) (en banc), that if “we can read the

[state court] decision to comport with clearly established

federal law, we must do so.”

Second, as Judge Singleton explained in his concurrence

in this case, the state court’s analysis can also be reconciled

with Seibert if the decision is read to have found that the

custodial and thus administered in violation of Miranda, a post-warning

confession remains admissible under Justice Kennedy’s concurrence so

long as the officers did not deliberately violate Miranda and the

confession was voluntary.

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REYES V. LEWIS 25

Miranda warnings were effective. The state court made the

following finding in distinguishing Seibert:

Unlike in Missouri v. Seibert (2004) 542 U.S.

600, 616, the circumstances in the instant case

need not “be seen as challenging the

comprehensibility and efficacy of the

Miranda warnings to the point that a

reasonable person in the suspect’s shoes

would not have understood them to convey a

message that [he] retained a choice about

continuing to talk.” (Id. at p. 616.)

Reyes, 2010 WL 3026227, at *13. This finding of

effectiveness provides an additional ground for distinguishing

Seibert, even assuming that the detectives deliberately

violated Miranda. Under either ground, the panel majority

erred in “free[ing] itself from AEDPA’s strictures.” Kernan

v. Hinojosa, 136 S. Ct. 1603, 1605 (2016) (per curiam). As

explained below, we need not reach the question whether the

state appellate court’s effectiveness finding was an

objectively unreasonable application of Seibert because a

reasonable jurist could conclude that any Miranda violation

was unintentional.

C. The panel wrongly presumed that the police violated

Miranda in bad faith, and conflated the deliberateness

of a Miranda violation with the effectiveness of a

subsequent Miranda warning.

Even if de novo review were appropriate, the panel’s

decision misinterprets Seibert and creates bad law on how

courts should assess whether police officers deliberately

violated Miranda.

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The panel begins its analysis of whether the detectives

deliberately violated Miranda by stating, “‘the most plausible

reason’ for delaying Miranda warnings until after a suspect

has confessed ‘is an illegitimate one, which is the

interrogator’s desire to weaken the warning’s effectiveness.’” 

Maj. Op. 67 (quoting United States v. Williams, 435 F.3d

1148, 1159 (9th Cir. 2006)). The panel’s presumption of bad

faith is contrary to Justice Kennedy’s concurrence in Seibert,

effectively overrules Elstad, and removes a habeas corpus

petitioner’s burden of proving a constitutional violation. See

Thompson v. Runnels, 657 F.3d 784, 788–91 (9th Cir.)

(Callahan, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc)

(explaining that “contrary to the majority’s assertion, . . .

Seibert did not overrule Elstad”), vac’d sub nom. McEwen v.

Thompson, 132 S. Ct. 578 (2011).

As the State points out, nothing in Seibert “suggests that

it is necessary or proper to presume wrongdoing on the part

of police.” Justice Kennedy explained that his test would

apply only “in the infrequent case” where detectives

deliberately violated Miranda. Seibert, 542 U.S. at 622. He

emphasized that in most cases “[t]he admissibility of

postwarning statements should continue to be governed by

the principles of Elstad.” Id. He “suggested a number of

plausible reasons why an officer might legitimately wait to

deliver Miranda warnings, including that ‘[a]n officer may

not realize that a suspect is in custody and warnings are

required.’” United States v. Stewart, 536 F.3d 714, 720 (7th

Cir. 2008) (alteration in original) (quoting Seibert, 542 U.S.

at 620 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment)).

Other circuits have rightly refused to presume that police

officers act in bad faith. See, e.g., id. at 720–21; CarrizalesToledo, 454 F.3d at 1153 (concluding that there was no

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REYES V. LEWIS 27

deliberate two-step interrogation because “it is likely that [the

officer]failed to provide the Miranda warning because at that

point it was unclear whether [the suspect] was in custody”). 

Indeed, the Supreme Court has admonished that “the task of

defining ‘custody’ is a slippery one, and police[ officers]

investigating serious crimes [cannot realistically be expected

to] make no errors whatsoever.” Elstad, 470 U.S. at 309

(second alteration in original). Where police officers

engrossed in the moment mistake the difficult line between

custodial and non-custodial interviews, we will not suppress

subsequent warned and voluntary “admissions of guilt by

wrongdoers, [which] are inherently desirable.” Id. at 305

(quoting United States v. Washington, 431 U.S. 181, 187

(1977)).

The panel also misconstrued Seibert, collapsed the

plurality and concurrence’s tests, and effectively overruled

Elstad by conflating the issue of whether the detectives

deliberately violated Miranda with the issue of whether the

midstream-Miranda warning was effective. The majority

found indicative of deliberateness the facts that the prewarning and post-warning confessions overlapped in content,

the detectives did not take specific curative measures, and

there was overlap in personnel. These facts do not pertain to

the subjective intent of the detectives; they pertain to

assessing whether “a reasonable person in the suspect’s shoes

would . . . have understood [the midstream-Miranda

warnings] to convey a message that she retained a choice

about continuing to talk.” Seibert, 542 U.S. at 617 (plurality

opinion).

At best, such evidence is neutral on whether detectives

deliberately violated Miranda. For example, the fact that

“Reyes provided essentially the same information,” Maj. Op.

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69, during the warned and unwarned interrogations has little

bearing on whether the detectives deliberately violated

Miranda. Of course Reyes’s pre-warning confession to

murdering Ochoa overlapped with his post-warning

confession to murdering Ochoa. How could it be otherwise?

If “there was no earlier confession to repeat,” Seibert would

not apply and we would not need to consider deliberateness. 

Bobby v. Dixon, 132 S. Ct. 26, 31 (2011) (per curiam). 

Similarly, the fact that “Brandt did not take curative

measures,” Maj. Op. 70, is relevant to whether the

midstream-Miranda warningwas effective. But this fact does

not show that detectives who clearly endeavored to create a

non-custodial interview employed a two-part interrogation in

deliberate violation of Miranda. If the detectives thought the

pre-warning interview was non-custodial, then they would

have thought such “corrective measures” to have been

unnecessary. The panel’s view that Brandt “played down”

the importance of the Miranda warnings by stating that he

wanted “just to clarify stuff,” id., also is relevant to whether

the midstream-Miranda warning was effective. But such

statements do not establish a deliberate Miranda violation. 

Again, if the detectives thought the pre-warning interview

was non-custodial, they would have seen no problem with

referencing it. As Justice Kennedy noted, “Skilled

investigators often interview suspects multiple times, and

good police work may involve referring to prior statements to

test their veracity or to refresh recollection.” Seibert,

542 U.S. at 620.

The panel also found the fact that the “three Riverside

police officers involved in the case—Brandt, Wheeler and

Medici—were all experienced officers” to evidence a

deliberate Miranda violation. Maj. Op. 69. But the fact that

the officers were seasoned is just as likely to evidence that

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REYES V. LEWIS 29

they understood Miranda and endeavored to keep the

interview non-custodial. Similarly, the fact that the

detectives “obtained the incriminating information from

Reyes very early in the unwarned custodial interrogation,”

Maj. Op. 70–71, does not evidence a deliberate Miranda

violation. Rather, that Reyes quickly confessed once the

detectives entered, at Reyes’s request, shows that the officers

would have had little reason to believe that Reyes no longer

felt free to leave and thus that the interview had become

custodial.

Inexplicably, the panel went as far as to attribute bad faith

to the detectives because they questioned Reyes “in a

nonconfrontational, sympathetic way, with the result that

Reyes was made to feel . . . comfortable . . . and laugh[].” Id. 

As explained below, this fact and many others that the panel

ignored show that a reasonable jurist could find that the

detectives did “not realize that [the] suspect [was] in custody

and warnings [were] required,” which is a good-faith reason

for not delivering Miranda warnings earlier. Seibert,

542 U.S. at 620 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment).

D. The state appellate court and federal district court

correctly found that the detectives did not deliberately

violate Miranda and that Reyes’s post-warning

murder confession was admissible.

Under AEDPA, the state court’s determination that no

Miranda violation occurred is entitled to deference and

should be upheld as long as “fairminded jurists could

disagree” on the correctness of the state court’s decision. 

Harrington, 562 U.S. at 101. Even if de novo review applied

here, however, the panel erroneously concluded that the

detectives deliberately violated Miranda. The weight of

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30 REYES V. LEWIS

objective and subjective evidence favors the view that the

reason that the pre-warning interview was unwarned is that

the officers believed that Reyes was not in custody. After all,

Reyes was repeatedly told that he was not under arrest and

was free to leave, left two previous interviews free, requested

the polygraph interview, consented to it verbally and in

writing, and then asked to speak to the detectives after its

conclusion. Under applicable case law, these facts and many

others weigh strongly in favor of the view that the officers

reasonably viewed the pre-warning interview to have been

non-custodial.

For example, following the Supreme Court, “[w]e have

consistently held that a defendant is not in custody when

officers tell him that he is not under arrest and is free to leave

at any time,” United States v. Bassignani, 575 F.3d 879, 886

(9th Cir. 2009), as the officers here repeatedly told Reyes.8

Courts have also consistently held that the fact that a

defendant came to the police station voluntarily, as Reyes did

here, weighs in favor of the view that he was not in custody. 

Beheler, 463 U.S. at 1122 (noting that the suspect

“voluntarily agreed to accompany police to the station

8

See also Howes v. Fields, 132 S. Ct. 1181, 1185 (2012) (“Most

important, respondent was told at the outset of the interrogation, and was

reminded again thereafter, that he could leave . . . .”); California v.

Beheler, 463 U.S. 1121, 1122 (1983) (per curiam); Oregon v. Mathiason,

429 U.S. 492, 495 (1977); United States v. Crawford, 372 F.3d 1048, 1060

(9th Cir. 2004) (en banc) (“Perhaps most significant for resolving the

question of custody, Defendant was expressly told that he was not under

arrest . . . .”); Dyer v. Hornbeck, 706 F.3d 1134, 1136–40 (9th Cir. 2013);

United States v. Norris, 428 F.3d 907, 912 (9th Cir. 2005).

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house”).9 Courts have also held that the fact that a defendant

consented in writing to a polygraph test, as Reyes did here, is

powerful evidence that the defendant was not in custody. 

People v. Ochoa, 19 Cal. 4th 353, 402 (Cal. 1998).

Still other objective facts support the view that the

detectives reasonably believed that Reyes did not view

himself to be in custody. For example, the detectives released

Reyes after two previous interviews. See, e.g., Beheler,

463 U.S. at 1122 (emphasizing that “Beheler was permitted

to return to his home”). The officers did not restrain Reyes

in the exam room or yell at him. They permitted Reyes to

give narrative answers and “appealed to his interest in telling

the truth and being helpful.” Yarborough v. Alvarado,

541 U.S. 652, 664 (2004). These are all signs that the officers

endeavored to keep the pre-warning interview non-custodial,

not to violate Miranda in bad faith.

Moreover, the panel concedes that there is no subjective

evidence that the detectives deliberately violated Miranda. 

There is, however, subjective evidence that they did not. As

the state appellate court observed, Detective Brandt stated

before giving the Miranda warnings that the warnings were

now required because Reyes was no longer free to leave. 

Reyes, 2010 WL 3026227, at *6. The clear implication is that

Detective Brandt did not believe that the warnings were

required earlier because he believed the earlier interview was

non-custodial.

9

See also Mathiason, 429 U.S. at 495 (“He came voluntarily to the

police station . . . .”); Crawford, 372 F.3d at 1059 (emphasizing that the

defendant “agreed to accompany” the officers).

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It is true that some circumstances were indicative of

custody and thus lend some support to the view that the

officers knew that the pre-warning interview had turned

custodial. In its analysis, the panel oddly does not mention

the strongest of such evidence, that Reyes intermittently

stated that he did not want to answer particular questions. 

Reyes, however, never sought to terminate the interview and

leave. Especially given that Reyes had previously

acknowledged many times that he could terminate the

interview and leave, and had left two previous interviews free

after intermittentlydeclining to answer questions, the fact that

the officers continued questioning him is not dispositive of a

deliberate Miranda violation. Moreover, as the state appellate

court emphasized, Officer “Heard ultimately terminated the

postpolygraph questioning upon defendant’s request.” Id. at

*8. Reyes then asked to speak with the detectives, not to

leave. Indeed, the transcripts suggest that Reyes remained

because he was fishing for a deal.

Similarly, I cannot conclude on AEDPA or clear error

review that the officers employed a two-part interrogation in

deliberate violation of Miranda simply because the officers

questioned Reyes’s veracity, confronted him with evidence of

his guilt, and suggested leniency. See, e.g., Mathiason,

429 U.S. at 493 (officers told the suspect that his fingerprints

had been found at the scene and that “his truthfulness would

possibly be considered by the district attorney or judge”);

Stansbury v. California, 511 U.S. 318, 325 (1994) (telling a

person he is a “prime suspect” does not necessarily mean he

is under arrest because “some suspects are free to come and

go until the police decide to make an arrest”).

Again, this is not to say that the pre-warning interview

could not reasonably be viewed as custodial; that 20–20

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REYES V. LEWIS 33

hindsight legal conclusion made by judges is not at issue. 

What is at issue is whether officers engrossed in the moment

knew that the interview had become custodial but deliberately

pressed on to undermine the effect of subsequent Miranda

warnings. It bears repeating that Miranda warnings need be

given only once a suspect is in custody. There is nothing

wrong with officers seeking to question a suspect in a noncustodial situation. Rather, this may be viewed as good

police work. So long as the officers believed that the

interview remained non-custodial, where they turned out to

be mistaken, a subsequent, warned confession must be

allowed into evidence if voluntarily given. Here, a

reasonable jurist could conclude, as did the state appellate

court and the district court, that the detectives did “not realize

that [Reyes was] in custody and warnings [were] required.” 

See Seibert, 542 U.S. at 620 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the

judgment).

Because any Miranda violation by the detectives was not

deliberate, the operative question under de novo review, as

the state courts, the district court, the prosecution, and Reyes

correctly recognized, is whether Reyes’s post-warning

confession is admissible under Elstad. Under Elstad, “[t]he

relevant inquiry is whether, in fact, the second statement was

also voluntarily made.” Elstad, 470 U.S. at 318. The state

appellate court and the district court explained in detail why

both the pre-warning and post-warning confessions were

voluntary, and thus the post-warning confession was

admissible. Reyes, 2010 WL 3026227, at *8–14. I will not

repeat those courts’ exhaustive analyses here. I note only that

the state appellate court’s conclusion that Reyes’s confessions

were voluntary must be given even “more leeway” on

AEDPA review given the inquiry’s open-ended nature. See

Alvarado, 541 U.S. at 664; Harrington, 562 U.S. at 102

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34 REYES V. LEWIS

(“[E]ven a strong case for relief does not mean the state

court’s contrary conclusion was unreasonable.”). The panel

majority has not conducted this inquiry, which should have

been the focus of its analysis from the start given the absence

of bad faith by the detectives.10

III.

The panel’s decision conflicts with AEDPA, Supreme

Court precedent, other circuits’ precedent, our recent en banc

decisions, and Seibert itself. Moreover, the panel is wrong in

finding that Detective Brandt, Detective Wheeler, and Officer

Heard violated Miranda in bad faith. Our failure to go en

banc has consequences. Courts in our circuit will be

permitted to read the worst into state court decisions and

required to presume the worst of police officers in assessing

10 The panel suggests that Reyes might not have been the triggerman,

noting that two witnesses testified that the driver was the shooter. This

suggestion not only epitomizes the type of second-guessing by our court

that AEDPA is designed to limit, but also inaccurately characterizes the

record. One of these two witnesses stated that the initial shots that hit

Ochoa came from inside the car and then the driver stepped around the car

and fired additional shots. Another witness testified that he heard

gunshots and then saw a passenger get out of the back of the car and

approach Ochoa. All of this, of course, went to the jury, but the panel

apparently thinks itself capable of finding facts based on an incomplete,

cold record. The panel’s suggestion that Reyes was an innocent passenger

who took the fall for his older cousin is further undercut by the fact that

Reyes voluntarily confessed after acknowledging several times that he

would do “25 years to life” for shooting Ochoa. Moreover, Reyes’s guilt

is beyond reasonable dispute. The evidence presented at trial shows

overwhelmingly that Reyes and his cousin set out in Reyes’s aunt’s car to

exact revenge on a rival neighborhood in retaliation for an assault on

Reyes the previous day. They came across Ochoa and killed him in a

drive-by as he waited outside of his house for his parents to take him to

school.

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REYES V. LEWIS 35

whether a confession was constitutionally obtained. 

Reasonable police work will be disrupted. The decision

effectively forces officers to tell wrongdoers that their prewarning admissions may not be used against them, even

where the officers do not believe that the pre-warning

interview had become custodial. The State will be required

to retry a confessed murderer to secure justice. Its ability to

succeed is uncertain given the decade that has passed since

Ochoa’s murder.

For these reasons, I dissent from our failure to take this

case en banc.

BEA, Circuit Judge, with whom O’SCANNLAIN, Circuit

Judge, joins as to paragraphs 1 and 4, dissenting from the

denial of rehearing en banc:

1. I join Judge Callahan’s dissent from the denial of

rehearing en banc.

2. I write separately to reiterate my view that United

States v. Davis, __ F.3d __, 2016 WL 3245043 (9th Cir. June

13, 2016) (en banc), was wrongly decided. As I explained in

my Davis dissent, id. at *15–*18 (Bea, J., dissenting), Marks

v. United States, 430 U.S. 188 (1977), requires that we apply

a “results-based” approach, not a “reasoning-based”

approach, when interpreting splintered Supreme Court

decisions.

3. Had my view commanded a majority of the Davis en

banc Court, I would likely agree with the panel that Justice

Kennedy’s concurring opinion in Missouri v. Seibert,

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36 REYES V. LEWIS

542 U.S. 600 (2004), provides a controlling rule. In my Davis

dissent, I cited with approval United States v. Williams,

435 F.3d 1148, 1157–58 (9th Cir. 2006), which applied a

results-based approach and concluded that “both the [Seibert]

plurality and Justice Kennedy agree that where law

enforcement officers deliberately employ a two-step

interrogation to obtain a confession and where separations of

time and circumstance and additional curative warnings are

absent or fail to apprise a reasonable person in the suspect’s

shoes of his rights, the trial court should suppress the

confession.” However, I agree with Judge Callahan that,

under the reasoning-based approach adopted in Davis,

Williams should be revisited. See Callahan Dissent at 18–22;

see also United States v. Rodriguez–Preciado, 399 F.3d 1118,

1138–43 (9th Cir. 2005) (Berzon, J., dissenting).

4. I also wish to underline two AEDPA-related points

made by Judge Callahan in her dissent. First, our conclusion

that Justice Kennedy’s concurring opinion in Seibert provides

a controlling rule—right or wrong—is not “clearly

established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court

of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). Even if we are

bound by Justice Kennedy’s concurring opinion in cases on

direct review, there is a “possibility for fairminded

disagreement” regarding the controlling effect of that

opinion, such that it may not control in cases, such as this

one, in which AEDPA applies. Harrington v. Richter,

562 U.S. 86, 103 (2011); see Callahan Dissent at 19–22

(noting that other federal courts of appeals have found that

Justice Kennedy’s concurring opinion in Seibert does not

provide a controlling rule). Second, we must give state courts

“the benefit of the doubt” and attempt to reconcile the

California Court of Appeal’s decision with Seibert. Woodford

v. Visciotti, 537 U.S. 19, 24 (2002) (per curiam). As Judge

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REYES V. LEWIS 37

Callahan discusses, we can do so by reading the state-court

decision to “acknowledge expresslythat the detectives did not

deliberately violate Miranda.” Callahan Dissent at 23. Of

course, whether the detectives acted with deliberation is

quintessentially a factual issue. As Judge Callahan explains,

a finding by the California Court of Appeal that the detectives

did not deliberately violate Miranda was not “an

unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the

evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C.

§ 2254(d)(2); see Callahan Dissent at 29–34.

5. For these reasons, I join Judge Callahan’s dissent with

the caveat that I continue to believe Davis was wrongly

decided.

OPINION

W. FLETCHER, Circuit Judge:

Petitioner Adrian Reyes petitions for a writ of habeas

corpus on the ground, inter alia, that his state-court

conviction rested on a confession obtained in violation of

Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600 (2004). For the reasons that

follow, we reverse the district court and remand with

instructions to grant the writ.

I. Factual Background

On January 11, 2006, an armed person exited a silver

Toyota Camry and shot Derek Ochoa three times. The person

may have yelled “Delhi” (the name of an Orange County

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38 REYES V. LEWIS

gang). Ochoa died as a result of the shooting. He was a

senior at La Sierra High School in Riverside County.

Riverside Police Department officers traced the Camry to

the home of Andres Munoz, an older cousin of petitioner

Adrian Reyes. The car was registered to another member of

the Munoz family, Albert. Reyes had recently moved to

Riverside County from Orange County. He was a freshman

at La Sierra. He was not quite two months past his fifteenth

birthday.

The day before the shooting, Reyes had been walking

home from school with a friend. A carload of gang members

drove up and asked Reyes where he was from. Reyes

answered “Delhi.” One of the gang members punched Reyes

in the eye. They then drove away, yelling “South Side

Riverside 51-50.”

Two days after the shooting, Riverside Police Department

homicide detectives James Brandt and Rick Wheeler

questioned Reyes at his aunt’s home. Reyes had moved from

his family’s home to his aunt’s home the day after his assault

by the gang members. The detectives’ questions related

primarily to the assault. During the questioning, Reyes

acknowledged that he had known Ochoa and that he knew

Delhi was a “group in Santa Ana.”

Nearly a month later, on February 9, sometime between

5:20 and 5:30 in the morning, a SWAT team of between

fifteen and twenty officers executed a search warrant on

Reyes’s aunt’s home. They handcuffed Reyes and searched

the house. In Reyes’s bedroom they discovered papers with

“Delhi” written in large block letters. After the house was

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REYES V. LEWIS 39

secured, Reyes was released from handcuffs and allowed to

eat breakfast.

Brandt told Reyes that he was not under arrest, but that he

wanted to ask him some questions at the station. Reyes

acquiesced, and he was driven to the Riverside police station. 

Reyes was not accompanied to the station by any family

member. At the station, Brandt and Wheeler together

questioned Reyes. At no point during their questioning on

February 9 did they provide Miranda warnings.

Reyes was held at the station for some time before he was

questioned. Wheeler began the interview by saying, “Thanks

for being so dang patient man I appreciate you . . . [h]anging

out for us ’cause it’s been a long day, long day.” Wheeler

told Reyes that he could stop the interview at any time: “I just

wanna make sure that you understand that if we get at some

point in the interview that you’re done talkin’ . . . and you

don’t feel like answering any more questions or whatever, let

me know, okay?”

Wheeler asked briefly about the assault the day before the

shooting. He then asked about the shooting. He said that the

search warrants had been executed and that they had talked

“with all these different people.” “[W]e got pictures, too, . . .

and I’ve had more than one person say that’s the car that the

guy was in, okay? . . . I’ve got enough information that shows

that you were there.” (Wheeler’s statement was false. The

only witness who had made any type of identification had not

identified Reyes.) According to the transcript, Wheeler was

interrupted by the “sound of sniffing.” Wheeler continued,

“[T]here’s no denying it. . . . [T]he truth is gonna come out

and, and I already know what it is.” Reyes denied that he was

there. “I didn’t go out that day you could ask my Mom, you

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40 REYES V. LEWIS

would ask anybody in my home I didn’t come out that day, I

was sleeping.” When Wheeler said that the police had

spoken to his family already, Reyes said, “Don’t you guys

have a lie detector or something? I, I was in my house.”

Brandt then took over the questioning. He challenged

Reyes, saying that he had his phone records. “When your

phone is being used basically six, seven, eight times an hour

every, you know, on an average every five minutes so you’re

not sleeping okay?” Brandt was interrupted by the “sound of

sniffing.” Brandt suggested a mitigating version of events: 

“There is a big difference between being in the car when this

thing happens . . . and being the shooter and stuff. . . . So

just tell us what happened, okay?” “We’ve done our

homework, dude and . . . don’t screw yourself and lie to us,

seriously, tell us what happened.”

Wheeler and Brandt pressed Reyes on the inconsistency

between Reyes’s statements and his phone records. Wheeler

asked him about the papers found in his room with “Delhi

written in big letters.” Brandt said, “We work homicide,

alright, we gonna do our homework, definitely, I’m telling

you, we have the car, we have the gun, we have five guns

total. . . .” (Brandt’s statement was false. The Sheriff’s

Department had not recovered—indeed, never did

recover—the gun used to shoot Ochoa.)

Wheeler and Brandt continued to press Reyes. Brandt

said, “[T]here’s another detective was out showing witnesses

the picture . . . ’cause we had a picture of you.” Wheeler

immediately followed, “And we identified you as being in the

car.” (Wheeler’s statement was false. Reyes had not been

identified by anyone as having been in the car.) Brandt said,

“I’m not trying to trick you and . . . I’m not making the stuff

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REYES V. LEWIS 41

up that I’m telling you . . . . [S]o you know I’m not trying to

trick you.”

Brandt talked about Ochoa’s family and their “right to

understand what happened.” Reyes responded, “I don’t really

want to say nothing no more . . . trying to cooperate here.” 

(Elision in original.) Brandt replied, “You’re not

cooperating.” Brandt was interrupted multiple times by the

“sound of sniffing.” A moment later, Brandt said, “Tell me

what happened.” Reyes responded, “I don’t know nothing

man.”

Reyes said, “Stop askingme questions.” Brandt said, “No

I’m not gonna stop asking you questions.” Brandt was again

interrupted by the “sound of sniffing.”

Brandt said, “[A]re you willing to take a polygraph

examination?” Reyes responded, “Yeah.” Brandt elaborated,

“About everything.” Reyes responded, “I guess, man, I don’t

know nothing man.” Reyes mentioned that he might need to

have his parents there, but Brandt interrupted him, saying,

“[W]e’ll certainly arrange for all that stuff just seeing that

you’re willing to . . . do it.”

A moment later, Reyes said, “You guys stop asking me

. . . kinda questions.” (Elision in original.) “Stop[] asking

this kind of stuff man.” Wheeler, who had begun the

interview by telling Reyes that he could stop at any time, did

not stop. He responded to Reyes, “The only rope that you got

is me throwing it to you right now and telling you ‘you gotta

be clean’ because you haven’t been. This thing’s gonna burn

you down.”

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42 REYES V. LEWIS

Wheeler persisted, interrupted frequently by the “sound

of sniffing.” Reyes continued to indicate that he did not want

to talk. “I’ve got nothing to say man.” Brandt took over the

questioning: “Okay, so witnesses identifying you and other

people in the car identifying you, . . . you’re good with that?

. . . You want us to go in there with this two-hour

conversation of you just lying about where you were when

your phone records show it’s not the case and all that stuff,

you’re comfortable with that.” Reyes replied, “Stop asking

me man. I don’t know nothing.”

Brandt terminated the interview, saying, “This time when

I walk out I’m not gonna come back and give you another

shot, okay? We’re gonna, we’ll, we’ll go to the D.A.’s office

and, and then later on to court with the case we have and, and

I’m, I’m not worried about it, I’m not gonna lose.” Wheeler

added, “Oh ya, we’re not gonna lose that case.” Brandt said,

“Last chance.” Reyes responded, “I don’t know nothing

man.”

The transcript of the February 9 interview does not

indicate start and stop times, but it is apparent from Brandt’s

statement referring to “this two-hour conversation,” quoted

above, that the interview took about two hours. Brandt

testified at Reyes’s preliminary hearing that the interview had

taken “forty minutes to an hour,” but his testimony is

inconsistent with what he himself said during the interview

and with the length of the transcript. The interview was

interrupted thirty-three times by the “sound of sniffing.”

Reyes went to his mother’s house to sleep that night. The

next morning, Brandt and Michael Medici, another Riverside

Police Department detective, picked up Reyes and took him

to the San Bernardino County sheriff ’s station for a

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REYES V. LEWIS 43

polygraph test. There is no written consent by an adult to the

polygraph test. Brandt testified at the preliminary hearing

that Reyes’s mother gave permission “on the phone,” and the

record contains a police report stating that she had given

permission. No family member accompanied Reyes to the

sheriff’s station.

Robert Heard of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s

Department administered the polygraph test. Before

administering the test, Heard spoke with Reyes for a

sustained period. He impressed on Reyes the fact that he was

an experienced test administrator. He recounted that he had

gone to “polygraph school” “9 years before you were born,”

and that he was in high demand as a polygraph teacher. At no

point did Heard provide Miranda warnings.

Reyes had difficulty filling out a form Heard gave him,

not knowing his zip code or his height and weight. Reyes had

even more difficulty with the written consent form. When he

did not understand the terms “duress and coercion” and

“immunity,” Heard explained them in simpler language. 

Reyes had particular trouble understanding what was meant

by the sentence, “I hereby release the County of San

Bernardino, the Sheriff’s Department and Examiner

administering this examination from any and all claims

resulting from, or arising out of, this examination. . . .” After

Heard explained what “release . . . from any and all claims”

meant, Reyes said, “Alright, so that, that means like that you

guys won’t, won’t trick me . . . .” Heard corrected him,

saying, “Well, no, this doesn’t say I won’t trick you.” Heard

then added, “[Y]ou have my word I won’t trick you.” Heard

again explained what “release” meant, and said, “That’s what

it means.” Reyes responded, “Like you haven’t tricked me or

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44 REYES V. LEWIS

something.” Heard replied, “Exactly, exactly.” Thus

informed, Reyes signed the consent form.

After administering the test, Heard told Reyes, “You

failed the test. I have no doubt that you were there when

Derek was shot.” (There is nothing in the record to indicate

whether Reyes had in fact failed the test.) Heard pressed

Reyes to give details about what he had done. Reyes asked,

“[L]ike what’s the truth gonna help?” Heard answered:

[T]hey read my report and the detectives, their

supervisor reads the report. . . . And the

District Attorney’s gonna ask these detectives

hey, how was Adrian? Is he one of these, you

know tough, gang banger type guys[]? No,

no. Adrian’s a nice young man. He

cooperated, failed the test, and without

hesitation he says hey, look, man, I feel bad

about what happened. . . . Adrian, I can’t tell

you what’s gonna happen because you know

what? I don’t know. I don’t[] know what’s

gonna happen because you haven’t told me

what happened out there. . . . [Y]ou tell me

I’m going to state prison for, I, I, said 25 to

life or something like that. Fifteen year olds

don’t go to state prison, Adrian.

Reyes responded, “I know, but I’ve got a go to Juvenile

Hall.” Heard replied, “Well, I don’t know what’s gonna

happen because I, you haven’t told me anything yet, Adrian.”

Heard continued to ask Reyes what happened, and Reyes

repeated several times that he did not know. Heard asked

from what side of the car the shooter had shot. Reyes

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REYES V. LEWIS 45

responded, “Oh, not that I know, you know, so don’t ask any

question.” Heard asked, “You wanna be alone?” Reyes

replied, “No, it’s just, just don’t ask any questions,” and then

said, “Can we just call the detectives?”

Brandt and Medici then came into the room and took over

from Heard. At no point in the interview that followed did

they provide Miranda warnings.

Brandt asked at the outset, “[W]hat’s your biggest

concern, going to jail?”

Reyes: Think so.

Brandt: At all or for a long time?

Reyes: For a long time.

Brandt: Okay, how long do you think you

would go to jail for?

Reyes: I don’t know. Like it’s a murder,

probably like 25 years.

Brandt: Yeah? How old are you?

Reyes: 15.

Brandt: How many 15 year olds do you know

that go to jail for 25 years?

Reyes: None.

Brandt: Huh?

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46 REYES V. LEWIS

Reyes: None.

Brandt: Okay, so why would you be any

different?

Reyes: I don’t know.

Brandt then asked, “Remember yesterday I asked you . . .

if Derek had anything in his hands or reached for his pockets,

anything like that? You remember me asking you that?” 

Reyes replied, “No.” Brandt then told Reyes that Ochoa had

had a gun:

There’s a reason, a very easy explanation to

this whole thing. . . . The deal is . . . Derek

had a gun in his pocket. . . . Now, if he’s

going for a gun in his pocket or you believed

he was going for a gun in his pocket and we

find one, that’s obviously, and it’s, there’s an

explanation as to what happened. Maybe you

just stopped and talked to him because you

knew him, and then he’s going for a gun or

something like that . . . and shit happens.

(Third elision in original.) (Brandt’s statement was false. 

Ochoa had not had a gun.)

Brandt went on, “If it’s just . . . a cold blooded thing, no,

we just, went up and . . . did it and, and shot him just because,

um, and I don’t feel bad about it . . . that looks bad.” Reyes

said, “It wasn’t like that.” Brandt said, “Tell me, tell me why,

how did it happen then?” Reyes hesitated. “I’m scared,

man. . . . Make everybody go to prison and everything, like I

want everybody to get locked up.” Brandt responded, “[I]f

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REYES V. LEWIS 47

he’s going for a gun, dude, . . . that’s gotta be explained. We

have to know that and we have to be able to tell the District

Attorney’s office that . . . .” Reyes still hesitated. After

encouragement from Brandt, he finally said, “Um hmm,

hmm, well, he, you, he always had a gun.”

After more encouragement, Reyes said, “He was just

running up to the car.” Brandt asked, “Okay, was he reaching

for his pockets or anything like that?” Reyes replied, “Yeah.” 

Brandt said, “Okay, and what happened?” Reyes replied, “I

don’t know.” Reyes expressed concern about his older

cousin, Andres Munoz, and sought to exculpate him. “Well,

if I say something like what’s going to happen with my

cousin? Is he still gonna go to jail? . . . He had nothing to do

with it.”

Brandt asked, “Did you shoot him because you thought he

was going for a gun? Yeah? Did you . . . see the gun in his

pocket?”

Reyes: He was reaching for it.

Brandt: Okay . . . and then what happened?

Reyes: He had a grip on it.

Brandt: Okay, do you remember . . . what

pocket it was in, what side it was in? Okay,

do you remember seeing the grip of the gun

though? And he was reaching for it? But

what was he yelling at you guys?

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48 REYES V. LEWIS

Reyes: I don’t know. It was just, I wasn’t

panicked . . . ain’t gonna say nothing, just

scared.

Brandt: You were scared cause he was going

for the gun? And then, and what happened?

Reyes: I don’t know. I just shot.

Reyes’s statement that he had shot Ochoa came early in

the interview, on the seventh page of the transcript. Brandt

and Medici continued to question and talk to Reyes for

another thirty-five pages. Much of the later exchange was

friendly, even including a discussion of Christmas. Reyes

said that his family opens presents at “twelve in the night.” 

Brandt responded, “Oh, see I can’t stay up that late,” and

Reyes laughed. Near the end of the interview, Medici asked,

“Does your Mom know about any of this, your Dad?” Reyes

responded, “It’ll be cool like if you guys don’t tell my Mom,

you know, cause . . . [l]ike it’ll break her heart and shit, you

know, cause like she’s very religious.” Brandt told Reyes,

“Oh, we don’t need to run over there.”

Immediately after the February 10 interview at the San

Bernardino sheriff’s station, Brandt drove Reyes back to the

Riverside police station where he and Wheeler had

interviewed him the day before. The length of the drive is not

in the record, but it is apparent from a map of the area that it

was no more than fifteen miles. When they arrived at the

Riverside police station, Reyes was put in an interview room.

Brandt and Medici together questioned Reyes. Brandt

began the interview:

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REYES V. LEWIS 49

OK. Uuh, we talked to people at the D.A.’s

office and stuff about the case. Kinda told

them that, you know, you came clean and

finally told us the truth and why things

happened and, you know that you were, you

know, obviously scared and all that kind of

stuff. Uuh, there’s more questions that they

want answered, if we can. OK, just to, to

clarify stuff. Alright, so I wanna talk to you

again, but because you’ve been sitting in that

room and the door was locked and you’re not

free to leave, I wanna read you your rights,

OK? And then ask you some questions. OK?

You have the right to remain silent. Anything

you say can and will be used against you in a

court of law. You have the right to talk to a

lawyer and have him present with you while

you’re being questioned. If you cannot afford

to hire a lawyer, one will be appointed to

represent you before any questioning. Do you

understand each of these rights that I’ve

explained to you? Yeah? OK. Can we talk

about the stuff we talked about earlier today?

Is that a yes?

Reyes, who had not previously spoken, answered, “Yeah.”

Under questioning from Brandt, Reyes repeated his

confession. At the end of the interview, Reyes said, “Let me

call my mom.” Medici then handcuffed Reyes before taking

him to McDonald’s to get something to eat.

The total elapsed time, from when Brandt picked up

Reyes at his mother’s house on February 10 until the

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50 REYES V. LEWIS

conclusion of the interview at the Riverside police station on

the same day, was somewhere between five and six hours. 

Brandt testified at Reyes’s preliminary hearing that he picked

up Reyes at approximately 9:00 am to drive him to the San

Bernardino sheriff’s station. He estimated that Reyes then

spent about three hours at that station, including both his

polygraph test with Heard and his post-polygraph interview

with Brandt and Medici. During the suppression hearing, the

state represented that Reyes spent four hours at the San

Bernardino sheriff’s station. Brandt then drove Reyes to the

Riverside police station for the second interview with Brandt

and Medici. Brandt estimated that the second interview took

between forty minutes and an hour. There is nothing in the

record to indicate that Reyes had anything to eat until Medici

took him to McDonald’s for a late lunch at the conclusion of

the interview at the Riverside police station.

II. Prior Judicial Proceedings

Reyes and his cousin Andres Munoz were charged in

California Superior Court with first-degree murder. They

were tried before the same judge with separate juries. Reyes

moved to suppress his confession as having been obtained in

violation of Miranda. The judge concluded that Reyes’s

February 10 post-polygraph confession at the San Bernardino

sheriff’s station was voluntary but that he had been in custody

within the meaning of Miranda when he made the statement. 

The judge therefore suppressed the unwarned post-polygraph

statement at the sheriff’s station due to a Miranda violation. 

However, the judge refused to suppress Reyes’s postwarning

confession at the Riverside police station.

At trial, there was inconsistent evidence about the identity

of the shooter. Except for Reyes’s postwarning confession,

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REYES V. LEWIS 51

the evidence largely pointed to Reyes’s cousin, Munoz, who

had been the driver of the car, rather than Reyes, who had

been a passenger.

A friend of both Ochoa and Reyes testified that Reyes had

been in the back seat, on the passenger side, of a silver car on

the afternoon of the shooting. An eyewitness to the shooting

testified that she saw the driver of a silver Camry get out of

the car and shoot Ochoa. She made an in-court identification

of the driver as Munoz. Another eyewitness agreed with this

account. She testified that the driver got out of the car,

walked toward Ochoa, shot Ochoa, and “continue[d]shooting

until he couldn’t anymore.” She testified that the back door

on the driver’s side was opened, but that no one got out of the

back seat. She was unable to identify the shooter, either

when shown photographs shortly after the shooting, or in the

courtroom.

Another witness testified that he heard gunshots as he was

pulling out of his father’s driveway. He pulled back into the

driveway and got out of the car to look. He testified that he

saw someone get out of the back seat on the passenger side

and come around to the driver’s side. “I don’t know if he

actually went to check on the kid [who had been shot] or . . .

what else happened. . . . [I]t just happened so quick.” He

estimated that the time between the shots being fired and the

person getting out of the back passenger seat “wasn’t

long”—“[m]aybe a couple of seconds.” Yet another witness,

a friend of Ochoa’s, testified that he was on the front porch of

a friend’s house when he heard shots. His view was obscured

by cacti, so he “started walking toward the front yard.” “We

were going towards [Ochoa], and that’s when we saw the guy

shooting at him. But I only saw when he just went inside the

car, like turned around inside the car and yelled out ‘Delhi.’” 

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52 REYES V. LEWIS

He testified that there were five people in the car and that it

was “light brown.” He testified that he saw only one person

get into the car, and that this person got into the back seat on

the driver’s side.

The jury returned a verdict finding Reyes guilty of firstdegree murder with gang and firearm enhancements. The

judge sentenced Reyes to fifty years to life in prison: twentyfive years to life for the murder conviction to be served

consecutively with a twenty-five years to life sentence for the

firearm enhancement. The court stayed sentencing on the

two gang enhancements.

Reyes appealed. Citing Seibert, Reyes claimed, inter alia,

that the trial court had erred in admitting his February 10

confession at the Riverside police station, after he had

received Miranda warnings. The Court of Appeal agreed

with the trial judge’s suppression of Reyes’s unwarned postpolygraph statement at the San Bernardino sheriff’s office. 

The court wrote that it was “not disputed” that Reyes was in

custody at the time he made the statement, and that this

statement was thus obtained in violation of Miranda. The

Court of Appeal nonetheless affirmed Reyes’s conviction,

holding that his subsequent, warned confession at the

Riverside police station was admissible.

In the view of the Court of Appeal, the “operative

question” was whether Reyes’s post-polygraph unwarned and

custodial statement had been voluntary. The Court of Appeal

wrote:

The issue on appeal is whether the trial

court erred in allowing defendant’s

subsequent statements made at the Riverside

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REYES V. LEWIS 53

police station after defendant was advised of

his Miranda rights. The operative question is

thus whether defendant was subjected to

coercion within the meaning of the Fifth and

Fourteenth Amendments when he was

interrogated at the sheriff’s station and, if so,

whether his statements made thereafter at the

Riverside police station were the tainted

product of the earlier statements.

. . .

We thus will consider whether the trial

court erred in finding that defendant’s

statements were voluntary.

(Emphasis added.)

The Court of Appeal then spent nine pages analyzing in

detail what had taken place during the post-polygraph

unwarned custodial interview at the police station, concluding

that the “trial court had properlyruled defendant’s statements,

both at the sheriff’s station and thereafter at the Riverside

police station, were voluntary beyond a reasonable doubt.” 

In the view of the Court of Appeal, because Reyes’s

unwarned statements while in custody at the sheriff’s station

had been voluntary, his later postwarning statements at the

police station were necessarily “likewise volitional.” The

Court of Appeal dismissed Reyes’s argument under Seibert

in a single paragraph, on the ground that his statement at the

Riverside police station had been “volitional”:

Since defendant’s statements made at the

sheriff’s station were voluntary, his waiver of

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54 REYES V. LEWIS

Miranda rights at the Riverside police station

and statements made thereafter were likewise

volitional. Unlike in Missouri v. Seibert[,

542 U.S. 600, 617 (2004)], the circumstances

in the instant case need not “be seen as

challenging the comprehensibility and

efficacy of the Miranda warnings to the point

that a reasonable person in the suspect’s shoes

would not have understood them to convey a

message that [he] retained a choice about

continuing to talk.”

(Second alteration in original.)

Reyes filed a state habeas petition contemporaneously

with his direct appeal. The Court of Appeal declined to

consolidate the petition and the appeal, summarily denying

the petition in a one-sentence order. The California Supreme

Court summarily denied both Reyes’s direct appeal and his

habeas petition.

Reyes timely filed a petition for federal habeas corpus

under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. In his Report and Recommendation,

the magistrate judge devoted most of his analysis to whether

Reyes’s postwarning Riverside police station confession was

coerced. He concluded under the deferential standard of the

Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”)

that the Court of Appeal had not been unreasonable in

concluding that the confession was not coerced. He

dismissed Reyes’s Seibert argument in a footnote, concluding

that there was no evidence that the law enforcement officers

deliberately employed the two-step method of interrogation

condemned in that case. The district court adopted without

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REYES V. LEWIS 55

comment or correction the conclusions and recommendations

of the magistrate judge.

Reyes timely appealed. Prior to oral argument, we asked

the parties to provide supplemental briefs on Seibert and its

application to the facts of this case.

III. Standard of Review

We review de novo the district court’s decision to deny

Reyes’s habeas petition. Martinez-Villareal v. Lewis, 80 F.3d

1301, 1305 (9th Cir. 1996).

Under AEDPA, we may not grant an application for a writ

of habeas corpus for a state prisoner with respect to any claim

adjudicated on the merits in state court unless the state

adjudication “resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or

involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established

Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the

United States,” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), or “resulted in a

decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of

the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court

proceeding,” id. § 2254(d)(2). “[C]learly established Federal

law” includes only governing legal principles established by

the United States Supreme Court at the time the state decision

was rendered. Greene v. Fisher, 132 S. Ct. 38, 44 (2011).

A state court’s decision is “contrary to” clearly

established federal law if it applies a rule that contradicts

governing Supreme Court precedent or it decides a case

differently than the Supreme Court has on a set of materially

indistinguishable facts. Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362,

405–07, 413 (2000). A state court decision is an

“unreasonable application” of clearly established federal law

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“if the state court identifies the correct governing legal rule

. . . but unreasonably applies it to the facts of the particular

state prisoner’s case.” White v. Woodall, 134 S. Ct. 1697,

1705 (2014) (quoting Williams, 529 U.S. at 407–08).

“A state-court decision will certainly be contrary to . . .

clearly established precedent if the state court applies a rule

that contradicts the governing law set forth in [Supreme

Court] cases.” Williams, 529 U.S. at 405; see also Early v.

Packer, 537 U.S. 3, 8 (2002) (per curiam) (“Avoiding [a

‘contrary to’ error] does not require citation of [Supreme

Court] cases—indeed, it does not even require awareness of

[Supreme Court] cases, so long as neither the reasoning nor

the result of the state-court decision contradicts them.”);

Frantz v. Hazey, 533 F.3d 724, 734 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc)

(“[M]istakes in reasoning or in predicate decisions of the type

in question here—use of the wrong legal rule or

framework—do constitute error under the ‘contrary to’ prong

of § 2254(d)(1).”). If a state court’s decision is “contrary to

clearly established Federal law, as determined by the

Supreme Court,” § 2254(d)(1), a federal habeas court does

not owe deference under AEDPA to that decision. Frantz,

533 F.3d at 739; cf. Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U.S. 930, 948

(2007) (stating this rule for “unreasonable application” error). 

If a “contrary to” error is identified, then “we must decide the

habeas petition by considering de novo the constitutional

issues raised.” Frantz, 533 F.3d at 735.

We may also grant a writ of habeas corpus in cases where

the state-court decision “was based on an unreasonable

determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented

in the State court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2). We

“may not second-guess a state court’s fact-finding process

unless, after review of the state-court record, [we]

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REYES V. LEWIS 57

determine[] that the state court was not merely wrong, but

actuallyunreasonable.” Taylor v. Maddox, 366 F.3d 992, 999

(9th Cir. 2004). To grant relief under this prong, “we must be

convinced that an appellate panel, applying the normal

standards of appellate review, could not reasonably conclude

that the finding is supported by the record.” Id. at 1000.

The relevant state court decision for purposes of AEDPA

review is the last reasoned state court decision. Ylst v.

Nunnemaker, 501 U.S. 797, 804–06 (1991); Medley v.

Runnels, 506 F.3d 857, 862 (9th Cir. 2007) (en banc). Here,

that decision is the California Court of Appeal’s decision on

direct review of Reyes’s conviction. See Nunnemaker,

501 U.S. at 805–06.

IV. Discussion

Reyes makes two arguments. First, he argues that his

postwarning Riverside police station confession on February

10 was coerced in violation of the Fifth Amendment. Second,

he argues that this confession was admitted in violation of

Seibert. For the reasons that follow, we agree with Reyes’s

second argument. We therefore do not need to reach his first

argument.

A. “Contrary To”

As the Supreme Court explained in Oregon v. Elstad,

470 U.S. 298, 304 (1985), “[p]rior to Miranda, the

admissibility of an accused’s in-custody statements was

judged solely by whether they were ‘voluntary’ within the

meaning of the Due Process Clause.” That is, the preMiranda exclusionaryrule analysis was simply a Due Process

Clause voluntariness inquiry. Miranda fundamentallyaltered

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the analysis: “The Miranda Court . . . presumed that

interrogation in certain custodial circumstances is inherently

coercive and held that statements made under those

circumstances are inadmissible unless the suspect is

specificallyinformed of his Miranda rights and freelydecides

to forgo those rights.” New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649,

654 (1984) (footnote omitted). The Court was concerned in

Miranda that its “‘traditional totality-of-the-circumstances’

test posed an ‘unacceptably great’ risk that involuntary

custodial confessions would escape detection.” Seibert,

542 U.S. at 608 (quoting Dickerson v. United States, 530 U.S.

428, 444 (2000)). The Court therefore held in Miranda that

finding a statement had been “voluntary” would no longer be

sufficient. The Court explained, “Failure to administer

Miranda warnings creates a presumption of compulsion. 

Consequently, unwarned statements that are otherwise

voluntary within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment must

nevertheless be excluded from evidence under Miranda.” 

Elstad, 470 U.S. at 307 (emphasis added). Miranda and later

cases thus clearly establish that the voluntariness of an

unwarned statement during a custodial interrogation is not

sufficient to establish the statement’s admissibility.

Miranda was decided in 1966. By the time the Court

decided Seibert in 2004, “Miranda warnings” had taken on

near-talismanic significance, almost guaranteeing

admissibility of a warned statement. Justice Souter wrote in

Seibert that “giving the warnings and getting a waiver has

generally produced a virtual ticket of admissibility;

maintaining that a statement is involuntary even though given

after warnings and voluntary waiver of rights requires

unusual stamina, and litigation over voluntariness tends to

end with the finding of a valid waiver.” Seibert, 542 U.S. at

608–09 (Souter, J., plurality opinion). In Elstad, the Court

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had held that an unwarned voluntary custodial confession

followed by a voluntary warned confession did not require

the exclusion of the second, warned confession. But in

Seibert, the Court limited its holding in Elstad. The Court in

Seibert recognized that “[t]he technique of interrogating in

successive, unwarned and warned phases,” was a “new

challenge to Miranda” that Elstad had not resolved. Id. at

609 (Souter, J., plurality opinion); see also id. at 618

(Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment).

In Seibert, a police officer in Rolla, Missouri, conducted

an unwarned custodial interrogation of Seibert that was

“systematic, exhaustive, and managed with psychological

skill.” Id. at 616. The unwarned custodial interrogation

produced a confession. The officer then gave Seibert a

twenty-minute coffee and cigarette break. After the break, he

read Seibert her Miranda warnings, and she signed a written

waiver. The officer then resumed questioning, reminding

Seibert of her prior prewarning statements. Id. at 605. The

officer later “testified that he made a ‘conscious decision’ to

withhold Miranda warnings, thus resorting to an interrogation

technique he had been taught: question first, then give the

warnings, and then repeat the question ‘until I get the answer

that she’s already provided once.’” Id. at 605–06. The

Seibert plurality wrote, with some understatement, that the

use of this two-step interrogation technique “[wa]s not

confined to Rolla, Missouri.” Id. at 609. Indeed, as the

plurality noted, its use had been promoted and endorsed by

national police training organizations including the Police

Law Institute. Id. at 609–10.

Justice Souter observed in his plurality opinion in Seibert

that the purpose of the two-step interrogation technique was

“to render Miranda warnings ineffective by waiting for a

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particularly opportune time to give them, after the suspect has

already confessed.” Id. at 611. He concluded:

It would have been reasonable to regard the

two sessions as parts of a continuum, in which

it would have been unnatural to refuse to

repeat at the second stage what had been said

before. These circumstances must be seen as

challenging the comprehensibility and

efficacy of the Miranda warnings to the point

that a reasonable person in the suspect’s shoes

would not have understood them to convey a

message that she retained a choice about

continuing to talk.

Id. at 616–17. In a footnote appended to this passage, Justice

Souter made clear that if a two-step interrogation technique

violated Miranda, the voluntariness of the postwarning

statement is irrelevant. In that circumstance, even a voluntary

postwarning statement must be suppressed. Justice Souter

wrote, “Because we find that the warnings were inadequate,

there is no need to assess the actual voluntariness of the

statement.” Id. at 617 n.8.

Concurring, Justice Kennedy agreed with Justice Souter

that, if deliberately employed, a two-part interrogation

technique presented “different considerations” from earlier

Miranda cases. Id. at 620 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the

judgment). While Justice Kennedy’s fifth-vote concurrence

narrowed Seibert’s holding to “those cases involving

deliberate use of the two-step procedure to weaken

Miranda’s protections,” United States v. Williams, 435 F.3d

1148, 1157–58 (9thCir. 2006) (emphasis added), the plurality

and Justice Kennedy agreed that even a voluntary

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postwarning confession must be excluded where law

enforcement officials deliberately withheld Miranda

warnings until after obtaining an in-custody confession, and

where insufficient curative measures had been taken to ensure

that the suspect understood the meaning and importance of

the previously withheld warnings.

Justice Kennedy wrote:

The plurality concludes that whenever a

two-stage interview occurs, admissibility of

the postwarning statement should depend on

“whether [the] Miranda warnings delivered

midstream could have been effective enough

to accomplish their object” given the specific

facts of the case. . . . I would apply a

narrower test applicable only in the infrequent

case, such as we have here, in which the twostep interrogation technique was used in a

calculated way to undermine the Miranda

warning.

The admissibility of postwarning

statements should continue to be governed by

the principles of Elstad unless the deliberate

two-step strategy was employed. If the

deliberate two-step strategy has been used,

postwarning statements that are related to the

substance of prewarning statements must be

excluded unless curative measures are taken

before the postwarning statement is made. 

Curative measures should be designed to

ensure that a reasonable person in the

suspect’s situation would understand the

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import and effect of the Miranda warning and

of the Miranda waiver. For example, a

substantial break in time and circumstances

between the prewarning statement and the

Miranda warning may suffice in most

circumstances, as it allows the accused to

distinguish the two contexts and appreciate

that the interrogation has taken a new turn. 

Alternatively, an additional warning that

explains the likely inadmissibility of the

prewarning custodial statement may be

sufficient.

Id. at 621–22 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment)

(internal citations omitted).

We take as “clearly established” for purposes of § 2254

the “narrowest” opinion in a fractured majority. See Marks

v. United States, 430 U.S. 188, 193 (1977); see also Panetti,

551 U.S. at 949. In United States v. Davis, — F.3d —, 2016

WL 3245043, at *5 (9th Cir. June 13, 2016) (en banc), we

interpreted Marks as requiring us to analyze “whether the

reasoning of a narrower opinion fit[s] entirely into the circle

drawn by a broader opinion.” Stated differently, a fractured

Supreme Court opinion binds us “only . . . when a majority of

the Justices agree upon a single underlying rationale and one

opinion can reasonably be described as a logical subset of the

other.” Id.

Previously, in Williams, we applied Marks to hold that the

rule established in Seibert is to be found by looking at Justice

Souter’s plurality opinion for four justices, together with

Justice Kennedy’s narrower concurring opinion. 435 F.3d at

1157. In Davis, we cited with approval our earlier opinion in

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Williams. Davis, 2016 WL 3245043, at *5. Justice Souter’s

plurality opinion requires suppression only where officers

employ a two-step technique that renders the Miranda

warnings ineffective. His opinion does not require a

deliberate intent to employ the forbidden two-step technique. 

Justice Kennedy largely agreed with the plurality, but wrote

that he would add one criterion before finding a Seibert

violation. Justice Kennedy wrote, “In my view, [the

plurality’s] test cuts too broadly. . . . I would apply a narrower

test[.]” Seibert, 542 U.S. at 622 (Kennedy, J., concurring in

the judgment). In Justice Kennedy’s view, an interrogating

officer not only must employ the two-step technique

condemned by the plurality; he or she must also do so

“deliberately.” Justice Kennedy’s concurrence, based on a

rationale narrowing the result reached by the plurality in

Seibert, thus constitutes “clearly established” law for the

purpose of AEDPA review.

Under Justice Kennedy’s concurrence, a postwarning

statement must be suppressed if interrogating officers

deliberately use the two-step interrogation technique that was

used in Seibert, and if effective curative measures are not

taken to ensure that the suspect genuinely understood the

Miranda warnings. In the words of Justice Kennedy, quoted

above, “[c]urative measures should be designed to ensure that

a reasonable person in the suspect’s situation would

understand the import and effect of the Miranda warning and

of the Miranda waiver.” Seibert, 542 U.S. at 622 (Kennedy,

J., concurring in the judgment).

The California Court of Appeal did not understand

Seibert. In the view of the Court of Appeal, the “operative

question” under Miranda was whether Reyes’s unwarned

post-polygraph custodial statement at the San Bernardino

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sheriff’s station had been voluntary. According to the Court

of Appeal, if that statement had been voluntary, his later

Mirandized statement at the San Bernardino police station

was necessarily “likewise volitional.” The Court of Appeal

spent nine pages addressing the voluntariness of Reyes’s

unwarned post-polygraph custodial statement at the San

Bernardino sheriff’s station. For the Court of Appeal, the

voluntariness of that statement determined the admissibility

of the subsequent warned statement at the Riverside police

station. The Court of Appeal addressed Seibert in a single

paragraph.

We quoted that paragraph above, but we reproduce it

here, in its entirety, for the convenience of the reader:

Since defendant’s statements made at the

sheriff’s station were voluntary, his waiver of

Miranda rights at the Riverside police station

and statements made thereafter were likewise

volitional. Unlike in Missouri v. Seibert[,

542 U.S. 600, 617 (2004)], the circumstances

in the instant case need not “be seen as

challenging the comprehensibility and

efficacy of the Miranda warnings to the point

that a reasonable person in the suspect’s shoes

would not have understood them to convey a

message that [he] retained a choice about

continuing to talk.”

(Alteration in original.) The first sentence of the paragraph

recites the Court of Appeal’s conclusion that Reyes’s

postwarning statement was “volitional.” The second sentence

states that, unlike in Seibert, Reyes “retained a choice about

continuing to talk.” That is, in the Court of Appeal’s view,

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REYES V. LEWIS 65

because Reyes “retained a choice,” his “continuing to talk”

was voluntary.

The clearly established rule under Seibert is that if

officers deliberatelyemploythe two-step technique employed

in Seibert, and if insufficient curative measures are taken to

ensure that later Miranda warnings are genuinely understood,

any warned statement thereby obtained must be suppressed,

even if the statement is voluntary. Contrary to Seibert, the

Court of Appeal did not address the question whether the

officers deliberately employed the two-step technique. Also

contrary to Seibert, the Court of Appeal did not address the

adequacy, or even existence, of any “curative measures.” 

Instead, the Court of Appeal analyzed at length the

coerciveness surrounding Reyes’s post-polygraph unwarned

custodial statement at the San Bernardino sheriff’s station and

concluded that because his confession was voluntary his

subsequent warned statement at the Riverside police station

was also voluntary.

Under the circumstances of this case—where police

interrogated fifteen-year-old Reyes over the course of two

days; where on the first day at the Riverside police station

they conducted a two-hour unwarned interrogation; where on

the second day at the San Bernardino sheriff’s station they

obtained a confession during an unwarned interrogation

following an unwarned custodial polygraph test; and where

they transported Reyes back to the Riverside police station

and obtained a postwarning confession “clarifying” what he

had stated at the sheriff’s station—a Seibert analysis was

clearly required.

Contrary to Seibert, the Court of Appeal did not conduct

such an analysis. Instead, the Court of Appeal examined only

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whether Reyes’s statement in his post-polygraph custodial

interrogation was voluntary. It wrote, as a prelude to its

analysis, that the “operative question” was voluntariness:

“We thus will consider whether the trial court erred in finding

that defendant’s statements were voluntary.” Upon

determining that Reyes’s unwarned statements were

voluntary, the Court of Appeal concluded that Reyes’s later

warned statement at the Riverside police station was

necessarily “likewise volitional.” The Court of Appeal then

affirmed the trial court’s decision not to suppress Reyes’s

postwarning statement. The Court of Appeal thus addressed,

and treated as dispositive, the question whether Reyes’s

postwarning statement was voluntary, which is precisely the

question that is irrelevant under Seibert.

We therefore conclude that the Court ofAppeal’s decision

was “contrary to . . . clearly established Federal law, as

determined by the Supreme Court,” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). 

Because its decision was “contrary to” Seibert, we owe it no

deference.

On habeas review, the federal magistrate judge

recommended denying relief, rejecting in a footnote Reyes’s

argument under Seibert. The magistrate judge correctly

understood the rule in Seibert but concluded without analysis

of the evidence that the law enforcement officers in this case

had not deliberately employed the two-step interrogation

process. Deliberateness is a factual finding that we review

for clear error. United States v. Narvaez-Gomez, 489 F.3d

970, 974 (9th Cir. 2007); McClure v. Thompson, 323 F.3d

1233, 1240 (9th Cir. 2003) (applying clear error review to

findings of fact made by a district court on AEDPA review). 

Clear error review requires us to form a “definite and firm

conviction that a mistake has been committed.” Easley v.

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Cromartie, 532 U.S. 234, 242 (2001) (internal quotation

marks omitted). A more searching review is appropriate

where the trial court’s decision was based on documents, as

it was here, rather than credibility evaluations. See id. at 243

(“[T]he key evidence consisted primarily of documents and

expert testimony. Credibility determinations played a minor

role. Accordingly, we find that an extensive review of the

District Court’s findings, for clear error, is warranted.”); Bose

Corp. v. Consumers Union of U.S., Inc., 466 U.S. 485,

500–01 (1984) (“The same ‘clearly erroneous’ standard

applies to findings based on documentary evidence as to

those based entirely on oral testimony, but the presumption

has lesser force in the former situation than in the latter.”

(internal citation omitted)).

We conclude that the magistrate judge, and the district

court in entering judgment based on the recommendation of

the magistrate judge, clearly erred. We wrote in Williams

that evidence of deliberateness in a Seibert inquiry can be

either objective or subjective. “[I]n determining whether the

interrogator deliberately withheld the Miranda warning,

courts should consider whether objective evidence and any

available subjective evidence, such as an officer’s testimony,

support an inference that the two-step interrogation procedure

was used to undermine the Miranda warning.” 435 F.3d at

1158. The absence of direct evidence of subjective intent is

not dispositive. United States v. Capers, 627 F.3d 470, 479

(2d Cir. 2010). As we have recognized, “the most plausible

reason” for delaying Miranda warnings until after a suspect

has confessed “is an illegitimate one, which is the

interrogator’s desire to weaken the warning’s effectiveness,”

see Williams, 435 F.3d at 1159, and “the intent of the officer

will rarely be as candidly admitted as it was [in Seibert].” Id.

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at 1158 (quoting Seibert, 542 U.S. at 617 n.6 (Souter, J.,

plurality opinion)).

In Williams, we provided a nonexhaustive list of

probative objective evidence of deliberateness. Such

evidence includes “the timing, setting and completeness of

the prewarning interrogation, the continuity of police

personnel and the overlapping content of the pre- and

postwarning statements.” Id. at 1159; see also United States

v. Barnes, 713 F.3d 1200, 1205 (9th Cir. 2013) (per curiam)

(examining the record for objective evidence under Seibert);

Capers, 627 F.3d at 479 (“[W]e join our sister circuits in

concluding that a court should review the totality of the

objective and subjective evidence surrounding the

interrogations in order to determine deliberateness, with a

recognition that in most instances the inquiry will rely

heavily, if not entirely, upon objective evidence.”); United

States v. Nunez-Sanchez, 478 F.3d 663, 668–69 (5th Cir.

2007) (examining the totality of the circumstances to infer

deliberateness); United States v. Street, 472 F.3d 1298, 1314

(11th Cir. 2006) (holding that the deliberateness

determination requires an evaluation of “the totality of the

circumstances, including ‘the timing, setting and

completeness of the prewarning interrogation, the continuity

of police personnel and the overlapping content of the preand post-warning statements’” (quoting Williams, 435 F.3d

at 1159)); United States v. Briones, 390 F.3d 610, 614 (8th

Cir. 2004).

Based on the objective evidence in this case, we conclude

that Brandt and his fellow officers deliberately employed the

two-step interrogation technique condemned in Seibert, and

that the magistrate judge and the district court clearly erred in

concluding otherwise. Reyes first confessed in the unwarned

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custodial interrogation conducted byBrandt and Medici at the

San Bernardino sheriff’s station on February 10, after Heard

told Reyes that he had failed the polygraph test. The

California Court of Appeal wrote that it is “not disputed” that

Reyes was in custody during this interrogation. Because the

interrogation was custodial, both the trial judge and

California Court of Appeal concluded that this unwarned

confession at the San Bernardino sheriff’s station was

obtained in violation of Miranda. This unwarned

interrogation, as well as the unwarned interrogation the

previous day at the Riverside police station, were, like the

interrogation in Seibert, “systematic, exhaustive, and

managed with psychological skill.” Seibert, 542 U.S. at 616.

In the unwarned custodial interrogation at the San

Bernardino sheriff’s station, Brandt and Medici obtained

statements from Reyes admitting that he shot Ochoa;

providing the outline of the events that occurred that

afternoon; providing information about how Reyes obtained

the gun used in the shooting and what happened to it

afterward; and providing details about the shooting. In the

warned interrogation at the Riverside police station that

followed, Reyes provided essentially the same information.

The three Riverside police officers involved in the

case—Brandt, Wheeler and Medici—were all experienced

officers. Cf. Capers, 627 F.3d at 481 (“Inexperience, while

not a legitimate excuse for postponing a Miranda warning,

nevertheless may save a confession from exclusion under

Seibert.”). All three were homicide detectives. At the time

of the interrogations, Brandt had been a police officer in

California for twelve years and a homicide detective for the

last four. The tenure of Wheeler and Medici is not specified

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in the record, but we may infer from their ranks that they both

had substantial experience.

Brandt did not take “curative measures” to ensure that

Reyes understood “the import and effect of the Miranda

warning and of the Miranda waiver.” Seibert, 542 U.S. at

622 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment). Indeed, he

did quite the opposite. Brandt was the lead investigator. He

was involved in the case from beginning to end. Brandt

asked Reyes to accompany him to the Riverside police station

on the morning of February 9 after the SWAT team had

entered Reyes’s aunt’s house and placed him in handcuffs. 

Brandt and Wheeler questioned Reyes at the police station for

about two hours that day. During that interview, Brandt

asked Reyes if he would be willing to take a polygraph

examination. Brandt picked Reyes up at his mother’s house

the next morning and took him to the San Bernardino

sheriff’s station for the examination. After Heard told Reyes

that he had failed the polygraph examination, Brandt and

Medici came into the room and took over from Heard. 

During the unwarned custodial interview at the San

Bernardino sheriff’s station on February 10, Brandt and

Medici obtained a detailed confession from Reyes. After

obtaining the confession, Brandt immediately drove Reyes

directly to the Riverside police station, where he and Wheeler

had questioned him the day before. On arrival at the

Riverside station, Brandt and Medici questioned Reyes again. 

At the beginning of this interview, Brandt finally provided

Miranda warnings. During this interview, Reyes gave Brandt

and Medici the same detailed confessions he had just given.

Brandt and Medici had obtained the incriminating

information from Reyes very early in the unwarned custodial

interrogation at the sheriff’s station, on the seventh page of

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the transcript. Yet they continued questioning and talking to

Reyes for another thirty-five pages. They did so in a

nonconfrontational, sympathetic way, with the result that

Reyes was made to feel sufficiently comfortable that he

talked about his family’s Christmas rituals and laughed when

Brandt said he could not stay up late enough to open presents. 

At the end of the session, Reyes even asked Brandt and

Medici not to tell his mother what he had confessed to them: 

“It’ll be cool like if you guys don’t tell my Mom.”

At the beginning of the follow-up questioning at the

Riverside police station, Brandt gave Reyes the Miranda

warnings, as recounted above. But, as is evident from the

transcript, he played down their importance. He said he

wanted “just to clarify stuff,” suggesting by his use of the

word “clarify” that the “stuff” had already been conveyed in

the earlier interview, and that the only purpose of the later

interview was clarification. Brandt then said he wanted to

“read you your rights” because “you’ve been sitting in that

room and the door was locked and you’re not free to leave.” 

An experienced officer in Brandt’s position would have

known that to a reasonable person not trained in the law, let

alone a fifteen-year-old high school freshman, these stated

reasons were hardly an effective means of conveying the fact

that the warning he was about to give could mean the

difference between serving life in prison and going home that

night.

After Brandt read the Miranda warnings, he said, “Do

you understand each of these rights that I’ve explained to

you? Yeah? OK. Can we talk about the stuff we talked

about earlier today? Is that a yes?” While giving the

Miranda warnings, Brandt did not pause to ask “Is that a

yes?” after asking if Reyes understood “each of the rights”

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listed. Only after the Miranda warnings had been completed

and after Brandt asked whether “we [can] talk about the stuff

we talked about earlier today” did Brandt finally ask “Is that

a yes?” and wait for a response. In contrast to the

interrogation in Seibert, Brandt did not ask Reyes for a signed

waiver of rights or a signed acknowledgment of having read

and understood the Miranda warnings.

The psychological, spatial, and temporal break between

the unwarned and warned interrogations was not enough to

cure the Miranda violation. Perhaps most important, Brandt

had been a continuous presence throughout. He and Wheeler

were the two questioners in the unwarned interrogation on

February 9; he was the primary questioner in both the

unwarned and warned interrogations on February 10; and he

had personally driven Reyes on February 9 and 10, including

the short trip between the sheriff’s station and the police

station on February 10. Further, although the unwarned

custodial interrogation on February 10 took place at the San

Bernardino sheriff’s station and the warned interrogation took

place at the Riverside police station later that day, the warned

interrogation was conducted in a familiar place where Reyes

had been questioned by Brandt the day before. The record

does not tell us the driving distance and time between the

sheriff’s station and the Riverside police station, but a map of

the area indicates that it was no more than fifteen miles. The

timeline for the events on February 10, described above,

indicated that the driving time was not likely to have been

more than about thirty minutes. This case is quite unlike

Bobby v. Dixon, 132 S. Ct. 26, 32 (2011) (per curiam), in

which there was a four-hour gap, during which the defendant

was transported from the police station to a separate jail and

back, and during which the defendant spoke with his lawyer

and learned material facts about the ongoing investigation. 

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See also Capers, 627 F.3d at 484 (holding that a ninetyminute break in time between interrogations was not curative

in part because police personnel were consistent and “both

[interrogations] occurred while Capers remained in handcuffs

and in settings that clearlyestablished the authoritative nature

of the questioning”).

B. “Unreasonable Determination of the Facts”

Our concurring colleague reads the Court of Appeal’s

decision as understanding and applying Seibert. In his view,

the Court of Appeal’s quotation from Justice Souter’s

plurality opinion (in the paragraph we quoted above) shows

that it understood Seibert, and that the Court of Appeal

viewed the question before it to be whether Brandt and his

fellow officers took sufficient curative measures to ensure

that the Miranda warnings given at the Riverside police

station were effective. But our colleague nonetheless agrees

with the result we reach in this case. In his view, even under

AEDPA’s deferential standard, we must grant habeas relief

because the Court of Appeal’s conclusion that sufficient

curative measures were taken is an “unreasonable

determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented

in the State court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2). See

Concurrence at 78–80.

For the reasons given above, we disagree with our

concurring colleague on the question whether the Court of

Appeal’s decision was “contrary to” Seibert. However, we

note that, although we do not need to reach the question

whether the Court of Appeal’s decision rests on an

“unreasonable determination of the facts,” we entirely agree

with him on that question. It is readily apparent, on the

factual record of this case, that Brandt and the others were

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experienced officers who acted carefully and deliberately in

performing their two-step interrogation, and further, that they

did not take “curative measures” that would “ensure that a

reasonable person in [Reyes’s]situationwould understand the

import and effect of the Miranda warning and of the Miranda

waiver.” 542 U.S. at 622 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the

judgment). Indeed, as described above, far from taking

“curative measures,” they took affirmative steps to ensure

that Reyes did not “understand the import and effect” of the

Miranda warnings he was finally given at the Riverside

police station.

Conclusion

The California Court of Appeal applied a rule that was

contrary to federal law as clearly established by the Supreme

Court in Seibert when it concluded that Reyes’s postwarning

confession was admissible solely on the ground that his

unwarned custodial statement was voluntary, and that his

subsequent warned statement therefore was also necessarily

voluntary. We hold that police officers deliberately

employed a two-step interrogation technique, and that they

did not take appropriate “curative measures,” in violation of

Seibert. We therefore hold that Reyes’s postwarning

confession should have been suppressed. Because the state

did not argue harmless error in this court or the district court,

that defense is waived. See United States v. Vallejo, 237 F.3d

1008, 1026 (9th Cir. 2001). Accordingly, we reverse the

district court’s denial of Reyes’s petition for a writ of habeas

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REYES V. LEWIS 75

corpus and remand with instructions to grant the writ unless

Reyes is retried within a reasonable time, not to exceed 180

days.

REVERSED and REMANDED.

SINGLETON, Senior District Judge, concurring:

The majority has joined in a thoughtful and thorough

judgment in this case. I concur in that judgment. The

majority has forcefully marshaled the facts and analyzed the

applicable law. If this case had arisen entirely within the

federal system, e.g., under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, I would fully

join in the opinion and have no further comments or

suggestions.

This case does not arise entirelywithin the federal system,

however, but comes to us from state court under § 2254, and

thus our review must be guided by the Antiterrorism and

Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). AEDPA

requires us to give deference to decisions of the state courts

both as to the facts and the law, except in limited

circumstances.

The majority identifies Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600

(2004), as clearly established federal law at the time the

California Court of Appeal decided this case and looks to

Justice Kennedy’s concurring opinion to provide the

appropriate rule of decision. I agree. See United States v.

Williams, 435 F.3d 1148, 1157–59 (9th Cir. 2006) (analyzing

Seibert and concluding that Justice Kennedy’s opinion is the

narrowest holding obtaining five votes). In the majority’s

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view, the California Court of Appeal recognized Seibert as

controlling but unreasonably interpreted it, effectively

ignoring Seibert and deciding the case under the prior law set

out in Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. 298 (1985). The majority

concludes that, since the California court failed to apply

clearly established law, we may withhold any deference and

exercise our independent judgment in reviewing the

California Court of Appeal’s decision de novo.

I disagree. My review of the record leads me to conclude

that the California Court of Appeal’s conclusions of law are

in conformity with Seibert and Justice Kennedy’s

concurrence. In my view, the state court’s approach to the

law is sound, but its finding of facts are unreasonable in

context. I therefore, on this alternate ground, join in this

Court’s judgment. My reasons are as follows.

In reaching a contrary view, the majority focuses

exclusively on one part of Justice Kennedy’s concurrence. 

Seibert addresses what we have termed a two-step

interrogation leading to a confession. The first part of the

interrogation is unwarned. Once the suspect confesses,

Miranda warnings are given, and the interrogation resumes. 

Typically, the suspect confirms his confession. In practice,

the earlier confession is suppressed, but following Elstad, the

subsequent post-warning statement is allowed into evidence

if it is voluntary. Seibert modified Elstad in cases such as

this. The opinion was fragmented. Justice Souter wrote an

opinion for a plurality of four justices. Justice Kennedy

separately concurred, arguably on a more limited basis, and

Justice O’Connor wrote a dissent in which three other justices

joined. The majority and I agree that Justice Kennedy’s

opinion provides the holding of Seibert. We disagree on how

Seibert should be applied to this case.

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In my view, Justice Kennedyadopts all of Justice Souter’s

plurality opinion but imposes a limitation. Rightly

understood, Justice Kennedy’s opinion adopts a two-part test

for determining the validity of a confession where the police

use a two-step approach in their interrogation of a suspect. 

The first prong, which I will call the Kennedy prong, asks

whether the two-step procedure was chosen intentionally in

order to render subsequent Miranda warnings ineffective. 

The second prong, which I will call the Souter prong, asks if

the two-step process, whether or not intentional, rendered the

subsequent warnings ineffective. For Justice Kennedy, both

prongs must be satisfied in order to create a Siebert violation

and take the case out of Oregon v. Elstad. Since the test has

two prongs, it is analogous to the Strickland test for

determining ineffective assistance of counsel.1 Like that test,

a reviewing court should be able to look to either prong first,

and, if that prong is not satisfied, there is no need to address

the other prong. See Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 241

(2009). Viewed in this light, the California Court of Appeal’s

decision is within the law. That court quoted Justice Souter

directly for the second prong of the test and concluded that

nothing in the record of the interrogation “challenged the

comprehensibility and efficacy of the Miranda warnings to

the point that a reasonable person in the suspect’s shoes

would not have understood them to convey a message that

[he] retained a choice about continuing to talk.”

Justice Kennedy’s test requires that any two-step

procedure must be intentionally motivated to undermine

Miranda. Justice Souter rejects reference to the police intent

and focuses only on whether the process itself challenged the

comprehensibilityand effectiveness of theMirandawarnings. 

 

1

Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984).

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Thus, if as the California Court of Appeal found, Reyes

understood at the time of the second stage of the interview

that he retained a choice about whether to talk, his decision to

talk was consistent with Seibert, and there was no need for

the Court of Appeal to address the first prong of the test and

determine whether the police intended to nullify the Miranda

warnings.

The Court of Appeal did not separately address the first

prong of the test, and so by analogy to Strickland, we may

review that prong de novo and exercise independent

judgment.2See Porter v. McCollum, 558 U.S. 30, 39 (2009);

Mann v. Ryan, 774 F.3d 1203, 1215 (9th Cir. 2014)

(“Because the state post-conviction court did not reach the

deficiency prong of the Strickland analysis, our review of this

prong is not circumscribed by AEDPA.”). I agree with the

majority that, under the facts of this case, the use of the twostep procedure was a conscious effort to undermine Miranda. 

See Williams, 435 F.3d at 1158–60 (discussing how a court

should determine whether an interrogation was deliberately

used to undermine Miranda).

The second prong of the test was addressed by the Court

of Appeal, and we must grant deference and may only reject

the finding if it was “based on an unreasonable determination

2

It is clear that the Court of Appeal did not think that the procedure

followed undermined the effectiveness of the mid-stream Miranda

warnings. It is not clear that the Court of Appeal considered whether the

procedure was chosen to undermine Miranda. Even if I were to assume

that the Court of Appeal found no intent, sub silentio, requiring deference

I would still conclude under Williams that the procedure was chosen

intentionally. See Williams, 435 F.3d at 1160 (discussing how to prove a

deliberate choice of procedure).

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of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the state

court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (d)(2).

The majority points out that the Court of Appeal did not

explain its factual finding that the mid-stream Miranda

warning was not undermined by the interrogation procedure

chosen by the police. In such a case, we must look to all of

the relevant evidence to determine if the fact finding is

reasonably supported. See Delgado v. Lewis, 223 F.3d 976,

982 (9th Cir. 2000) (“Federal habeas review is not de novo

when the state court does not supply reasoning for its

decision, but an independent review of the record is required

to determine whether the state court clearly erred in its

application of controlling federal law.”). Reyes has a heavy

burden to establish that a state court fact finding is

unreasonable. See Burt v. Titlow, __ U.S. __, 134 S. Ct. 10,

15–16 (2013). I am satisfied that he has sustained that burden

here.

The majority has summarized all of the relevant evidence,

and it need not be repeated here. Guided by Williams

regarding a determination of the effectiveness of mid-stream

Miranda warnings, see Williams, 435 F.3d at 1160–62, I do

not believe that there is substantial evidence that would

support an inference that the warnings given to Reyes were

effective at the time they were given. There is no evidence of

the corrective measures identified by Justice Kennedy. 

Turning to the factors considered relevant by the plurality:

1) the pre-warning interrogation was complete and detailed,

consuming many hours; 2) the two rounds of interrogation

overlapped; 3) the two rounds of interrogation were close in

time; 4) there was a continuity of police personnel; and, most

importantly, 5) the interrogator’s questions treated the second

round of interrogation as continuous with the first.

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Viewed in light of the totality of the circumstances, there

is no evidence that would permit a finding that the two-step

interrogation in this case did not undermine Miranda and lead

to an involuntary confession.

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