Opinion ID: 1208887
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: False promises of leniency

Text: Montgomery first argues that his statement was induced by false promises of leniency from Heiser. Montgomery is specifically referring to Heiser's assurances that he would not receive a ten year sentence in the federal system. The district court found that the promises were not objectionable because there was no misrepresentation and because, even assuming that there was a misrepresentation, Heiser's speculation about sentencing was not enough to make the statement involuntary. A confession is involuntary if it is the result of coercive police conduct. See Gillaum, 372 F.3d at 856. The use of deceit to obtain a confession does not make the confession involuntary as long as the police interrogation was not coercive. See Sotelo v. Indiana State Prison, 850 F.2d 1244, 1251 (7th Cir.1988). As a fundamental matter, a confession must be voluntary under the totality of the circumstances, and a court evaluating the voluntariness of a confession must consider any promises or representations made by interrogating officers. United States v. Springs, 17 F.3d 192, 194 (7th Cir.1994); Holland v. McGinnis, 963 F.2d 1044, 1050-52 (7th Cir. 1992). Given the right circumstances, a false promise of leniency may be sufficient to overcome a person's ability to make a rational decision about the courses open to him. See United States v. Montgomery, 14 F.3d 1189, 1194 (7th Cir.1994) (A confession is considered voluntary if the state demonstrates that it `was not secured through psychological or physical intimidation but rather was the product of a rational intellect and free will.') (quoting United States v. Haddon, 927 F.2d 942, 945 (7th Cir.1991)). [A]n empty prosecutorial promise could prevent a suspect from making a rational choice by `distorting the alternatives among which the person under interrogation is being asked to choose.' Sprosty v. Buchler, 79 F.3d 635, 646 (7th Cir.1996) (quoting Weidner v. Thieret, 866 F.2d 958, 963 (7th Cir.1989)); see also United States v. Baldwin, 60 F.3d 363, 365 (7th Cir.1995) (generally, false promise of leniency made in order induce a confession is a forbidden tactic). The parties agree that Heiser told Montgomery that if he was sentenced to prison time on the federal charges he would not get ten years. However, as the testimony at the suppression hearing bore out, those proclamations were not tied to any confession or statement on Montgomery's part. Heiser did not promise Montgomery that he would not receive a ten year sentence if he confessed ; he said that Montgomery would not receive ten years from the federal system. [2] Montgomery frequently raised concerns about being tried on federal charges rather than state charges, and Heiser told him (incorrectly, it turned out) that the most he could expect for federal felon-in-possession charges was ten years. The information that Heiser gave him was inaccurate, but Montgomery was not promised a ten year sentence if he confessed or made a statement. This court has previously acknowledged that an illusive promise of leniency in exchange for a confession presents a difficult case. United States v. Kontny, 238 F.3d 815, 818 (7th Cir.2001). The mere fact that Heiser misstated the potential sentences in the federal system does not make the interrogation coercive, however, especially when the purported sentence was not linked to Montgomery's willingness to talk to the investigators. See, e.g., Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U.S. 731, 739, 89 S.Ct. 1420, 22 L.Ed.2d 684 (1969) (police misrepresentation of another suspect's statement was relevant to voluntariness of confession, but insufficient to make the confession involuntary); Sotelo, 850 F.2d at 1251 (deception by an interrogator does not automatically invalidate a confession). Montgomery contends that this case should be decided under a per se rule of suppression derived from Bram v. United States, 168 U.S. 532, 18 S.Ct. 183, 42 L.Ed. 568 (1897). The Supreme Court held in Bram, citing various common law authorities, that a confession procured either by flattery or hope ... however slightly the emotions may be implanted, is not admissible evidence; for the law will not suffer a prisoner to be made the deluded instrument of his own conviction. Id. at 547, 18 S.Ct. 183. This particular statement, which was not a statement by the Court but rather a quotation from a treatise cited in the opinion's review of common law sources, is one that criminal defendants frequently use to support a broad reading of the case creating a requirement of per se reversal if investigators made any sort of promise at all to a suspect prior to a confession. See United States v. Long, 852 F.2d 975, 980 (7th Cir.1988) (Easterbrook.J., concurring) ( Bram has not excluded a confession in decades; it is a derelict, offering false hope to suspects and vexing judges who must distinguish it on the way to decisions reached on other grounds. It is a source of pointless litigation...). Indeed, Bram 's statement that [t]he law cannot measure the force of the influence used, or decide upon its effect upon the mind of the prisoner, and therefore excludes the declaration if any degree of influence has been exerted, Bram, 168 U.S. at 565, 18 S.Ct. 183, is inconsistent with the current totality of the circumstances approach. See Frazier, 394 U.S. at 739, 89 S.Ct. 1420. This circuit has not read Bram as creating a per se rule requiring suppression whenever a promise or inducement is made to a suspect. Long, 852 F.2d at 977; see also United States v. Baldwin, 60 F.3d 363, 365 (7th Cir.1995). Montgomery's reading of Bram was decisively rejected by the Supreme Court in Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 285, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991), when the Court stated that Bram under current precedent does not state the standard for determining the voluntariness of a confession ... Id. at 285, 18 S.Ct. 183. Montgomery objects that the Supreme Court cited no authority for its abandonment of Bram, but the Court's statement about Bram came in the context of a discussion of the state supreme court's decision on Fulminante's case, including that court's citations to the modern case law establishing the totality of the circumstances as the relevant test. Id. at 285-86, 18 S.Ct. 183. And, in any event, the Supreme Court does not need to cite authority when revising or limiting its own case law. Montgomery then claims that Bram was revived by the Supreme Court's recent decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, ___ U.S. ___, 128 S.Ct. 2783, 171 L.Ed.2d 637 (2008). Heller struck down Washington D.C.'s handgun ban because it was inconsistent with the original understanding of the Second Amendment. The opinion in Heller also took issue with a dissenting opinion's use of United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 59 S.Ct. 816, 83 L.Ed. 1206 (1939), since that opinion did not purport to be a thorough discussion of the history of the Second Amendment. Heller, 128 S.Ct. at 2815, 128 S.Ct. 2783. Montgomery now claims that the originalist opinion in Heller revived opinions such as Bram, which he claims was a thorough history of the Fifth Amendment in contrast to Fulminante, and thus overrules Fulminante or limits its application to Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause cases. (The latter, we note, is an odd suggestion that would seriously undermine the jurisprudence incorporating the Fifth Amendment through the Due Process Clause.) To the extent that Montgomery believes that Heller adopts a new canon of constitutional interpretation for amendments wholly separate from that discussed in the case, and that it overrules or limits unrelated lines of case law sub silentio, we decline to read that much into the opinion and do not find it controlling on the issues presented. In short, while Heiser was mistaken about the prison sentence that Montgomery faced in the federal court system, his statements that Montgomery would not serve ten years pursuant to federal charges was not made in order to induce a confession. We agree with the district court that Montgomery did not make an involuntary statement in response to them.