Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca1-09-01234/USCOURTS-ca1-09-01234-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Richard Ellison
Appellant
United States
Appellee

Document Text:

The Hon. David H. Souter, Associate Justice (Ret.) of the *

Supreme Court of the United States, sitting by designation.

United States Court of Appeals

For the First Circuit

No. 09-1234

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Appellee,

v.

RICHARD ELLISON,

Defendant, Appellant.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

[Hon. Steven J. McAuliffe, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Torruella, Circuit Judge,

Souter, Associate Justice, and Stahl, Circuit Judge. *

Stephen Paul Maidman for appellant.

Donald Feith, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom John

P. Kacavas, United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee.

April 15, 2010

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SOUTER, Associate Justice. While being held at a county

jail charged with attempting to set fire to the building where his

ex-girlfriend lived, defendant Richard Ellison indicated his

willingness to give the police information about a pair of unsolved

robberies elsewhere. At an interview with a detective involved in

the latter cases, Ellison said the girlfriend was the robber and

admitted his own supporting role. After being charged with aiding

and abetting the crimes, he moved to suppress his statement. The

district court denied the motion, and we affirm. 

I

On January 24, 2006, a woman attempted to rob a

convenience store in Concord, New Hampshire, and when that effort

went awry she held up the clerk at a nearby grocery store and made

off with $300. The following December Ellison was in jail in the

State’s north country, charged with trying to torch the dwelling of

Robin Theriault, his ex-girlfriend and the beneficiary of a

protective order he had recently been convicted of violating.

Ellison let it be known to a Berlin Police Department detective,

who was speaking with him in connection with an unrelated

investigation, that he could provide information about the Concord

robberies. 

The next day a Concord Police detective, Todd Flanagan,

joined the Berlin officer in a second interview of Ellison, which

took place in the jail library. Ellison was brought there in

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restraints, but these were removed at the request of Flanagan, who

stated his understanding that Ellison wished to speak about the

robberies. Flanagan told Ellison that he was not under arrest for

these crimes, did not have to answer any questions, and was free to

end the interview at any time by pushing a button on the table to

summon the guards. Neither officer, however, advised Ellison of

other rights subject to warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona,

384 U.S. 436 (1966). Ellison was calm, showed no surprise, and

consented to a recorded interview, during which he disclosed his

erstwhile romantic involvement with Theriault at the time of the

robberies, identified her as the robber and implicated himself in

a supporting role. 

Ellison was then indicted for his part in the crimes,

and, after the district court denied a motion to suppress his

statement, he conditionally pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting

robbery, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1951 and 2, and aiding and abetting the

possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, 18

U.S.C. §§ 924(c) and 2. Here, Ellison contends that suppression

was required because there were no Miranda warnings, the statement

was coerced by a broken promise of leniency, and he had invoked his

Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to counsel during the interview

with Flanagan. 

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II

Miranda held that statements are generally inadmissible

against a defendant if obtained during “custodial interrogation”

without prior warnings that the suspect “has a right to remain

silent, that any statement he does make may be used as evidence

against him, and that he has a right to the presence of an

attorney, either retained or appointed.” Miranda, 384 U.S. at 444.

The central issue here is whether the interview in the library was

custodial interrogation, as Ellison says, simply because

incarceration makes any interrogation custodial per se within the

meaning of Miranda.

Determinations about Miranda custody begin by examining

all of the “circumstances surrounding the interrogation” and asking

whether “a reasonable person [would] have felt he or she was not at

liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave,” Thompson v.

Keohane, 516 U.S. 99, 112 (1995). This “initial determination

. . . depends on the objective circumstances of the interrogation,

not on the subjective views harbored by either the interrogating

officers or the person being questioned.” Stansbury v. California,

511 U.S. 318, 323 (1994) (per curiam). Once a court finds that a

reasonable person in the suspect’s position would not have felt

free to end the interview and walk away, there is a further

question whether the suspect would reasonably find the

circumstances coercive, thus raising the concern that drove

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Miranda. See Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 436-37 (1984)

(acknowledging that “a traffic stop significantly curtails . . .

‘freedom of action,’” and then deciding “whether a traffic stop

exerts upon a detained person pressures that sufficiently impair

his free exercise of his privilege against self-incrimination to

require that he be warned of his constitutional rights”). In the

paradigm example of interrogating a suspect at a police station,

the answer is obvious, in the absence of unusual facts: that was

the situation in Miranda and the warnings are the required antidote

to the stationhouse pressures observed there. Miranda is to be

“enforced strictly . . . in those types of situations in which the

concerns that powered the decision are implicated.” Id. at 437. 

But in dealing with a case outside the Miranda paradigm,

it is essential to recall that “the freedom-of-movement test

identifies only a necessary and not a sufficient condition for

Miranda custody.” Maryland v. Shatzer, 130 S.Ct. 1213, 1224

(2010). That is, custody under Miranda means a suspect is not free

to go away, but a suspect’s lack of freedom to go away does not

necessarily mean that questioning is custodial interrogation for

purposes of Miranda. 

Never is this distinction more important than when the

subject of interrogation is independently incarcerated. Even when

he is given the option to end the interrogation as he chooses, he

is not in the position of a suspect who is free to walk away and

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 In Mathis v. United States, 391 U.S. 1 (1968), a suspect’s 1

answers incriminating him in tax fraud, given to federal

investigators while he was imprisoned on a state conviction, were

held inadmissible because no Miranda warnings had been given. The

Court acknowledged Miranda’s applicability to questioning “‘when an

individual is taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his

freedom by the authorities in any significant way,’” id. at 5

(quoting 384 U.S. at 478), but did not say whether the interview

with Mathis fell within Miranda because of his incarceration or

because of some other deprivation that was significant in the

circumstances. Although it did not address Mathis, the Court’s

opinion in Shatzer forecloses Ellison’s reading of the case for the

former proposition. 

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roam around where he pleases, see, e.g., Oregon v. Mathiason, 429

U.S. 492, 495 (1977). Still, the restrictions on his freedom do

not necessarily equate his condition during any interrogation with

Miranda custody. While the suspect in a case just like Miranda

may well feel that the only way to end the pressure on him is to

answer the questions, the usual circumstances of someone serving

prison time following a conviction characteristically save him from

any such apprehension; so long as he is not threatened with harsher

confinement than normal until he talks, he knows that the worst

that can happen to him will be his return to prison routine, and

that he will be back on the street (in most cases) whether he

answers questions or refuses. See Shatzer, 130 S.Ct. at 1224-25.

Accordingly, the Supreme Court concluded in Shatzer that “lawful

imprisonment imposed on conviction of a crime does not create the

coercive pressures identified in Miranda,” id. at 1224. 

1

Shatzer left open the question whether those pressures

are necessarily brought to bear on someone who is incarcerated

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 On these facts, there would, of course, be no conclusion of 2

custodial interrogation in those circuits that have previously

applied the rule that such interrogation of a prisoner occurs only

when the suspect’s restraint is more rigorous than the

institutional norm. See, e.g., Garcia v. Singletary, 13 F.3d 1487,

1491 (11th Cir. 1994); United States v. Conley, 779 F.2d 970, 973

(4th Cir. 1985); Cervantes v. Walker, 589 F.2d 424, 428 (9th Cir.

1978).

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before trial and then interviewed about a crime distinct from the

pending charges. It is true that the condition of someone being

held while awaiting trial, like Ellison, is not exactly the same as

the convict’s position, since the suspect might reasonably perceive

that the authorities have a degree of discretion over pretrial

conditions, at least to the point of making recommendations to a

court. But we see nothing in the facts of this case that would be

likely to create the atmosphere of coercion subject to Miranda

concern. As mentioned, Detective Flanagan told Ellison that he was

not under arrest for the robberies and that he did not have to

answer any questions. He was interviewed in the prison library

(presumably one of its more comfortable areas), he was not

restrained, and he could go from the library at any time after

pressing the button to summon the guards.2

The relatively low atmospheric pressure in these

circumstances is all the more obvious in light of Ellison’s

previously expressed desire to tell the Concord police about the

unsolved crimes; Ellison had suggested such an interview, and

Flanagan was there to take him up on his proposal. And viewed

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objectively, the record readily shows why someone in Ellison’s

position would wish to be there talking. Theriault, whom he had

assaulted in violation of a protective order, and whose house he

was charged with attempting to set alight, was his ex-girlfriend.

The relationship had obviously gone sharply sour. At the very

least, Ellison would not have hesitated to hurt her (again) and try

to help himself by telling his story to the police. There is no

reason to find the concern of coercion behind Miranda implicated

here.

Ellison’s remaining arguments have no foundation. He

claims that the officers “coerced” him into speaking by means of a

subsequently broken promise that he would not be prosecuted for his

role in the robberies. The short answer to this is that the

district court found that no such promise was made. The court

credited Flanagan’s testimony that Ellison was told only that his

cooperation would be brought to the attention of the prosecutor,

who would determine what benefit, if any, Ellison would receive.

Ellison also argues that the interrogation should have ceased once

he invoked his right to counsel. But the district court found as

a fact that Ellison’s testimony that he had demanded to speak with

counsel “at least five times” was not credible (though the judge

did conclude that “there probably was some discussion of counsel”

that the officer “brush[ed] aside”). But even if Ellison had

clearly expressed a desire to speak with a lawyer, he could not

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have invoked any constitutional right to do that in a non-custodial

interrogation conducted before he was formally charged. See United

States v. Wyatt, 179 F.3d 532, 537 (7th Cir. 1999) (“The Fifth

Amendment right to counsel safeguarded by Miranda cannot be invoked

when a suspect is not in custody . . . .”); United States v.

Boskic, 545 F.3d 69, 84 (1st Cir. 2008) (“The Sixth Amendment takes

hold when the investigation gives way to a prosecution . . . .”).

Suppression could not, therefore, vindicate the Constitution. In

any event, the district court’s finding pretermits any issue based

on the requests alleged. 

III

The judgment of the district court is affirmed.

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