NOT FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

 v. 

RALPH DEON TAYLOR, 

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 17-50187 

D.C. No. 

2:16-cr-00805-RGK-1 

MEMORANDUM*

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

R. Gary Klausner, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted March 6, 2018

Pasadena, California

Before: GOULD and MURGUIA, Circuit Judges, and CHRISTENSEN,** Chief 

District Judge.

Appellant Ralph Taylor appeals his conviction for being a felon in 

possession of ammunition and a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). On 

appeal, Taylor asserts that three statements he made to officers while they searched

 

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent 

except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.

** The Honorable Dana L. Christensen, Chief United States District 

Judge for the District of Montana, sitting by designation.

FILED

MAR 21 2018

MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
2 

his apartment should have been suppressed as a result of an un-Mirandized

custodial interrogation. Specifically, Taylor argues that his statement identifying a 

jacket as his, his statement implying that ammunition found in the apartment was 

his, and his statement, “it’s all over,” when officers found a firearm in what 

appeared to be his bedroom, should have been suppressed. Despite Taylor’s failure 

to object to the admissibility of the statements in his pretrial Motion in Limine, 

because the district court explicitly ruled on the admissibility of Taylor’s 

statements, we review de novo. See United States v. Liu, 941 F.2d 844, 846 (9th 

Cir. 1991) (“A pretrial motion in limine preserves for appeal the issue of 

admissibility of that evidence if the substance of the objection has been thoroughly 

explored during the hearing and the district court’s ruling permitting introduction 

of evidence was explicit and definitive.”). 

The Fifth Amendment provides that no person “shall be compelled in any 

criminal case to be a witness against himself.” U.S. Const. amend V. In Miranda v. 

Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), the Supreme Court established that “when a person 

is ‘in custody,’ procedural safeguards must be afforded that person before the 

person is questioned” to protect their Fifth Amendment privilege against selfincrimination. United States v. Cazares, 788 F.3d 956, 980 (9th Cir. 2015). If a 
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person is not given these procedural safeguards,1the prosecution may not use what 

it learned through its custodial interrogation. Id. Violations of these procedural 

safeguards are subject to harmless error analysis. See United States v. Khan, 993 

F.2d 1368, 1376 (9th Cir. 1993).

The Supreme Court has established that “not . . . all statements obtained by 

the police after a person has been taken into custody are to be considered the 

product of interrogation.” Innis, 446 U.S. at 299. “Volunteered statements of any 

kind are not barred by the Fifth Amendment” and failure to give Miranda warnings 

does not affect the admissibility of such statements. Id. at 300 (quoting Miranda, 

384 U.S. at 478). 

Here, Taylor’s third statement, “it’s all over,” was spontaneous and not the 

result of police interrogation. Even if we assume that Taylor was in custody for 

Miranda purposes while the officers were in his apartment, the district court did 

not err in admitting his spontaneous statement. See id. 

Moreover, the government has carried its burden to prove “beyond a 

reasonable doubt” that any error in admitting Taylor’s other two statements—

Taylor’s statement identifying a jacket as his and Taylor’s statement implying the 

ammunition was his—was harmless. See Khan, 993 F.2d at 1376. The two 

 

1 These “procedural safeguards” now are commonly referred to as Miranda

warnings. See Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 297 (1980). 
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statements arguably given in violation of Miranda were not the only evidence to 

support Taylor’s conviction for being a felon in possession of ammunition and a 

firearm. There was other evidence connecting Taylor to the bedroom where 

officers eventually discovered the ammunition and firearm. For example, an officer 

testified that there were photos of Taylor and his girlfriend in the bedroom where 

the officers discovered the ammunition and firearm. Additionally, another officer 

testified that he found the ammunition in a file cabinet also containing medical 

documents with Taylor’s name on them. This evidence, in addition to Taylor’s 

statement “it’s over,” which was spontaneous and properly admitted, was such that 

any error in admitting Taylor’s statements about the jacket and ammunition did not 

“contribute to the verdict obtained.” See id. 

AFFIRMED.