Opinion ID: 173724
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Verdugo's Rest Area Admission

Text: Verdugo next argues that his statement to MacIsaac, in which he admitted that he owned the ringing cell phone, should have been suppressed because it was obtained in violation of his Miranda rights. This argument has some bite because Verdugo made the statement (1) without the benefit of Miranda warnings, (2) in response to interrogation, (3) after being forcibly removed from the cab of his truck by multiple officers with drawn guns, and (4) while in handcuffs that had been left on for several minutes. See United States v. McCarty, 475 F.3d 39, 45 (1st Cir.2007) (defendant was in custody because he made statement while in handcuffs); but see United States v. Fornia-Castillo, 408 F.3d 52, 64 (1st Cir.2005) (neither the use of handcuffs nor the drawing of a weapon necessarily transforms a valid Terry stop into a de facto arrest). Nevertheless, we have no need to evaluate the merits of Verdugo's argument because the claimed error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. See United States v. Carl, 593 F.3d 115, 119 n. 3 (1st Cir.2010), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 2116, 176 L.Ed.2d 741 (2010) ([s]tatements induced in violation of Miranda's safeguards are appropriate for analysis under the harmless beyond a reasonable doubt test). As the district court noted, Verdugo repeated his admission that he owned the ringing cell phone when he signed the property inventory form at the Northampton barracks after he had previously waived his Miranda rights at the rest area. Since Verdugo's post- Miranda admission was well-documented and substantially the same as his pre- Miranda admission, the court's refusal to suppress the pre- Miranda statement was at most harmless error unless the court should also have suppressed the post- Miranda statement. See Tankleff v. Senkowski, 135 F.3d 235, 245-46 (2d Cir.1998); Feltrop v. Bowersox, 91 F.3d 1178, 1182 (8th Cir. 1996); Bryant v. Vose, 785 F.2d 364, 367 (1st Cir.1986) (dictum). Verdugo seeks to overcome this problem by arguing that his post- Miranda statement was tainted by MacIsaac's failure to issue Miranda warnings before he obtained Verdugo's initial admission. The difficulty with this argument is that it cannot be squared with Supreme Court and First Circuit precedent. In United States v. Jackson, we explained that, An earlier, simple failure to administer the [ Miranda ] warnings, unaccompanied by any actual coercion or other circumstances calculated to undermine the suspect's ability to exercise his free will [does not] so taint[ ] the [later] investigatory process that a subsequent voluntary and informed waiver is ineffective for some indeterminate period. 544 F.3d 351, 360 (1st Cir.2008) (quoting Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. 298, 309, 105 S.Ct. 1285, 84 L.Ed.2d 222 (1985)). Thus, where law enforcement officers have not engaged in coercive or improper tactics in obtaining an initial statement, but merely failed to advise a defendant of his Miranda rights, determining the admissibility of a subsequent statement is relatively straightforward. Such a statement is admissible if it was obtained after the defendant: (1) was advised of his or her Miranda rights; and, (2) knowingly and voluntarily waived those rights. United States v. Marenghi, 109 F.3d 28, 32 (1st Cir.1997). Verdugo cites Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600, 124 S.Ct. 2601, 159 L.Ed.2d 643 (2004), in support of his argument that his second statement was tainted by the first because the circumstances surrounding both statements undermined the effectiveness of the warnings that were given before the second statement was made. Seibert involved the deliberate use of a two-step interrogation technique in which the suspect was questioned first without the benefit of Miranda warnings and then was advised of his rights and questioned again after a confession was obtained. Id. at 605-06, 124 S.Ct. 2601. In determining that both statements should have been suppressed, a plurality of the court focused on the circumstances under which the statements were made and identified the threshold issue as whether it would be reasonable to find that in these circumstances the warnings could function `effectively' as Miranda requires. Id. at 611-12, 124 S.Ct. 2601. Justice Kennedy supplied the fifth vote for the result in a more narrowly reasoned opinion that hinged on the admitted fact that the police had used the two-step interrogation technique in a calculated way to undermine the Miranda warning. Id. at 622, 124 S.Ct. 2601 (Kennedy, J., concurring). When we recently considered Jackson again following the district court's ruling on remand, we declined to determine whether Seibert 's reach is limited to cases in which the police set out to subvert a suspect's Miranda rights because the post- Miranda statement at issue in Jackson was admissible even under the Seibert plurality's more context-sensitive test. United States v. Jackson, 608 F.3d 100, 104 (1st Cir.2010). We follow the same path here. In the present case, the district court correctly concluded that Verdugo's interrogation at the rest area differed substantially from the two-step interrogation technique that the Supreme Court condemned in Seibert. In Seibert, the defendant was awakened in the middle of the night, arrested, transported to a police station, and questioned for 30 to 40 minutes until she confessed. Officers then gave the defendant a 20-minute break, administered Miranda warnings, and immediately confronted her with her pre-warning statements. See Seibert, 542 U.S. at 604-05, 124 S.Ct. 2601. Here, in contrast, Verdugo was asked only a limited number of questions before he was read his Miranda rights, the bulk of the post- Miranda questioning occurred at a different location than the pre- Miranda questioning, and Verdugo made his second statement and signed the Property Inventory form over an hour after he first admitted to MacIsaac that the ringing cell phone was his. See United States v. Materas, 483 F.3d 27, 33 (1st Cir.2007) (finding a subsequent confession untainted where police asked the defendant only one question before reading him his Miranda rights, at another location, fifteen minutes later). These circumstances do not call into serious question the effectiveness of the Miranda warnings that Verdugo received before he made his second admission. The district court therefore committed no error in refusing to suppress Verdugo's post- Miranda statements based on Seibert. Verdugo also claims that his post- Miranda statement was involuntary even if it was not tainted by his first statement. The circumstances surrounding Verdugo's questioning, however, contain no traces of the brutality, [p]sychological duress, threats, [or] unduly prolonged interrogation that courts have previously found when they have concluded that statements were involuntarily made. See Jackson, 608 F.3d at 102-03; see also Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157, 167, 107 S.Ct. 515, 93 L.Ed.2d 473 (1986) (only admissions procured by coercive official police tactics are to be excluded as involuntary); Greenwald v. Wisconsin, 390 U.S. 519, 88 S.Ct. 1152, 20 L.Ed.2d 77 (1968) (confession involuntary where defendant was interrogated for over 18 hours without food, sleep, or necessary medication); Beecher v. Alabama, 389 U.S. 35, 88 S.Ct. 189, 19 L.Ed.2d 35 (1967) (confession coerced where police held a gun to defendant's head and interrogated him while he was in the hospital and under the influence of morphine); Payne v. Arkansas, 356 U.S. 560, 78 S.Ct. 844, 2 L.Ed.2d 975 (1958) (confession coerced where defendant was held incommunicado for three days with limited food and threatened with attack from a lynch mob). Verdugo made his post- Miranda admission and signed the inventory form in an open room where he was no longer handcuffed, and he was not subject to prolonged questioning, threats, or duress. Thus, the evidence simply does not support Verdugo's claim that his post- Miranda statement was involuntary. See United States v. Byram, 145 F.3d 405, 408 (1st Cir.1998) (finding no evidence of coercion where police did not threaten violence or serious retaliation, the questioning was not prolonged, and the surrounding atmosphere appear[ed] to have been benign). [1]