Opinion ID: 3151132
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Dudley's Request to call Gordon

Text: Here, Dudley first argues that his statement to his wife as he was taken from the apartment (something along the lines of - 11 - call Gordon to get ahold of Joseph about the -- about getting a lawyer or call Higgins) was a clear and unambiguous invocation of his right to counsel. We do not agree. Dudley testified that on the day of the search he was coming out of the bathroom when he heard a commotion. According to Dudley, when he walked into the living room, a police officer immediately grabbed his shoulder and led him from the apartment. As he was being taken outside, and while everybody was rushing into the house, he made mention to his wife, who was standing at the door, that she should call Gordon to get ahold of Joseph about the -- about getting a lawyer. Lori similarly testified that shortly after the police entered her home, Dudley told her to call Higgins, his lawyer. Dudley contends that if Lori heard his request, there can be no doubt that the officers seizing [] Dudley also heard the request. But neither Dudley nor Lori claimed that Dudley yelled or shouted his request -- testifying instead that Dudley said or mentioned to Lori that she should call his attorney. Lori further said that when, in response to her husband's request, she reached for the telephone to call Dudley's attorney, an officer told her that she could not use the telephone.10 The 10 She acknowledged on cross examination, however, that she was never handcuffed or told that she could not leave the apartment, and that if she had wanted to call someone she could have left the apartment and used someone else's phone. - 12 - implication being, Dudley argues, that the officer must have heard Dudley's request and was prohibiting her from carrying it out. Agent Fife, who was a member of the entry team, testified that he did not hear Dudley say anything as he first made contact with him upon entering the apartment.11 And Agent Conley, who was also a member of the entry team and who was present on the landing when Dudley was removed from the apartment, testified that he never heard Dudley say anything about an attorney. In considering all the evidence presented and making credibility determinations, the district court concluded that there was no evidence the officers had heard Dudley's request to his wife. And the evidence shows that -- crediting that Dudley made this statement -- it nonetheless would have been made in the chaos of the initial protective sweep, as ten officers, with their guns in the low and ready position, moved quickly through the front door trying to secure the apartment. Taken as a whole, we find that the evidence supports the district court's findings, and, as such, we find no clear error. See Camacho, 661 F.3d at 723 ([W]e 'will uphold a denial of a motion to suppress if any reasonable view of the evidence supports it.' (quoting United States v. Mendez-de Jesus, 85 F.3d 1, 2 (1st Cir. 1996))). [W]hen 'the district court chooses to draw a 11Agent Fife acknowledged that he may have been branching off into another area by the time Dudley passed his wife at the door. - 13 - reasonable (though not inevitable) inference from a particular combination of facts,' that inference is entitled to respect. Hughes, 640 F.3d at 434 (quoting United States v. Espinoza, 490 F.3d 41, 46 (1st Cir. 2007)). This is especially true where, as here, evaluations of witnesses' credibility are concerned since we must be especially deferential to the district court's credibility findings. United States v. Nee, 261 F.3d 79, 84 (1st Cir. 2001) (quoting United States v. Jones, 187 F.3d 210, 214 (1st Cir. 1999)). Finding no clear error in the district court's findings, our inquiry is a simple one. If no officer heard Dudley's statement to his wife, it could not have been a clear invocation of his right to counsel. [T]his is an objective inquiry, Davis, 512 U.S. at 459, and officers could not have objectively understood a statement they did not hear to be an assertion of the right to counsel. But even assuming the entry team officers heard Dudley's request to his wife as they moved through the apartment, such a request simply does not unequivocally demand assistance, request the lawyer's presence, or otherwise clearly indicate an unwillingness to make a statement absent presence of an attorney. United States v. Oquendo-Rivas, 750 F.3d 12, 19 (1st Cir. 2014). Under the Davis standard, Dudley had to articulate his desire to have counsel present sufficiently clearly that a reasonable police - 14 - officer in the circumstances would understand the statement to be a request for an attorney. Davis, 512 U.S. at 459. Telling his wife to call Gordon to get ahold of Joseph about the -- about getting a lawyer, is not sufficiently clear to adequately inform officers whether or not Dudley wanted an attorney present for subsequent questioning.12 See Grant-Chase v. Comm'r, N.H. Dep't of Corr., 145 F.3d 431, 436 (1st Cir. 1998) (finding reasonable a state court's determination that a pre-Miranda request to call a lawyer was ambiguous as to purpose because it was unclear whether the suspect sought the assistance of an attorney in dealing with the forthcoming interrogation and concluding that in the face of such ambiguity officers were within their rights to continue the interrogation without asking for clarification); United States v. Fontana, 948 F.2d 796, 806 (1st Cir. 1991) (suspect's instruction to his wife to call an attorney -- made while in the presence of an officer -- was not a reassertion of the right to counsel); cf. Obershaw v. Lanman, 453 F.3d 56, 65 (1st Cir. 2006) (suspect inquiring whether he could talk to a lawyer, rather than expressly asserting that he in fact wanted to do so was not an unambiguous request for counsel). Accordingly, we conclude that Dudley's request to his wife that she call Gordon was not an unambiguous invocation of his right to counsel. 12 We note that Dudley made no incriminating statements until after he received the Miranda warnings. - 15 -