Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-23-03166/USCOURTS-caDC-23-03166-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Darrell Neely
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued October 15, 2024 Decided December 27, 2024

No. 23-3166

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

DARRELL NEELY,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:21-cr-00642-1)

Paul F. Enzinna, appointed by the court, argued the cause 

and filed the briefs for appellant.

T. Dietrich Hill, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause 

for appellee. With him on the brief were Matthew M. Graves,

U.S. Attorney, and Chrisellen R. Kolb, John P. Mannarino, 

Michael L. Barclay, and Kyle R. Mirabelli, Assistant U.S. 

Attorneys.

Before: WILKINS and PAN, Circuit Judges, and ROGERS, 

Senior Circuit Judge.

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Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge WILKINS.

WILKINS, Circuit Judge: On January 6, 2021, following a 

rally held by former-President Trump, a number of individuals 

entered the U.S. Capitol building and grounds, disrupting the 

joint session of Congress held to certify the 2020 presidential 

election. Darrell Neely was one of those individuals. He spent 

over an hour in the Capitol building, during which time he stole 

U.S. Capitol Police property. After a bench trial, Neely was 

convicted of five misdemeanor offenses and sentenced to 28 

months in prison. On appeal, he challenges the denial of three 

pretrial motions on statutory and constitutional grounds. After 

considering each of Neely’s arguments, we conclude that none 

prevail and affirm his convictions and sentence. 

I. 

Darrell Neely, radio host of the streaming show “Global 

Enlightenment Radio Network,” was part of a crowd of people 

who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. At the time that 

Neely entered the Capitol grounds, law enforcement had 

established a line barring further entry and signs displayed that 

the area was closed. Neely spent at least 20 minutes on the 

Lower West Terrace of the Capitol grounds, then entered the 

building itself, where he remained for over an hour. While in 

the building, Neely took various items that belonged to the 

Government, including a U.S. Capitol Police patch, badge, 

name tag, and baseball hat. Neely later wore the baseball hat 

while broadcasting his radio show. 

Based on this and other conduct, Neely was indicted on 

October 12, 2022, in a Superseding Indictment. He moved to 

dismiss the counts under 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a), arguing that the 

statute did not cover his conduct because the U.S. Capitol 

building and grounds were not “restricted” by the Secret 

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Service. The same day, Neely moved to transfer venue based 

on his concerns that he could not be tried by an impartial jury 

in the District of Columbia. He also moved to suppress a 

confession he gave to law enforcement. The District Court 

denied all three motions. Neely waived his right to a jury trial

and proceeded to bench trial on all counts. That trial 

commenced on May 22, 2023, and concluded on May 25, 2023. 

On May 25, 2023, Neely was convicted of violations of 18 

U.S.C. §§ 641, 1752(a)(1) & (2), and 40 U.S.C. 

§ 5104(e)(2)(D) & (G) and acquitted of one count of 18 U.S.C. 

§ 231(a). He was sentenced to a term of 28 months. 

On appeal, Neely argues that the District Court erred in 

denying his pretrial motions. Because the District Court 

correctly decided each of the three issues, we affirm Neely’s 

convictions and sentence in full.

II.

Neely filed three relevant pretrial motions: (1) a motion to 

dismiss two counts of 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a) as improperly 

charged, and alternatively, unconstitutionally vague; (2) a 

motion to suppress certain statements he gave to police after he 

signed a Miranda waiver; and (3) a motion to transfer venue 

based on jury prejudice. We address each in turn.

A.

The motion to dismiss below was predicated on Neely’s

interpretation of 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a). “We review preserved 

claims of statutory interpretation . . . de novo,” United States v. 

Saffarinia, 101 F.4th 933, 939 (D.C. Cir. 2024), including 

claims that a statute “is unconstitutionally vague,” which 

present a “pure question[] of law,” United States v. Bronstein, 

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849 F.3d 1101, 1106 (D.C. Cir. 2017) (internal quotation marks 

omitted).

1.

Neely first contends that the statutory prohibition against 

“knowingly enter[ing] or remain[ing] in any restricted building 

or grounds without lawful authority to do so,” under 18 U.S.C. 

§ 1752(a), is limited to buildings or grounds that have been 

restricted by the U.S. Secret Service. Because the Capitol 

building and grounds were restricted by the U.S. Capitol Police 

on January 6, 2021, Neely argues that his conduct there is not 

actionable under Section 1752(a). The District Court, per 

Neely, thus erred in denying his motion to dismiss those 

charges. The Government counters that the Court should read 

the statute as it is: silent as to who restricts the pertinent area. 

The plain text of the statute trumps Neely’s arguments to the 

contrary.

18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(1) criminalizes “knowingly enter[ing] 

or remain[ing] in any restricted building or grounds without 

lawful authority to do so.” Subsection (a)(2) defines the 

offense of “knowingly, and with intent to impede or disrupt the 

orderly conduct of Government business or official functions, 

engag[ing] in disorderly or disruptive conduct in, or within 

such proximity to, any restricted building or grounds,” where 

the act “impedes or disrupts the orderly conduct of Government 

business or official functions.” Subsection (c)(1) defines the 

term “restricted buildings or grounds” as follows: 

[A]ny posted, cordoned off, or otherwise restricted 

area—(A) of the White House or its grounds, or the 

Vice President’s official residence or its grounds; (B) 

of a building or grounds where the President or other 

person protected by the Secret Service is or will be 

temporarily visiting; or (C) of a building or grounds 

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so restricted in conjunction with an event designated 

as a special event of national significance[.]

By its terms, Subsection (a) does not specify that the 

“restricted building and grounds” shall be so restricted only by 

the Secret Service. The District Court ruled that this was 

dispositive, reasoning that “[t]o understand why Neely’s 

argument has failed to persuade a single court, one need only 

read the plain text of § 1752(c).” United States v. Neely, No. 

21-cr-642, 2023 WL 1778198, at *3 (D.D.C. Feb. 6, 2023)

(Bates, J.). We agree.

As Neely conceded at oral argument, the statutory text is 

silent as to who may restrict the relevant areas under Section 

1752(a). Because the Court does not “read into statutes words 

that aren’t there,” Romag Fasteners, Inc. v. Fossil, Inc., 140 S. 

Ct. 1492, 1495 (2020), we decline to supplement Section 

1752(a) with a requirement that “any restricted building or 

grounds” be so designated only by the Secret Service. Accord 

Johnston v. SEC, 49 F.4th 569, 577 (D.C. Cir. 2022) (“Because 

the SEC’s interpretation does not require reading any 

additional words into the statute, whereas Johnston’s would, 

we adopt the SEC’s interpretation.”). 

United States v. Bursey, 416 F.3d 301 (4th Cir. 2005), is 

not to the contrary. There, local and federal law enforcement 

coordinated to provide security for the restricted area. Because 

the Fourth Circuit concluded that “there was ample evidence 

that Bursey understood the area to have been restricted by the 

Secret Service, and thus a federally restricted zone,” id. at 309, 

per Neely, the focus on the Secret Service shows that restriction 

by that entity is a statutory requirement. The Government 

counters that the Bursey court’s analysis was limited to the 

statute’s mens rea requirement and the court “does not hold, or 

even imply, that § 1752 requires that only the Secret Service 

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may restrict the relevant area.” Appellee Br. 35. But there is a 

more fundamental issue with Neely’s reliance on Bursey: That 

case interpreted a prior version of the statute, which defined 

“restricted area[s]” as those restricted by Secret Service 

regulations. Id. at 306–07. Even if Bursey conclusively held 

that the Secret Service must restrict buildings or grounds, such 

a holding was based on a statute which is no longer in effect. 

Bursey does not control the question before this Court.

Neely argues that a plain text reading “ignores the fact that 

in enacting the statute and in each of its amendments, Congress 

has clearly understood—and intended—the statute to apply to 

the Secret Service.” Appellant Br. 7. He urges that the 

legislative history reveals that Congress intended the statute to 

define conduct “within the purview of the Secret Service,” id.

at 11, citing statements made by two House representatives and 

noting that “[t]he legislative history is devoid of any mention 

of any other agency,” id. at 11–12. But even assuming that 

Neely has correctly interpreted the legislative history, it cannot 

be used to inject new meaning into unambiguous statutory text. 

See United States v. Long, 997 F.3d 342, 356 (D.C. Cir. 2021). 

“The intentions of committees of either house regarding a 

certain subject, where these intentions conflict with the express 

provisions of existing law, cannot simply be read into a statute 

that is otherwise silent on the subject.” Demby v. Schweiker, 

671 F.2d 507, 510 (D.C. Cir. 1981). 

The same is true as to Neely’s appeal to the regulatory 

history. Although he accurately notes that the Secret Service 

used to possess regulatory authority to define specific restricted 

areas under Subsection 1752(a), as the Government points out, 

Congress subsequently amended the statute to eliminate any 

references to the former regulatory regime. See USA 

PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005, 

Pub. L. No. 109-177, § 602, 120 Stat. 192, 252 (2006); Federal 

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Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011, 

Pub. L. No. 112-98, 126 Stat. 263 (2012). As such, the prior 

regulations were rescinded by the agency, which clarified that 

following amendment, since “the statute in its current form 

makes no reference to regulation,” “the offense conduct is fully 

described in the text of the statute itself.” Restricted Buildings 

and Grounds, 83 Fed. Reg. 18939, 18940 (May 1, 2018). 

While Neely concedes that the statute no longer contains the 

language upon which he relies, he nevertheless claims that 

because Congress has not expressly divested the Secret Service 

of that authority or assigned it to another agency, the Secret 

Service remains authorized to restrict grounds under 

Subsection 1752(a). The parties agree that the Secret Service 

can restrict grounds. The Government merely disputes that the 

Secret Service is the exclusive restricting authority. Neely’s 

invocation of the regulatory history simply confirms that 

Congress intended to empower the Secret Service to restrict 

grounds within the meaning of Section 1752 but does not show 

that it sought to do so at the expense of other law enforcement 

agencies. 

Last, Neely’s proposed scenarios do not persuade us that a 

plain text reading of Subsection 1752(a) would yield absurd 

results. “A statutory outcome is absurd if it defies rationality 

by rendering a statute nonsensical or superfluous or if it creates 

an outcome so contrary to perceived social values that 

Congress could not have intended it.” United States v. Cook, 

594 F.3d 883, 891 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (cleaned up). To establish 

absurdity is “a high threshold.” Id. Neely argues that under 

the Court’s reading of the statute, any individual—whether 

they are an employee of the Kennedy Center or a private 

security officer at a deli—could establish restricted grounds 

under Subsection 1752(a). But under these hypotheticals, the 

mens rea requirement would ensure that any individual 

convicted of such an offense would have knowingly entered 

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into a restricted zone. As the Government presses, federal law 

enforcement frequently coordinates with state and local 

counterparts, or even private security, to secure areas. Neely 

does not explain why such outcomes are “nonsensical” or “so 

contrary to perceived social values” that they could not have 

been intended. 

Neely also argues that absent a limitation on who can 

restrict relevant areas, private citizens could freewheelingly 

create criminal liability for unsuspecting individuals. But the 

statute does not sanction otherwise unauthorized individuals to 

exercise such power: Neely points to no statutory provision 

purporting to expand the class of individuals with restricting 

authority and offers no response to the Government’s citation 

to parallel provisions as examples of such enabling language. 

See 18 U.S.C. § 3056(a) (“[T]he United States Secret Service 

is authorized to protect [designees].”); 2 U.S.C. § 1961(a) 

(authorizing the Capitol police to “police the United States 

Capitol Buildings and Grounds”); id. § 1963 (same).

Section 1752(a) thus does not require that the Secret 

Service restrict “any restricted building or grounds.”

2.

Neely also alternatively argues that, read as written, 

Subsection 1752(a) is unconstitutionally vague as applied to 

him. “The void-for-vagueness doctrine developed from the 

rule of construction that penal statutes are to be construed 

strictly in favor of the accused.” Bronstein, 849 F.3d at 1106

(internal quotation marks and citation omitted). “[A] statute is 

unconstitutionally vague if, applying the rules for interpreting 

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legal texts, its meaning specifies no standard of conduct at all.” 

Id. at 1107 (cleaned up). 

A law may be vague in violation of due process for 

failure to give notice to the public or guidance to law 

enforcement or both: “First, it may fail to provide the 

kind of notice that will enable ordinary people to 

understand what conduct it prohibits; second, it may 

authorize and even encourage arbitrary and 

discriminatory enforcement.” 

United States v. Nassif, 97 F.4th 968, 981 (D.C. Cir. 2024) 

(quoting City of Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41, 56 (1999)). 

Neely persists that nothing in the statute indicates that 

Subsection 1752(a) prohibits entry into areas restricted by the 

U.S. Capitol Police, but the plain text of the statute 

unambiguously includes such locations. The “restricted” signs 

on the Capitol grounds, coupled with the presence of federal 

law enforcement officers enforcing the boundaries, clearly 

sufficed to “give [a] person of ordinary intelligence a 

reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited, so that he 

may act accordingly.” Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 

104, 108 (1972). 

Moreover, Neely states that he has been unable to locate a 

single case prosecuted under Section 1752 involving areas 

restricted by those other than the Secret Service, arguing that a 

potential defendant would not be on notice that conduct on 

grounds restricted by the U.S. Capitol Police could be charged 

under the statute. But “Supreme Court precedent teaches that 

the presence of enforcement discretion alone does not render a 

statutory scheme unconstitutionally vague.” Kincaid v. 

District of Columbia, 854 F.3d 721, 729 (D.C. Cir. 2017). This 

is because the Department of Justice’s interpretation of a 

statute does not elucidate legislative intent at enactment. 

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“[C]riminal laws are for courts, not for the Government, to 

construe.” Abramski v. United States, 573 U.S. 169, 191 

(2014); see also United States v. Sorensen, 801 F.3d 1217, 

1228 (10th Cir. 2015) (relying “on the statute’s plain language 

to affirm the conviction” because “[e]ven if the government 

had never prosecuted someone in [the defendant’s] position,” 

courts would still “look to the statute’s plain language and 

conclude that [his] charge fits within” it).

Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347 (1964), does not 

help Neely. There, two Black students entered a restaurant and, 

in response, an employee hung up a “No Trespassing” sign. Id. 

at 348. When asked to leave, the students refused, and were 

charged with trespassing under a state statute that forbade 

“entry upon the lands of another after notice prohibiting such 

entry.” Id. at 348, 351–52 (cleaned up). The students were 

convicted and on appeal, the South Carolina Supreme Court 

affirmed, “constru[ing] the statute to cover not only the act of 

entry on the premises of another after receiving notice not to 

enter, but also the act of remaining on the premises of another 

after receiving notice to leave.” Id. at 350. The Supreme Court 

invalidated the defendants’ convictions because while the 

statutory text was not vague, the state supreme court’s 

“unforeseeable and retroactive judicial expansion of narrow 

and precise statutory language” constituted “a deprivation of 

the right of fair warning.” Id. at 352.

Neely cites Bouie to argue that the absence of judicial 

decisions affirming Subsection 1752(a) convictions occurring 

on grounds restricted by those other than the Secret Service

deprived him of fair notice that such conduct was criminal. But 

in Bouie, the plain text of the statute was clear and “the 

uncertainty as to the statute’s meaning [was] itself not revealed 

until the court’s decision,” id., whereas here, Neely argues that 

the statutory text itself is void-for-vagueness. (And we have 

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rejected this argument.) Thus, Bouie does not support a 

conclusion that Section 1752(a) is unconstitutionally vague as 

applied.

Finally, because the statute is not ambiguous, the rule of 

lenity has no role to play in its interpretation. See Beecham v. 

United States, 511 U.S. 368, 374 (1994). Section 1752(a) is 

consistent with the Due Process Clause and the District Court 

correctly denied Neely’s motion to dismiss because the statute

is not unconstitutionally vague.1

B.

Neely also appeals the District Court’s denial of his motion 

to suppress the videotaped statement that he gave to the Federal 

Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) on October 18, 2021, 

following his arrest. That motion argued that Neely’s written 

waiver of his Miranda rights was neither voluntary nor 

intelligent as required by the Fifth Amendment. The 

challenged interview was Neely’s third conversation with the 

FBI. The first two occurred before his arrest, in January and 

June 2021. Neely claims that because he was not provided with 

Miranda warnings during the first two interviews, the warning 

1 Neely argues in a footnote that Section 1752(a)(2), which 

proscribes conduct “within such proximity to” restricted areas, is 

unconstitutionally vague because it does not define the relevant 

location with specificity. But Neely does not have standing to bring 

such a claim. “[A]n individual ‘who engages in some conduct that 

is clearly proscribed cannot complain of the vagueness of the law as 

applied to the conduct of others.’” United States v. Nassif, 97 F.4th 

968, 981 (D.C. Cir. 2024) (quoting Holder v. Humanitarian L.

Project, 561 U.S. 1, 20 (2010)). Neely was convicted of Section

1752(a) violations not just for remaining “within proximity to” the 

U.S. Capitol buildings and grounds, but for actually entering them. 

That conduct is clearly encompassed by the statute, depriving Neely 

of standing to challenge its other applications.

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given prior to the third interview was constitutionally 

ineffective under Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600 (2004). He 

asks us to hold that the District Court erred in denying his 

motion without a hearing.

While any factual findings made by the District Court are 

reviewed for clear error, “[t]he question whether a given set of 

facts meets the legal threshold needed to overcome [the] 

prophylactic protection of Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights is 

reviewed de novo.” United States v. Straker, 800 F.3d 570, 621 

(D.C. Cir. 2015) (per curiam). Although we have not yet 

“establish[ed] a standard of review with respect to the District 

Court’s denial of [a] request for a” motion to suppress hearing, 

United States v. Guertin, 67 F.4th 445, 449 (D.C. Cir. 2023), 

the Government urges the Court to “review the denial of an 

evidentiary hearing on a motion to suppress for abuse of 

discretion,” United States v. Edgeworth, 889 F.3d 350, 353 (7th 

Cir. 2018) (internal quotation marks omitted). Neely does not 

offer a contrary standard, so we will assume without deciding 

that the District Court’s denial of a hearing is reviewed for 

abuse of discretion.

1.

Neely contends that his two unmirandized pre-arrest 

interviews invalidated his later Miranda waiver because at that 

point, after being questioned without a Miranda warning twice, 

he did not “think he had a genuine right to remain silent, let 

alone persist in so believing once the police began to lead him 

over the same ground again.” Seibert, 542 U.S. at 613. The 

Government defends the ruling below that the October 18th 

waiver was voluntary under Seibert.

2

 Because the Seibert

2 For the first time on appeal, the Government urges the Court to 

decide that the lawfulness of the pre-arrest interviews is fatal to 

Neely’s Seibert claim. The Circuits are unanimous that Seibert

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framework demonstrates that the contested statements were not 

elicited unconstitutionally, we affirm. 

a.

“A subsequent administration of Miranda warnings to a 

suspect who has given a voluntary but unwarned statement 

ordinarily should suffice to remove the conditions that 

precluded admission of the earlier statement.” Oregon v. 

Elstad, 470 U.S. 298, 314 (1985). “The relevant inquiry is 

whether, in fact, the second statement was also voluntarily 

made.” Id. at 318. In Seibert, a fractured Supreme Court 

concluded that a law enforcement “strategy of withholding 

Miranda warnings until after interrogating and drawing out a 

confession,” then mirandizing the suspect and obtaining the 

same confession after waiver, was unlawful because such 

waivers were clearly involuntary. 542 U.S. at 609. This 

technique, known as “question-first,” was designed “to render 

Miranda warnings ineffective by waiting for a particularly 

opportune time to give them, after the suspect has already 

applies only if the initial unmirandized interview was custodial and 

thus unlawful. See, e.g., United States v. Simmonds, 641 F. App’x 

99, 101 (2d Cir. 2016); United States v. Courtney, 463 F.3d 333, 337 

(5th Cir. 2006); Sturm v. Superintendent of Indian River Juv. Corr. 

Facility, 514 F. App’x 618, 625 n.2 (6th Cir. 2013); United States v. 

Thompson, 496 F.3d 807, 811 (7th Cir. 2007); Smith v. Clark, 612 F. 

App’x 418, 421 (9th Cir. 2015). Yet courts that have circumvented 

Seibert on the basis of an initially lawful interview have done so 

where there was a factual record and ruling below on the custodial 

nature of the first interview. Cf. Courtney, 463 F.3d at 337 (“Because 

the record is well developed on this issue, we consider whether 

Courtney was in custody during the first two interviews.”); 

Thompson, 496 F.3d at 811 (same). We have no such record here. 

Despite our doubts that Seibert governs, we assume without deciding 

that it does. Accord United States v. Kiam, 432 F.3d 524, 531–33 

(3d Cir. 2006).

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confessed.” Id. at 611. The Court concluded that “it is likely 

that if the interrogators employ the technique of withholding 

warnings until after interrogation succeeds in eliciting a 

confession, the warnings will be ineffective in preparing the 

suspect for successive interrogation, close in time and similar 

in content.” Id. at 613 (emphasis added).

Justice Souter, writing for the four-Justice plurality, set 

forth “a series of relevant facts that bear on whether Miranda

warnings delivered midstream could be effective,” including:

[T]he 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.

Id. at 615. Justice Kennedy, the fifth vote for the majority, 

concurred separately because he believed the plurality’s 

“multifactor test that applies to every two-stage interrogation 

may serve to undermine” Miranda’s clarity. Id. at 622 

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

reasoned that a violation should be found where the questionfirst method “was used in a calculated way to undermine the 

Miranda warning,” that is, deliberately deployed to make the 

warning ineffective. Id. 

“When a fragmented Court decides a case and no single 

rationale explaining the result enjoys the assent of five Justices, 

‘the holding of the Court may be viewed as that position taken 

by those Members who concurred in the judgments on the 

narrowest grounds . . . .’” Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 

188, 193 (1977) (quoting Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 169 

n.15 (1976) (plurality opinion)). We have “interpreted Marks

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to mean that the narrowest opinion ‘must represent a common 

denominator of the Court’s reasoning; it must embody a 

position implicitly approved by at least five Justices who 

support the judgment.’” United States v. Epps, 707 F.3d 337, 

348 (D.C. Cir. 2013) (quoting King v. Palmer, 950 F.2d 771, 

781 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (en banc)) (emphasis in original). Put 

simply, the concurrence controls when it “posits a narrow test 

to which the plurality must necessarily agree as a logical 

consequence of its own, broader position.” Id. (quoting King, 

950 F.2d at 782) (emphasis in original).

Circuits have split as to whether Justice Kennedy’s 

concurrence controls under Marks, see Straker, 800 F.3d at 

617, with some finding “Seibert’s holding in Justice Kennedy’s 

opinion concurring in the judgment,” United States v. 

Courtney, 463 F.3d 333, 338 (5th Cir. 2006), and others 

concluding that “the Marks rule is not applicable to Seibert,” 

because “Justice Kennedy’s intent-based test was rejected by 

both the plurality opinion and the dissent,” United States v. 

Heron, 564 F.3d 879, 884 (7th Cir. 2009). The vast majority 

of Circuits have read Marks as requiring the application of 

Justice Kennedy’s test. See, e.g., United States v. Capers, 627 

F.3d 470, 476 (2d Cir. 2010); Kiam, 432 F.3d at 532; United 

States v. Mashburn, 406 F.3d 303, 309 (4th Cir. 2005); 

Courtney, 463 F.3d at 338; United States v. Torres-Lona, 491 

F.3d 750, 758 (8th Cir. 2007); United States v. Williams, 435 

F.3d 1148, 1158 (9th Cir. 2006); United States v. Guillen, 995 

F.3d 1095, 1120 (10th Cir. 2021); United States v. Street, 472 

F.3d 1298, 1313 (11th Cir. 2006). Only the Sixth and Seventh 

Circuits diverge. See United States v. Ray, 803 F.3d 244, 272

(6th Cir. 2015); Heron, 564 F.3d at 884. 

This Court has yet not decided which test controls. 

Straker, 800 F.3d at 617. We now join the majority to rule that 

under Marks and Epps, the test articulated by Justice 

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Kennedy’s concurrence controls. The plurality’s test in Seibert 

analyzes the two-step interrogation through an objective lens: 

Based on the consideration of a series of factors, were the 

Miranda warnings rendered ineffective to accomplish their 

object? Seibert, 542 U.S. at 615. This test would find both 

intentionally and unintentionally illegal two-step interrogations 

to be violative of the defendant’s constitutional rights. See

Guillen, 995 F.3d at 1115–16. 

Justice Kennedy’s subjective test defines a constitutional 

violation under a narrower set of circumstances, that is, when 

the interrogation was deliberately used to circumvent the 

protections of Miranda. Seibert, 542 U.S. at 622 (Kennedy, J., 

concurring in the judgment). Under this framework, only 

intentionally unlawful two-step interrogations give rise to a 

constitutional claim. Thus, “the analysis of the Seibert

plurality opinion and Justice Kennedy’s concurrence merge 

when a two-step interrogation was deliberately used to evade 

the requirements of Miranda, and the tests diverge when the 

interrogating officer(s) unintentionally performed a two-step 

interrogation.” Guillen, 995 F.3d at 1115. While Justice 

Kennedy would not agree with every outcome resulting from 

the plurality’s broader test, the plurality would “necessarily 

agree” that intentional Miranda violations that made the 

warnings ineffective stated a constitutional claim, “as a logical 

consequence of its own, broader position” that both 

unintentional and intentional violations are unconstitutional. 

Epps, 707 F.3d at 348 (internal quotation marks and citations 

omitted) (emphasis omitted). We thus inquire whether the FBI 

utilized a two-step interrogation strategy “in a calculated way 

to undermine the Miranda warning” given to Neely on October 

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18th. Seibert, 542 U.S. at 622 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the 

judgment).

b.

As described, Justice Kennedy’s test inquires whether 

“police deliberately use[d] a two-step interrogation to thwart 

Miranda.” Straker, 800 F.3d at 618. “If the deliberate twostep 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.” Seibert, 542 U.S. at 622 

(Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment). Here, Neely has 

proffered no evidence that the FBI deliberately engaged in a 

two-step interrogation. In Seibert, the officer testified at the 

suppression hearing that his interrogation technique was an 

official policy designed to secure admissible confessions. Id.

at 605–06.

The evidence here is very different. At the outset, there is 

no suggestion that the FBI used the series of interviews with 

Neely to secure a confession that would be admissible, and 

Neely was not arrested at the time of the first two interviews. 

Neely does not allege, for instance, that the FBI referenced any 

of his prior statements in the October 18th interview. The 

record does not reflect the nature of the questioning in the 

January or June interviews, but it does show that the substance 

of Neely’s statements greatly differed between the first two 

pre-arrest interviews and the post-arrest interview conducted 

on October 18th. In the January and June statements, Neely 

focused on the conduct of others, clearly envisioning himself 

as an informant. Suppl. App. 17–19 [hereinafter S.A.]. During 

the October 18th interview, he instead discussed his own 

actions, including charged conduct such as taking police 

property and his entrance into the Capitol, including particular 

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rooms visited. S.A. 15–16. The only common information 

shared was Neely’s statement that he broadcast while in the 

Capitol and that he saw a “male with the horns” there. 

Compare S.A. 15–16, with S.A. 18–19. Unlike in Seibert, the 

pre- and post-waiver statements were thus not identical. In 

fact, the first two interviews contain little incriminating 

information beyond the fact of Neely’s presence at the 

Capitol.3 

But even assuming that the FBI deliberately interviewed 

Neely this way, the “curative measures” inquiry is dispositive.

In Seibert, the defendant was arrested prior to her initial 

unmirandized interview, which occurred in the middle of the 

night in a police interview room and involved 30–40 minutes 

of questioning. 542 U.S. at 604–05. Seibert confessed her 

awareness of the offense. Id. After a 20-minute break, officers 

returned, turned on a tape recorder, obtained a Miranda waiver, 

and confronted her with her prewarning statements. Id. at 605–

06. By contrast, here, the last pre-arrest interview was in June 

3 Neely asserts that because he was charged under 18 U.S.C. § 1752, 

“any discussion of his activities at the Capitol that day is necessarily 

a confession.” Appellant Br. 25. But this argument misses the mark. 

In Seibert, the Court was concerned with the nearly indistinguishable 

nature of the incriminating statements before and after the warning 

since the constitutional problem arises when law enforcement “leads 

the suspect to cover the same ground a second time,” thereby

confusing the suspect who already provided the information without 

a warning. 542 U.S. at 604, 613. Repeating the same questions and 

eliciting the same statements before and after contributes to an 

“impression that the further questioning was a mere continuation of 

the earlier questions and responses was fostered by references back 

to the confession already given.” Id. at 616. Neely’s proposed rule—

that any incriminating utterance in a prior interview renders a 

subsequent interview that elicits similar, or different, incriminating 

information involuntary—finds no support in Seibert.

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2021, and the challenged statements were elicited four months 

later, in October. 

Four months is “a substantial break in time and 

circumstances” between the latter June 2021 interview and 

Neely’s post-arrest interview in October of that year. Id. at 622 

(Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment). Neely points to no 

case where a court determined that months between interviews 

was not sufficiently curative. Cf. United States v. Lewis, 833 

F.2d 1380, 1387 (9th Cir. 1987) (reasoning that “the interview 

on the second day was [not] a continuation of what had 

occurred on the previous day” as over 24 hours had elapsed 

between interviews and “[t]he agents did not refer to the fact 

that she had made a statement the previous day”).

Moreover, the evidence tended to show that “a reasonable 

person in [Neely’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), because the circumstances giving rise to the 

October 18th interrogation were very different than the prearrest interviews. While each occurred in the FBI’s 

Washington Field Office, October 18th was the first statement 

Neely gave after being charged and arrested, and Neely had 

undergone the booking process prior. He had not even been 

charged when he gave the preceding two interviews. Finally, 

the information conveyed in the interviews also reflects his 

understanding that they differed in kind.

Neely failed to proffer evidence that the October 18th 

interview was a part of one “extended interview.” Id. at 621

(Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment). The District Court 

thus did not abuse its discretion in denying Neely a hearing on 

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this issue.4 “A defendant is entitled to an evidentiary hearing 

on his motion to suppress only upon factual allegations which, 

if established, would warrant relief.” United States v. Law, 528 

F.3d 888, 903–04 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (per curiam) (internal 

quotation marks and citation omitted). If the defendant’s 

“assertions [a]re insufficient to establish a constitutional 

violation,” United States v. Dale, 991 F.2d 819, 848 (D.C. Cir. 

1993) (per curiam), or the District Court need not “resolve any 

disputes of material fact to decide [the] suppression motion,” 

Law, 528 F.3d at 904, denial of a hearing is warranted. For 

these reasons, we affirm.

2.

Neely also appears to suggest that the statements he gave 

during his January and June 2021 interviews were 

4 Neely asserts in passing that he was subjected to a post-arrest, prewarning interrogation on October 18th that rendered his later 

confession constitutionally infirm, disputing the District Court’s 

statement that “[f]ollowing Neely’s arrest on October 18, 2021, he 

was processed and signed a Miranda form indicating that he 

understood and waived his rights,” and only after was he “then 

questioned for approximately 35 minutes.” Neely, 2023 WL 

1778198, at *10. Even though Neely alleged that, on October 18th, 

officers engaged him in conversation about January 6th before he 

was mirandized, the District Court had no reason to resolve this 

disagreement through further factfinding because Neely did not 

identify any incriminating statement made, “let alone one that was 

later repeated in the statements he seeks to have suppressed.” Id. at 

*11 (internal quotation marks omitted). Any pre-waiver questioning 

on October 18th thus did not pose a constitutional problem under 

Neely’s own version of events.

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unconstitutionally elicited. Any such claim was not adequately 

raised before this Court. We thus decline to consider it.

The motion to suppress below was not a model of clarity. 

Neely characterized “[t]he crux” of his motion as “whether or 

not Mr. Neely’s waiver of his right to remain silent was 

voluntary and knowing . . . before his questioning.” Jt. App. 

19 [hereinafter J.A.]. This shows that Neely sought to suppress 

the statements provided after the allegedly defective Miranda 

waiver on October 18th, as Neely’s prior statements were 

unmirandized. J.A. 22 (“Mr. Neely is asking this court to find 

that his subsequent waiver during his third interview was 

[invalid].”). The motion refers to the maxim that “failure to 

give Miranda warnings and obtain a waiver of rights before 

custodial questioning generally requires exclusion of any 

statements obtained,” but only applies this principle to argue 

that a post-Miranda confession obtained in violation of Seibert

would be invalid. J.A. 21–22 (challenging “this confession,”

singular). Neely did not argue that the FBI’s failure to 

mirandize him prior to his January and June statements violated 

his constitutional rights. Any challenge to those statements 

was not preserved below.

This Court has not yet decided whether Federal Rule of 

Criminal Procedure 12(b)(3)(C), which requires a defendant to 

file a motion to suppress prior to trial, “permit[s] plain-error 

review when a defendant did not intentionally relinquish a 

claim within Rule 12’s ambit, even if the defendant has not 

offered good cause for his or her failure to timely raise it.” 

United States v. Burroughs, 810 F.3d 833, 838 (D.C. Cir. 

2016). We need not resolve this question, because Neely has 

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not argued (under any standard) that the unmirandized 

interviews were unconstitutional. 

On appeal, Neely merely states that “[t]he Motion to 

Suppress clearly stated that in those earlier interrogations, 

Appellant ‘discussed his broadcasting live from the Capitol 

with the officers,’ which, again was necessarily a confession. 

The District Court erred in failing to hold a hearing to 

determine precisely what occurred in any of the 

interrogations[.]” Appellant Br. 26 (quoting J.A. 19). But 

“[s]imply listing the issues on review without briefing them 

does not preserve them.” Terry v. Reno, 101 F.3d 1412, 1415 

(D.C. Cir. 1996). When a defendant “assert[s] error . . . but 

then offer[s] no argument in support,” he “abandon[s] his 

argument[.]” United States v. Wilson, 605 F.3d 985, 1025 

(D.C. Cir. 2010); United States v. Wade, 255 F.3d 833, 839 

(D.C. Cir. 2001) (citing Unites States v. Feuver, 236 F.3d 725, 

727 n.3 (D.C. Cir. 2001), for the proposition that “issues not 

briefed are abandoned”). Neely offers no response to the 

Government’s argument that the pre-arrest interviews were 

noncustodial, such that no Miranda warning was required. His 

failure to argue that the January and June 2021 interviews 

violated his Fifth Amendment rights precludes our review of 

any such claim. 

C.

Lastly, the District Court was correct to deny Neely’s 

motion to transfer venue. Because Neely has failed to establish 

a presumption of prejudice in this jurisdiction, we affirm the 

denial of his motion to transfer venue.

Criminal defendants have a Sixth Amendment right to be 

tried “by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the 

crime shall have been committed.” U.S. CONST. amend. VI. 

“The Constitution’s place-of-trial prescriptions, however, do 

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not impede transfer of the proceeding to a different district at 

the defendant’s request if extraordinary local prejudice will 

prevent a fair trial—a ‘basic requirement of due process.’” 

Skilling v. United States, 561 U.S. 358, 378 (2010) (quoting In 

re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133, 136 (1955)). Neely moved to 

transfer venue based on a presumption of jury impartiality. We 

review the denial of such a motion for an abuse of discretion. 

Jones v. Gasch, 404 F.2d 1231, 1242 (D.C. Cir. 1967). 

In this Court, Neely abandoned his contention that the 

District of Columbia’s size and characteristics gave rise to a 

presumption of jury prejudice, agreeing that such a claim was 

foreclosed by our intervening decision in United States v. 

Webster, 102 F.4th 471 (D.C. Cir 2024). Neely clarified that 

he now relies exclusively on pretrial publicity regarding his 

particular conduct on January 6th, as well as the timing of his 

trial shortly after congressional hearings investigating those 

events. Neither argument is persuasive after Webster.

First, Neely has not shown that press coverage tainted his 

ability to receive a fair jury trial. “[E]xtensive knowledge in 

the community of either the crimes or the putative criminal is 

not sufficient by itself to render a trial constitutionally unfair.” 

Dobbert v. Florida, 432 U.S. 282, 303 (1977). It is not enough 

to establish “that the community was made well aware of the 

charges against him.” Id. Neely must demonstrate “a trial 

atmosphere . . . utterly corrupted by press coverage.” Id.

(quoting Murphy v. Florida, 421 U.S. 794, 798 (1975)). He has 

not done so here.

Neely points to a handful of articles that directly refer to 

him and his January 6th-related conduct. First, a Rolling Stone

piece describes his presence at the Capitol as well as a post 

from his then-Twitter account publicizing the sale of a Capitol 

Police cap. See Charisma Madarang, Jan. 6 Rioter Stole a 

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Police Officer’s Hat, Then Tried to Sell It for $16, ROLLING 

STONE (Nov. 30, 2022), https://perma.cc/ED8T-9BWU. The 

most inflammatory statement in that piece is that Neely 

“appeared to taunt the FBI—Neely was aware that it had 

launched an investigation into his actions at the Capitol, 

including the alleged theft for the rogue hat.” Id. But even 

some press statements that “are hostile in tone and accusatory 

in content” are insufficient where “[t]he overwhelming bulk of 

the material submitted . . . consists of straightforward, 

unemotional factual accounts of events and of the progress of 

official and unofficial investigations.” United States v. 

Haldeman, 559 F.2d 31, 61 (D.C. Cir. 1976) (en banc) (per 

curiam) (footnote omitted). 

The same is true as to the Washington Post article, see

Jaclyn Peiser, A Man Stole a Capitol Police Officer’s Baseball 

Cap on Jan. 6, Feds Say. He Wore It on His YouTube Channel., 

WASH. POST (Oct. 19, 2021), https://perma.cc/D9LK-2VN6. 

Every statement in the latter article is a quotation or paraphrase 

from another source, “simply recit[ing] the facts of the 

allegations confronting” Neely. Webster, 102 F.4th at 480. 

Finally, an article from a local news outlet discusses a bench 

warrant issued for Neely’s arrest for failure to appear at a 

probation violation hearing. See Jordan Fischer, Capitol Riot 

Defendant ‘Absconded’ With $200k from Property Sale, DOJ 

Says, WUSA9, https://perma.cc/GA53-JS4B (Sept. 2, 2022, 

4:58 PM EDT). That article also avoids editorializing, merely 

describing the allegations against Neely and the contents of 

court filings. None of the articles to which Neely points 

contain language as inflammatory as “eye gouger” or 

“junkyard dog,” terms used in articles that the Webster court 

found insufficient to impede upon the defendant’s right to a fair 

trial. 102 F.4th at 480. And even assuming this coverage could 

create prejudice in the minds of particular jurors, Neely 

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conceded at argument that jurors could be screened for such 

bias through voir dire questioning, curing any prejudice.

Second, the timing of Neely’s trial did not prejudice him. 

The Government contends that the long time period—more 

than two years—between January 6th and Neely’s trial 

mitigated the prejudice. Neely concedes that the period 

between January 6, 2021, and his trial is more attenuated than 

in Webster—there, about a year. Instead, he argues that the 

voluminous news coverage in the months leading up to the 

House Select Committee hearings regarding January 6th 

intensified the prejudice, because his trial was less than a year 

later. 

But this Court previously concluded that highly publicized 

Senate Select Committee hearings regarding the Watergate 

scandal were not sufficient to presume prejudice, even though 

it determined that coverage of those hearings was likely higher 

in this jurisdiction than elsewhere. Haldeman, 559 F.2d at 61–

62. At argument, Neely contended that the volume of media 

has exploded since the Watergate era, amplifying the prejudice 

here, although he agreed that the proffered polling data did not 

support a conclusion that District of Columbia jurors would be 

more influenced than elsewhere by the hearings, because those 

polls were taken before the congressional hearings. But in 

Haldeman, the Court so ruled despite the fact that several jurors 

had actually watched the congressional hearings. Id. The key 

is not the jury’s likely exposure to media coverage, but rather 

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the possibility of prejudice against the defendant as a result. 

Neely has not shown the latter here. 

We therefore affirm the District Court’s denial of Neely’s 

motion to transfer venue.

III.

For these reasons, the District Court appropriately denied 

each of the pretrial motions. We thus affirm Neely’s 

convictions and sentence.

So ordered.

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