Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-03-03336/USCOURTS-ca8-03-03336-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Michael S. Czichray
Appellee
United States of America
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 03-3336

___________

United States of America, *

*

Appellant, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the District

* of Minnesota.

Michael S. Czichray, * 

*

Appellee. *

*

___________

Submitted: March 8, 2004

Filed: August 11, 2004

___________

Before WOLLMAN, MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, and COLLOTON, Circuit

Judges.

___________

COLLOTON, Circuit Judge.

The government appeals from an order of the district court suppressing a

written statement that Dr. Michael Czichray, a chiropractor, signed at the conclusion

of an interview with FBI agents. The district court determined that the statement

should be suppressed because it was the product of custodial interrogation that was

conducted without informing Czichray of his Miranda rights. See Miranda v.

Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966). We respectfully disagree, and we reverse.

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I.

The district court, after receiving a report and recommendation from a

magistrate judge, made extensive findings of fact concerning Czichray's encounter

with the FBI, and the government does not assert on appeal that any of these findings

were clearly erroneous. FBI agents Timothy Bisswurm and Sean Boylan went to

Czichray's home the morning of February 16, 2001, to interview him regarding a

health care fraud investigation. Prior to their arrival, the agents called Czichray at

4:30 a.m. to ensure that Czichray was home, stating they had the wrong number. At

6:30 a.m., the agents approached the home. When Czichray did not answer the door,

Agent Boylan called Czichray by telephone and told him that he needed to come to

the front door. When Czichray appeared, Boylan identified himself and Bisswurm

as FBI agents and told Czichray they would like to speak with him for a few minutes.

Boylan further informed Czichray that he need not speak with the agents. Although

he was dressed in a t-shirt and boxer shorts, Czichray admitted the agents into his

home, and the three men proceeded to the living room to discuss the investigation.

Over the course of the ensuing interview, which lasted nearly seven hours,

Czichray was informed several times that his participation was voluntary, and that he

was free to ask the agents to leave his home. About three hours into the interview,

Czichray told the agents that he was late for work. The agents instructed Czichray

to call in sick, and directed him not to inform his office about the investigation.

Czichray complied. Although the telephone rang several times as the interview

progressed, the agents instructed Czichray not to answer, and Czichray did not do so.

When Czichray moved about his home on two occasions to go to the bathroom and

his bedroom, Boylan accompanied him to check the rooms for telephones. During

the interview, Czichray was told that if he did not cooperate, the agents would

interview his 75-year-old father and others. The agents further told Czichray that

they would "light up his world," and also suggested that if he did not cooperate, then

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they could use the power of the FBI to pressure insurance companies to withhold

payments from his business.

Czichray did not resist the agents' questioning during the interview, and he

never asked them to leave. At the conclusion of the meeting, Czichray signed a

written statement (after making one correction and initialing each page)

acknowledging that "no one has threatened, coerced or promised me anything." The

written statement contained admissions that Czichray had knowingly caused

insurance companies to reimburse at least one hundred false claims, and knowingly

paid illegal fees to persons who referred new patients to Czichray's chiropractic

clinic. There was no threat of arrest during the encounter, and the agents never

displayed weapons. Czichray was not arrested until weeks later.

Czichray was charged in a twenty-seven count indictment with various crimes

relating to an alleged health care billing fraud scheme. He brought a motion to

suppress his signed statement. After concluding that Czichray was in custody and

had not been given Miranda warnings, the district court granted the motion. In

reviewing the district court's grant of Czichray's motion to suppress, we review its

conclusions of law de novo, and its findings of fact for clear error. United States v.

Guevara-Martinez, 262 F.3d 751, 753 (8th Cir. 2001).

II.

The ultimate question in determining whether a person is in "custody" for

purposes of Miranda is "whether there is a formal arrest or restraint on freedom of

movement of the degree associated with a formal arrest." California v. Beheler, 463

U.S. 1121, 1125 (1983) (internal quotation omitted). The "only relevant inquiry" in

considering that question is how a reasonable person in Czichray's position would

have understood his situation. Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 442 (1984); see

generally Yarborough v. Alvarado, 124 S. Ct. 2140, 2147-50 (2004). In making that

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evaluation, we consider the totality of the circumstances that confronted the defendant

at the time of questioning. United States v. Axsom, 289 F.3d 496, 500 (8th Cir. 2002).

We have observed that "[t]he most obvious and effective means of

demonstrating that a suspect has not been taken into custody . . . is for the police to

inform the suspect that an arrest is not being made and that the suspect may terminate

the interview at will." United States v. Griffin, 922 F.2d 1343, 1349 (8th Cir. 1990)

(internal quotation omitted). The FBI agents who interviewed Czichray exercised this

"obvious and effective" means of demonstration in spades. Boylan and Bisswurm

testified that they informed Czichray at least eight times that his participation in the

interview was voluntary, and that he was free to ask the agents to leave his home.

The magistrate judge recommended that "[g]iven this evidence, which is not

controverted," the district court should find that Czichray was advised of his freedom

to terminate the interview at will. (Add. 114). The district court ultimately found that

"[a]s the Magistrate Judge noted, it is clear from the record that the agents informed

Czichray several times that he could refuse to speak with them, and that he could tell

them to leave." (Add. 23).

We believe that this abundant advice of freedom to terminate the encounter

should not be treated merely as one equal factor in a multi-factor balancing test

designed to discern whether a reasonable person would have understood himself to

be in custody. That a person is told repeatedly that he is free to terminate an

interview is powerful evidence that a reasonable person would have understood that

he was free to terminate the interview. So powerful, indeed, that no governing

precedent of the Supreme Court or this court, or any case from another court of

appeals that can be located (save one decision of the Ninth Circuit decided under an

outmoded standard of review, United States v. Lee, 699 F.2d 466, 467-68 (9th Cir.

1982) (per curiam)), holds that a person was in custody after being clearly advised of

his freedom to leave or terminate questioning.

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The weighty inference that Czichray was not in custody after receiving such

advice is strengthened further by the context in which the interview occurred -- the

living room of Czichray's home. When a person is questioned "on his own turf,"

United States v. Rorex, 737 F.2d 753, 756 (8th Cir. 1984), we have observed

repeatedly that the surroundings are "not indicative of the type of inherently coercive

setting that normally accompanies a custodial interrogation." United States v. Helmel,

769 F.2d 1306, 1320 (8th Cir. 1985); see also United States v. Wolk, 337 F.3d 997,

1007 (8th Cir. 2003); Axsom, 289 F.3d at 502; United States v. Sutera, 933 F.2d 641,

647 (8th Cir. 1991). Even our court's one brief suggestion to the contrary, see Griffin,

922 F.2d at 1355 n.15, also cited Miranda itself for the "accepted logic" that "an

interrogation in familiar surroundings such as one's home softens the hard aspects of

police interrogation and moderates a suspect's sense of being held in custody."

In the Supreme Court's only decision involving whether Miranda applied to

questioning of a suspect in a private home absent formal arrest, the Court concluded

that the suspect "hardly found himself in the custodial situation described by the

Miranda Court as the basis for its holding." Beckwith v. United States, 425 U.S. 341,

347 (1976). Elaborating on the "custodial surroundings" described in Miranda, the

Beckwith Court explained that "the principal psychological factor" of concern was

"isolating the suspect in unfamiliar surroundings 'for no purpose other than to

subjugate the individual to the will of his examiner.'" 425 U.S. at 346 & n.7

(emphasis added) (quoting Miranda, 384 U.S. at 457). The teaching of Beckwith,

which involved a three-hour interrogation by two IRS agents in the dining room of

a residence, was that such "noncustodial interrogation" might possibly in some

situations lead to an involuntary confession inadmissible under the Fifth Amendment,

id. at 347-48, but that the prophylactic rule of Miranda was not applicable.

In reaching its conclusion that Czichray was nonetheless in custody, the district

court relied on the presence of certain "coercive factors" identified in United States

v. Griffin, 922 F.2d at 1349, which were said in Griffin to "aggravate the existence

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of custody." Id. In Griffin, while emphasizing that our list of considerations was

"merely intended to be representative of those indicia of custody most frequently

cited by this and other courts when undergoing the prescribed totality of the

circumstances analysis," id., we identified six factors for consideration in making the

custody determination: (1) whether the suspect was informed during the interview

that the questioning was voluntary, that he could ask the officers to leave, or that he

was not considered under arrest; (2) "whether the suspect possessed unrestrained

freedom of movement during questioning;" (3) whether the suspect voluntarily

acquiesced to official questioning or initiated contact with authorities; (4) "whether

strong arm tactics or deceptive stratagems were employed during questioning;"

(5) whether there was a police-dominated atmosphere; and (6) "whether the suspect

was placed under arrest at the termination of the questioning." Id. We observed that

the first three factors tended to mitigate the existence of custody, while the last three

tended to aggravate it. Id. Both parties debate the presence and significance of these

so-called "Griffin factors" in their briefs on appeal.

Although the "non-exhaustive" Griffin factors and their attendant balancing test

are often cited in our decisions concerning Miranda, we recently resolved the

question of "custody" as an en banc court with nary a mention of Griffin. See United

States v. LeBrun, 363 F.3d 715, 719-24 (8th Cir. 2004) (en banc). There is no

requirement, therefore, that the Griffin analysis be followed ritualistically in every

Miranda case. When the factors are invoked, it is important to recall that they are not

by any means exclusive, and that "custody" cannot be resolved merely by counting

up the number of factors on each side of the balance and rendering a decision

accordingly. Exploring the nuances of such vague factors as "voluntary

acquiescence," "strong arm tactics," and "police-dominated atmosphere" in order to

place them on one side or the other of a balancing scale may tend to lose sight of the

forest for the trees. The ultimate inquiry must always be whether the defendant was

restrained as though he were under formal arrest. And the court must consider

whether the historical facts, as opposed to the one-step-removed Griffin factors,

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establish custody. The debatable marginal presence of certain judicially-created

factors that ostensibly tend to "aggravate the existence of custody" cannot create the

functional equivalent of formal arrest where the most important circumstances show

its absence.

The district court relied heavily on its finding that the FBI agents instructed

Czichray not to alert others by telephone of the FBI's presence during the interview,

and escorted Czichray to his bedroom and bathroom to check for telephones before

Czichray entered the rooms. There are two difficulties with this emphasis on

telephones. The first is precedent. In United States v. Sutera, officers conducted a

three and one-half hour search of Sutera's apartment, and then interviewed him for

one hour. They "prevented him from using his phone" during the search, and then

questioned him "in isolation" in his apartment. 933 F.2d at 647. In response to

Sutera's contention that prohibition on use of the telephone was one of several factors

that demonstrated custody, we found the record "devoid of any evidence showing

conduct by the officers which would lead to the conclusion that Sutera was in

custody." Id. (emphasis added). Similarly, in United States v. Helmel, an FBI agent

"answered all incoming telephone calls while the search and interview progressed,"

but we "fail[ed] to see how this created a coercive atmosphere." 769 F.2d at 1320.

The second difficulty presumably explains the precedent: That a suspect is

discouraged from using a telephone in his home during an interview often is not

probative of whether he is free to terminate the interview altogether. In this case, the

FBI agents testified that they requested (or, as the district court found, "directed")

Czichray not to use the telephone to disclose the presence of FBI agents, because

such disclosure would interfere with Czichray's ability to cooperate with an ongoing

investigation. If his cooperation with the FBI were known by alleged co-conspirators,

then he could not assist the government (and potentially himself) through undercover

telephone calls or recorded meetings with other suspects. This likely is a common

request (or direction) from investigators who are soliciting cooperation. Like an

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effort to preserve officer safety, see Axsom, 289 F.3d at 503, however, an effort to

preserve opportunities to cooperate should not be understood by a reasonable person

as a restriction on movement akin to formal arrest. Assuming a reasonable person in

Czichray's position would feel that he was not free to use the telephone during the

questioning, he still retained two viable options: conduct an uninterrupted interview

with the agents or terminate the interview. Sutera and Helmel recognize that placing

certain ground rules on an interview does not preclude a reasonable person from

foregoing the interview altogether.

We also conclude that Czichray's lack of "voluntary acquiescence" in

questioning does not tend to show that he was in custody. The district court thought

the mere absence of resistance by Czichray, such as his "ma[king] no attempt to

terminate the interview" and allowing the interview "to proceed to its closing," did

not "rise to the level of active cooperation" that our court has found to constitute

"voluntary acquiescence" as used in the third Griffin factor. (Add. at 33-34).

Whatever the Griffin court meant by "acquiescence," cf. Webster's Third New

International Dictionary 18 (2002) ("passive assent or submission"); 1 Shorter

Oxford English Dictionary 20 (5th ed. 2002) ("Silent or passive assent to, or

compliance with, measures or proposals"), we conclude that the initiation of

questioning by FBI agents in this case is not significant evidence of restraint on

Czichray's freedom of movement. Against a backdrop of repeated advice that he was

free to terminate the interview, Czichray's decision not to terminate the interview and

to allow the interview to proceed to its closing suggests an exercise of free will, rather

than restraint to a degree associated with formal arrest. Cf. Alvarado, 124 S. Ct. at

2144-46, 2149-50 (where police initiated two-hour interview of suspect in police

station, did not tell suspect he was free to leave, and engaged in "pretty friendly

conversation" during interview, state court was clearly "reasonable" in concluding

that suspect was not in custody). This is not a case where a suspect sought to exercise

his option of terminating the interview, only to meet resistance from his interrogators.

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1

Agent Boylan testified as follows at the suppression hearing: 

The only references that were made to [Czichray's] father is he at some

point told us later that his father had left -- lent him some money

regarding his MRI clinic, and the references were made in the sense of

if we believe his father had information that's -- and that's evidence of

a crime that's what we'd have to do. We'd have to go talk to that person

whether it's his father, a relative, somebody he doesn't know, or whether

it's a coemployee.

(Suppr. H'rg Tr., Vol. II at 58, Nov. 26, 2002). Agent Bisswurm testified that

Czichray's father was later interviewed, because "[d]uring our interview with Dr.

Czichray, he indicated his father loaned him $50,000 for his MRI business, and we

went to ask him questions about that loan." (Suppr. H'rg Tr., Vol. III. at 128, Nov.

27, 2002).

-9-

Czichray argues that "threats" made by the FBI agents should be counted as a

factor weighing in favor of custody. We do not believe that informing a suspect that

investigation of his alleged fraud will "light up his world" by exposing his activities

to his friends, family, and neighbors is a threat that aggravates the existence of

custody. See United States v. Martin, 369 F.3d 1046, 1052-53, 1057 (8th Cir. 2004).

It is appropriate for an investigator to advise a suspect of the potential course and

consequences of a criminal investigation. Suspects frequently confront difficult

decisions about whether to defend against potential criminal charges or to pursue

resolutions that may ameliorate certain unpleasant consequences. If the suspect's

father happens to be a witness with relevant information in such an investigation,1

then knowledge of potential investigative activities may influence the suspect's

decision whether to short-circuit the investigation by cooperating. But the

presentation of information that requires such a decision does not tend to restrain a

person's freedom of movement such that he should be deemed in custody. As we said

in LeBrun, "some degree of coercion is part and parcel of the interrogation process

and [ ] the coercive aspects of a police interview are largely irrelevant to the custody

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determination except where a reasonable person would perceive the coercion as

restricting his or her freedom to depart." 363 F.3d at 721.

The district court's finding that agents threatened to use the power of the FBI

to prevent insurance companies from making legitimate payments to Czichray's

business is not well explained, because the statements were denied by the agents, and

Czichray did not elaborate. Perhaps the point is that agents would notify insurance

companies of Czichray's fraudulent practices in the course of their investigation, in

which case the insurance companies would cease dealing with Czichray of their own

accord. If so, then the "interference" with business would be just another natural

consequence of the doctor's fraudulent activities coming to light. If the FBI agents

misled Czichray by exaggerating their ability to control the conduct of private

insurance companies (or if they really had the power to dictate non-payment of

private insurance payments), then their statements might be one of many factors

relating to the voluntariness of any admissions, but they would have little or no

bearing on whether Czichray's freedom of movement was restrained for purposes of

the Miranda custody analysis. Cf. Oregon v. Mathiason, 429 U.S. 492, 495-96

(1977) ("Whatever relevance [the officer's false statement during questioning] may

have to other issues in the case, it has nothing to do with whether respondent was in

custody for purposes of the Miranda rule."). 

Where a suspect is questioned in the familiar surroundings of his home, and

informed several times of his right to terminate the interview at will, we believe that

strong evidence of restraint on freedom of movement of the degree associated with

a formal arrest is necessary to overcome the natural inference that such questioning

is non-custodial. For the foregoing reasons, the totality of the circumstances in this

case leads us to conclude that Czichray was not the subject of custodial interrogation,

and that the warnings set forth in Miranda were not required. We therefore reverse

the district court's order granting the motion to suppress Czichray's signed statement.

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MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge, dissenting.

I respectfully dissent from the judgment of the court for the reasons that follow.

I.

In granting the motion to suppress, the district court made the following

findings of fact, none of which is clearly erroneous. FBI agents, Timothy Bisswurm

and Sean Boylan, called Dr. Czichray's home at 4:30 one morning, and when he

answered they pretended that they had reached the wrong number. Two hours later,

they knocked on his door or rang his doorbell. When Dr. Czichray did not answer,

the agents telephoned him and instructed him to open the door. He did so, wearing

only a t-shirt and boxer shorts, and the agents informed Dr. Czichray that they wanted

to talk to him for "a few minutes." After Dr. Czichray let them come into his home,

the agent's "few minutes" turned into nearly seven hours. 

During this time, the agents told Dr. Czichray about their investigation into

health care fraud and their belief that he was involved. When Dr. Czichray told the

agents that he was late for work, they instructed him to call in sick, and when he

spoke with his office, the agents further instructed him not to inform his co-workers

that the FBI was interviewing him. Dr. Czichray's home and cell phones rang several

times during the interview, but the agents admonished him to not answer the calls.

When Dr. Czichray wanted to get dressed, Agent Boylan escorted him to the bedroom

and did a quick search to ensure that there was no telephone in the room that

Dr. Czichray might use to alert others about the FBI's interview. When Dr. Czichray

needed to use the bathroom, a similar check was performed. 

While the agents informed Dr. Czichray that he was free to end the interview

at any time, they also told him that if he did not cooperate they would "light up" his

world and tell insurance companies to stop making legitimate payments to his

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chiropractic practice. After nearly seven hours, one of the agents wrote out a

statement outlining what Dr. Czichray had said during the interview, which included

an assertion that Dr. Czichray had not been "threatened, coerced, or promised ...

anything." Dr. Czichray signed the statement but was never informed of his Miranda

rights.

II.

Law enforcement officers are bound to give the warnings required by Miranda

v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), only when a suspect is interrogated in a so-called

custodial setting. See, e.g., Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. 298, 309 (1985). In Miranda,

384 U.S. at 444, the Supreme Court defined custodial interrogation as "questioning

initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or

otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way." Courts do not

determine whether a suspect is in custody from the perspective of the interrogator;

"the only relevant inquiry is how a reasonable man in the suspect's position would

have understood his situation." Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 442 (1984). In

other words, the question is whether, viewing the totality of the circumstances, a

reasonable person would have believed that the police curtailed his or her freedom

of movement to a "degree associated with formal arrest." California v. Beheler,

463 U.S. 1121, 1125 (1983) (per curiam). Admittedly, "the task of defining 'custody'

is a slippery one," Elstad, 470 U.S. at 309, that presents mixed questions of fact and

law. A court of appeals reviews a district court's custody determination de novo, but

the underlying factual findings for clear error. United States v. LeBrun, 363 F.3d 715,

719 (8th Cir. 2004) (en banc).

In United States v. Griffin, 922 F.2d 1343, 1349 (8th Cir. 1990), we identified

six considerations which "either mitigate or aggravate an atmosphere of custodial

interrogation." These considerations are "whether the suspect was informed at the

time of questioning that the questioning was voluntary, that the suspect was free to

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leave or request the officers to do so, or that the suspect was not under arrest";

"whether the suspect possessed unrestrained freedom of movement" during the

interview; "whether the suspect initiated contact with authorities or voluntarily

acquiesced to official requests to respond to questions"; "whether strong arm tactics

or deceptive stratagems were employed during questioning"; whether the atmosphere

of the questioning was dominated by law enforcement officers; and "whether the

suspect was placed under arrest at the termination of the questioning." Id. No one

consideration is dispositive on the question of custody, nor must all of the matters

considered weigh in favor of the defendant before a finding that the defendant was

in custody is warranted. Id. I will address each of these considerations in turn. 

With respect to the first consideration, there is no dispute that the agents

informed Dr. Czichray several times that he could refuse to speak to them or could

ask the agents to leave his home at any time. This weighs against a holding that

Dr. Czichray was in custody.

But the restriction on Dr. Czichray’s freedom of movement supports the

suppression of the statement that he signed. As I have said, when Dr. Czichray

announced that he was late for work, the agents, rather than permitting him to leave,

directed him to call in sick. And even though he was in his own home and not at a

police station, he could not go to his bedroom or bathroom unattended. The district

court rejected the government's contention that the agents escorted Dr. Czichray

around his home because they were concerned for their safety. Instead, the district

court found that the agents' only reason for escorting Dr. Czichray was "[to] look[]

for a telephone to make sure that Czichray did not place any outside calls" to alert

others of the investigation. 

The government relies heavily on United States v. Axsom, 289 F.3d 496 (8th

Cir. 2002), to support its contention that requiring that an interviewee be escorted

when he or she wants to visit rooms outside the interview area does not restrict the

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suspect's freedom of movement. In Axsom, however, the police escorted the suspect

about his house because they had observed numerous weapons when they entered the

house to execute a search warrant. In that case we explicitly held that the absence of

"unrestrained freedom of movement" was "much less significant" to a determination

of whether the suspect was in custody than it otherwise would have been because a

reasonable person in the suspect's "shoes should have realized the agents escorted him

not to restrict his movement, but to protect themselves and the integrity of the

search." Id. at 502-03. That was not the case here. There was no evidence to suggest

that Dr. Czichray possessed weapons that he might use against himself or the agents,

nor was there an ongoing search that needed protection against the destruction of

evidence. And the district court found that when Dr. Czichray needed to use the

bathroom, the agents asked him whether there was a phone in that room but did not

inquire about weapons. The district court had ample reason to believe that the

justification of officer safety was a post hoc invention, and to find, as it did, that the

agents "true concern was preventing Czichray from communicating with anyone

else." The agents thus deliberately subjected Dr. Czichray to incommunicado

interrogation, a consideration that particularly concerned the Miranda court. See

Miranda, 384 U.S. at 445-46.

The third consideration identified in Griffin also supports a finding that

Dr. Czichray was in custody: No one disputes that it was the agents who approached

the defendant and asked to speak with him. While Dr. Czichray allowed them to enter

his home, the district court found that he did not "voluntarily acquiesce[]" to the

interview, see Griffin, 922 F.2d at 1349. The government argues that Axsom

precludes this conclusion, but there the defendant (who we said had voluntarily

acquiesced) "was extremely friendly and cooperative during the interview" and even

telephoned the FBI agents afterward to commend them for their professionalism,

Axsom, 289 F.3d at 501-02. Here, in contrast, Dr. Czichray did not make any effort

to assist in the investigation. While I would not hold that a defendant needs to be

enthusiastic about an interview before the balance can tip against a finding that he or

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she was in custody, I think that the mere absence of resistance is not sufficient to do

so.

The magistrate judge who conducted a hearing on the suppression motion made

a proposed finding, rejected by the district court, that Dr. Czichray voluntarily

acquiesced because he "made no attempt to terminate the interview directly or

indirectly" and allowed the interview "to proceed to its closing." See 28 U.S.C.

§ 636(b)(1)(C). There is a difference, however, between allowing an interview to

continue and taking affirmative steps to make it go more smoothly. When a

defendant can only be said not to be acting in a rude or uncooperative manner, the

presumption that an officer-initiated interview lends weight to a finding of custody

is not rebutted. I agree with the district court that Dr. Czichray's level of active

cooperation was not sufficient to undermine the inferences that are properly drawn

from the fact that the agents initiated contact with him. In any event, I believe that

in this context the voluntariness of Dr. Czichray’s actions are a matter of fact, and the

district court’s finding is certainly not clearly erroneous.

I also agree with the district court that it is a "close question" whether the

agents used strong-arm tactics or deceptive stratagems in their interview with

Dr. Czichray. They did, however, threaten to interfere with Dr. Czichray's legitimate

business and to "light up his life," insinuating that they would begin investigating his

elderly father unless Dr. Czichray agreed to cooperate. These threats support an

inference that Dr. Czichray was in custody. 

Whether the police dominated the interview is the fifth consideration under

Griffin. While we have recognized that "[w]hen a suspect is interrogated in the

comfort and familiarity of his home, a court is less likely to find the circumstances

custodial," Axsom, 89 F.3d at 502, "a suspect's sense of captivity can actually be

intensified by the intrusive and intimidating environment created when agents ... take

control of a person's private residence," Griffin, 922 F.2d at 1355 n.15. The actions

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of FBI Agents Bisswurm and Boylan, including directing Dr. Czichray not to

communicate with others during the interview and not allowing him free,

unaccompanied movement about his own home, demonstrate the agents’ domination

of the interview.

Finally, it is undisputed that the agents did not place Dr. Czichray under arrest

at the conclusion of the interview. According to Griffin, this fact weighs against a

finding that the interview took place in a custodial setting.

III.

To determine whether Dr. Czichray was in custody, we must assess the totality

of the circumstances surrounding his statement. It is important to emphasize that the

considerations identified in Griffin are not by any means exclusive, and that the

answer to the ultimate question depends on a careful evaluation of all the relevant

facts. But in this case, I think that our opinion in Griffin directs us rather clearly to

a conclusion that the district court did not err when it held that Dr. Czichray's

situation entitled him to Miranda warnings. Only two considerations (whether

Dr. Czichray was informed that he was free to end the interview and whether he was

arrested at the end of the interview) tend to support a finding that he was not in

custody. But actions sometimes speak louder than words. I believe that the agents'

restrictions on Dr. Czichray's movements and on his access to his telephones

significantly undermined any statements that they made to him about his freedom to

ask them to leave or to end the interview. A reasonable person in Dr. Czichray's

position would not believe that he was free to end the interview or to ask the agents

to leave. Thus only one fact (the absence of an arrest at the interview's conclusion)

weighs substantially in favor of the government's position, and in any event as an

original proposition it is hard to see why this fact has much if any relevance to the

question of whether Dr. Czichray was in custody.

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I would therefore hold that Dr. Czichray was in custody when he signed the

statement. While the absence of Miranda warnings will not require suppression when

suspects volunteer inculpatory evidence during a non-custodial interrogation, they

must be informed of and voluntarily, intelligently, and knowingly waive their

Miranda rights when they are in custody, or their statements are inadmissible. See

Miranda, 384 U.S. at 478-79. Because the written statement in the instant case was

made during an "incommunicado interrogation ... in a police-dominated atmosphere

... without full warnings of constitutional rights," id. at 445, I would affirm the district

court's order granting the motion to suppress.

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