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Parties Involved:
Opio Moore
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Filed April 15, 1997

No. 93-3158

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

OPIO MOORE,

APPELLANT

Consolidated with 

96-3046 

-

Appeals from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(93cr00038 & 93cr00038-01)

-

On Appellee's Suggestion for Rehearing En Banc

-

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*Circuit Judge GARLAND did not participate in this matter. 

Before: EDWARDS, Chief Judge, WALD, SILBERMAN, WILLIAMS, 

GINSBURG, SENTELLE, HENDERSON, RANDOLPH, ROGERS, TATEL

and GARLAND*, Circuit Judges.

O R D E R

Appellee's Suggestion for Rehearing En Banc has been 

circulated to the full court. The taking of a vote was requested. Thereafter, a majority of the judges of the court in 

regular active service did not vote in favor of the suggestion. 

Upon consideration of the foregoing, it is

ORDERED, by the Court, that the suggestion be denied.

Per Curiam

FOR THE COURT: 

Mark J. Langer, Clerk

Circuit Judges SILBERMAN, WILLIAMS, and RANDOLPH would 

grant the suggestion.

Separate statement filed by Circuit Judge SENTELLE, concurring in the denial of rehearing en banc.

Separate statement filed by Circuit Judge SILBERMAN, dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc.

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SENTELLE, Circuit Judge, concurring in the denial of rehearing in banc: Although my exchanges with my dissenting 

colleague are dangerously approaching the point of shedding 

more heat than light on the subject of this case, I feel 

prompted to reply briefly to his call for in banc review. 

Because of the demands that an in banc proceeding places on 

the limited resources of the judiciary, by rule

such a hearing or rehearing is not favored and ordinarily 

will not be ordered except (1) when consideration of the 

full court is necessary to secure or maintain uniformity of 

its decisions, or (2) when the proceeding involves a 

question of exceptional importance.

FED.R.APP.P. 35.

I have generally construed this to mean that we should not 

waste the assets of the court on an in banc proceeding unless 

the panel decision at least (a) is erroneous and (b) establishes 

or maintains a precedent of some importance. Since this case 

fits neither of those criteria, it is particularly ill-suited for in 

banc review.

As for the errors asserted by my dissenting colleague, he 

relies first on the "holding[ ] ... that a defendant is "in 

custody' for purposes of the Fifth Amendment when he is 

merely "not free to leave.' " While the language alluded to by 

the dissenter is surely in the opinion, it is at most a strong 

dicta and not a holding. In so saying, I do not concede that 

the dicta would be wrong were it a holding. But the actual 

holding is our affirmance (104 F.3d 377 at 384-85) of the 

District Court's ruling at the time of the prosecutor's comment on the defendant's silence that the comment referred to 

post-arrest silence. As the government did not challenge the 

District Court's ruling, either then or before us, our more 

general statement on indicia of custody later in the opinion is 

not a holding in that it was not essential to our decision. 

Thus, while not conceding any error, if we made one, it was in 

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either a very fact-specific holding affirming the District Judge 

on this case or in dicta, neither of which rises to the level of 

importance supporting an in banc review.

Secondly, my colleague rehashes the Miranda-based issue 

from our opinion. He somehow finds it "patently illogical," to 

distinguish between speech and silence in an in-custody situation. If he were correct, an arrested but not Miranda-ized 

defendant would be faced with two courses of conduct: he 

could make a voluntary utterance, which could be used 

against him; or he could stand silent, which could be used 

against him. I fail to see the patent illogic in rejecting that 

proposition. For the reasons set forth in the panel opinion, 

neither of the Supreme Court decisions cited by my dissenting colleague is to the contrary and indeed they support my 

position. To the extent that United States v. Rivera, 944 

F.2d 1563, 1568 & n.11 (11th Cir. 1991), is in conflict, that 

conflict amounts to a single sentence, supplying no reasoning, 

and resting on a citation to Fletcher v. Weir, 455 U.S. 603 

(1982). For the reasons set forth in the original opinion, our 

ruling in this case is not in conflict with Fletcher v. Weir.

Insofar as the Eleventh Circuit disagrees, it is misconstruing 

that Supreme Court opinion.

Finally, the dissent asserts that the panel opinion "reaches 

well beyond the arguments presented by defense counsel." 

However, in so asserting the dissent admits that the defendant devoted a page and a half of his brief to the silence 

question in which he asserted that the silence was "postarrest." I certainly agree with my colleague that "appellate 

courts do not sit as self-directed boards of legal inquiry and 

research, but essentially as arbiters of legal questions presented and argued by the parties before them." Carducci v. 

Regan, 714 F.2d 171, 177 (D.C. Cir. 1983). However, I do not 

read Carducci or any other precedent as compelling us to 

decide only those issues which are argued for more than a 

page and a half or in which the parties' discussion of an 

essential aspect of the issue is extensive. See Alabama 

Power Co. v. Gorsuch, 672 F.2d 1, 7 n.34 (D.C. Cir. 1982) (per 

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curiam) (collecting authorities). If we made such a rule, it 

might commend counsel to write better briefs, or it might 

place a counter productive tax on brevity.

In short, I have rarely if ever seen the United States file a 

petition for in banc review with less justification than is 

present here.

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1

Judge Sentelle now protests that the custody determination is 

not actually a holding of the opinion. See Separate Concurring 

Statement at 1-2. But the determination that Moore was in 

custody, as the government correctly insists, is the pivot upon which 

the entire question of defendant's protected silence turns. It 

cannot be dismissed as an uncontested "ruling" of the district court, 

because the district court made no such findingit made only a 

passing remark in response to defense counsel's objection to the use 

of post-arrest silence, an objection that the district court overruled. 

See 104 F.3d at 392 (Silberman, J., concurring). And the government has always insisted that the defendant's reaction was prearrest. The majority sua sponte developed the notion that the 

silence occurred post-custody but pre-arrest. 

SILBERMAN, Circuit Judge, dissenting from the denial of 

rehearing en banc: When I wrote separately in this case, I 

assumed that because the majority had determined the errors 

it found were "harmless" the case would not be suitable for 

further review. United States v. Moore, 104 F.3d 377, 396 

(D.C. Cir. 1997) (Silberman, J., concurring). I do not recall 

another occasion when the government has sought rehearing 

and suggested en banc review where a conviction was upheld. 

But the government is right; that the majority concluded the 

errors were "harmless" should not affect our decision whether to rehear the case because the panel opinion adopts two 

major holdings that will have a broad and immediate impact 

on law enforcement. Those holdings are:

(1) that a defendant is "in custody" for purposes of the 

Fifth Amendment when he is merely "not free to 

leave." This occurs after a Terry stop or routine 

traffic stop when the police discover contraband and 

before any interrogation. This holding is in conflict 

with the Supreme Court's reasoning in Berkemer v. 

McCarty, 468 U.S. 420 (1984), and the caselaw in this 

circuit. See United States v. Gale, 952 F.2d 1412, 

1414-15 n.4 (D.C. Cir. 1992). It also contradicts the 

cases in this circuit defining "arrest" for Fourth 

Amendment purposes. See, e.g., United States v. 

Clark, 24 F.3d 299, 303-04 (D.C. Cir. 1994); United 

States v. Clipper, 973 F.2d 944, 951-52 (D.C. Cir. 

1992), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 1070 (1993); United States 

v. Jones, 973 F.2d 928, 929-31 (D.C. Cir.), vacated in 

part on other grounds pending rehearing en banc, 980 

F.2d 746 (D.C. Cir. 1992), on rehearing en banc, 997 

F.2d 1475 (D.C. Cir. 1993), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 1065 

(1994).1

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(2) that even though defendant was not interrogated 

and the government was not obliged to give a Miranda

warning, the government was not permitted to introduce evidence of defendant's silence at the moment 

when the contraband was discovered. Since Judge 

Sentelle's opinion acknowledges that a defendant's voluntary statement under those circumstances would be 

admissible, see 104 F.3d at 389 n.5, to conclude that his 

silence is constitutionally protected is not only patently 

illogical, it is contrary to the reasoning of governing 

Supreme Court cases, see, e.g., United States v. Robinson, 485 U.S. 25, 33-34 (1988); Fletcher v. Weir, 455 

U.S. 603, 607 (1982), and in direct conflict with at least 

one other circuit. See United States v. Rivera, 994 

F.2d 1563, 1567-70 (11th Cir. 1991); see also United 

States v. Zanabria, 74 F.3d 590, 593 (5th Cir. 1996).

The government is particularly aggravated by the panel 

opinion because it reaches well beyond the arguments presented by defense counsel. See 104 F.3d at 391-92 (Silberman, J., concurring). As the government notes, defense 

counsel only devoted a page and a half of its brief to the 

defendant's so-called "post-arrest silence" and never made 

any sort of argument at trial or on appeal that the defendant 

was in custody, short of arrest, for Fifth Amendment purposes when his silence was observeddefense counsel simply 

asserted before us, with no support or citation to the record, 

that the silence was "post-arrest." The panel did not even 

have the entire portion of the record upon which a "custody" 

finding is supposedly based or which described defendant's 

reaction and the timing of relevant events. The government 

now points out that the actual circumstances were very close 

to what I discussed as a hypothetical in my separate opinion. 

When the drugs were discovered, the defendant's immediate 

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response was to "let out a sigh," look dejected, and say 

nothing.

The government, in urging us, at a minimum, to vacate the 

Fifth Amendment holding of the panel majority, relies on one 

of our famous cases, Carducci v. Regan, 714 F.2d 171 (D.C. 

Cir. 1983), in which then-Judge Scalia, in rejecting an effort 

to go beyond the parties' arguments, said, "appellate courts 

do not sit as self-directed boards of legal inquiry and research, but essentially as arbiters of legal questions presented 

and argued by the parties before them." Id. at 177. The 

difficulty is that the rigor and integrity of Carducci was 

severely impaired by the unanimous decision of the Supreme 

Court in Independent Ins. Agents of America, Inc. v. Clarke,

508 U.S. 439 (1993), in which the courts of appeals were 

explicitly encouraged to decide nonjurisdictional issues not 

presented by the parties (even issues waived by plaintiffs) so 

long as a court views the legal issues as anterior to those 

presented.

In Insurance Agents we had decided sua sponte that a 1916 

statute on which a disputed regulation rested had itself been 

repealed (albeit inadvertently) two years later even though 

the plaintiff determined (wisely it turned out) not to argue the 

statutory repeal point. See Independent Ins. Agents of 

America, Inc. v. Clarke, 955 F.2d 731 (D.C. Cir. 1992), rev'd,

508 U.S. 439 (1993). The original statute permitted banks 

"located and doing business in any place the population of 

which does not exceed five thousand inhabitants" to sell 

insurance. Id. at 732. This court compelled the parties to 

brief the issue supplementally and then decided that the 

statute had, indeed, been repealed. Not surprisinglygiven 

the policy consequencesthe Supreme Court reversed but 

endorsed the panel's reaching of the issue. The Court, 

however, ducked the question of whether the panel was 

obliged to reach the anterior question, stating only that the 

court's decision to do so was not an abuse of discretion. That 

meant that federal courts were free, without standards to 

follow, to decide such an issue or not depending on whether it 

pleased the judges to do so. Under that mode of thinking, if 

parties were litigating a breach of contract, a federal court 

would be entitled to conduct a "self-directed inquiry" into 

whether a contract was even formed, even if the parties 

concurred on that point.

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2 The Court reasoned that a court cannot be bound by a 

stipulation of law and in doing so ignored the obvious difference 

between both parties agreeing that a statute or a case means 

something it does not and a plaintiff refusing to make a claim based 

on the validity of a statute. 

I am inclined to believe that one can explain the Court's 

unanimous agreement in Insurance Agents on this issue, 

despite the opinion's obvious analytical flaws,2in part on the 

urging of the government (the same government now complaining about similar judicial behavior), which wished to 

reverse this court's opinion on the merits since it placed a 

cloud over the legality of banks selling insurance, a practice of 

the last 70 years. But, perhaps even more important to the 

opinion, I suspect, is that the justices did not wish to restrict 

their own ability to reach out to issues not presented in cases 

brought to the Court, nor did they wish to justify that 

practice by openly acknowledging the Supreme Court as not 

subject to normal judicial constraints (A "non-court court?" 

Compare Board of Governors of the Fed. Reserve Sys. v. 

Dimension Fin. Corp., 474 U.S. 361, 363 (1986), which refers 

to "non-bank banks").

In any event, it is an indicia of judicial overreaching (if not 

judicial activism) for any court to decide issues not properly 

presented. Judicial overreaching or activism in the lower 

federal courts, much discussed these days, invariably traces 

back to Supreme Court decisions, often decisions involving 

entirely different subject matter, for the lower federal courts 

are even more influenced by the manner in which the Supreme Court decides cases than by the particular substantive 

results. Thus, Insurance Agentsa particularly egregious 

example of the Supreme Court's cutting of traditional judicial 

cornershas had a broad impact. Judges, even disciplined 

judges, are more willing than they were prior to that case, if 

convinced by a legal theory, to seek to fit the controversy 

before them to that theory, rather than vice versa. This case 

is one of those unfortunate examples.

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