Opinion ID: 2658909
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: IMM was “In Custody” While Questioned by the

Text: Detective “In determining whether an individual was in custody, a court must examine all of the circumstances surrounding the interrogation, but the ultimate inquiry is simply whether there [was] a formal arrest or restraint on freedom of movement of the degree associated with a formal arrest.” Stansbury v. California, 511 U.S. 318, 322 (1994) (per curiam) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). “This inquiry requires a court to examine the totality of the circumstances from the perspective of a reasonable person in the suspect’s position.” United States v. Crawford, 372 F.3d 1048, 1059 (9th Cir. 2004) (en banc) (citing Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 442 (1984)). “[W]e must determine whether the officers established a setting from which a reasonable person would believe that he or she was not free to leave.” United States v. Kim, 292 F.3d 969, 973–74 (9th Cir. 2002) (quotation marks and citation omitted); see also Thompson v. Keohane, 516 U.S. 99, 112 (1995) (“Two discrete inquiries are essential to the determination: first, what were the circumstances surrounding the interrogation; and second, given those circumstances, would a reasonable person have felt he or she was at liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave.” (quotation marks and citation omitted)). In United States v. Kim, we identified a non-exhaustive list of five factors that have often proven relevant in deciding whether a suspect was in custody: “(1) the language used to summon the individual; (2) the extent to which the defendant is confronted with evidence of guilt; (3) the physical surroundings of the interrogation; (4) the duration of the detention; and (5) the degree of pressure applied to detain the individual.” 292 F.3d at 974 (citations omitted). As we 20 UNITED STATES V. IMM recognized in Kim, “[o]ther factors may also be pertinent to, and even dispositive of, the ultimate determination whether a reasonable person would have believed he could freely walk away from the interrogators.” Id. Although this inquiry is objective, the Supreme Court held in J.D.B. that “so long as the child’s age was known to the officer at the time of police questioning, or would have been objectively apparent to any reasonable officer, its inclusion in the custody analysis is consistent with the objective nature of that test.” 131 S. Ct. 2394, 2406. The Court cautioned that “a child’s age [may] affect[] how a reasonable person in the suspect’s position would perceive his or her freedom to leave,” and warned that “a reasonable child subjected to police questioning will sometimes feel pressured to submit when a reasonable adult would feel free to go.” Id. at 2402–03. Thus, J.D.B. recognized that for Miranda, as for so many other rights, common sense dictates that we must take into account the unique characteristics and vulnerabilities of children. See id. at 2404 (“‘[O]ur history is replete with laws and judicial recognition’ that children cannot be viewed simply as miniature adults.” (quoting Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104,115–16 (1982))); Miller v. Alabama, 132 S. Ct. 2455, 2470 (2012) (“[I]f . . . ‘death is different,’ children are different too. Indeed, it is the odd legal rule that does not have some form of exception for children.”). To fail to recognize this tenet would be to invite legal error. Here, the district court concluded that IMM was not in custody. We review the “in custody” determination de novo. United States v. Bassignani, 575 F.3d 879, 883 (9th Cir. 2009) (“[A] district court’s ‘in custody’ determination is a mixed question of law and fact warranting de novo review.” UNITED STATES V. IMM 21 (quotation marks and citation omitted)). “[T]he factual findings underlying the district court’s decision . . . are reviewed for clear error,” however. Id. (citation omitted). IMM does not challenge the district court’s factual findings and, having carefully reviewed the record, we conclude that those findings are not clearly erroneous. However, applying the legal standard set forth above to the “determination” regarding IMM’s custodial status, we conclude that IMM was “in custody” for Miranda purposes. A reasonable person, and especially a reasonable twelve year old child, in IMM’s position would not, under all of the circumstances, have felt that he was free to terminate the interrogation and leave. The first Kim factor, “the language used to summon the individual,” slightly favors a finding that IMM was in custody. In general, when a suspect voluntarily agrees to accompany police with an “understanding that questioning would ensue,” this factor weighs against a finding of custody. Kim, 292 F.3d at 974 (emphasis in original) (citing California v. Beheler, 463 U.S. 1121, 1125 (1982) (per curiam)). We have strongly cautioned, however, that “[v]oluntary initiation of contact with police cannot be, under any circumstances, the end of the inquiry into whether a defendant was ‘in custody’ during the encounter.” Id. at 975. That warning applies with particular force here: although IMM’s mother agreed to a voluntary meeting with the detective, there is no evidence that IMM himself ever agreed to an interview, understood it to be voluntary, or understood his mother’s role in making the necessary arrangements. Because the ultimate issue is whether IMM himself understood that he was free to leave, we cannot impute his mother’s subjective awareness of the circumstances of the interview to IMM. The evidence 22 UNITED STATES V. IMM shows only that, from IMM’s vantage point, an armed detective arrived at his house one Saturday morning, drove him and his mother 30 to 40 minutes to a police station, and brought him to a small room where he remained for nearly an hour of questioning. Although the officer did not menace IMM or order him into the car, it is doubtful that a juvenile in IMM’s position would have seen the circumstances of his arrival at the police station as the result of a free and voluntary choice to be questioned. The second Kim factor, “the extent to which the defendant is confronted with evidence of guilt,” overwhelmingly favors a finding of custody. “We have found a defendant in custody when the interrogator adopts an aggressive, coercive, and deceptive tone.” Bassignani, 575 F.3d at 884.10 Here, although the detective did not raise his voice, he repeatedly confronted IMM with fabricated evidence of guilt and engaged in elaborate deceptions. The detective fed IMM facts that fit the detective’s predetermined account of what must have happened, accused IMM of dishonesty whenever IMM disagreed with the detective’s false representations, and forced IMM to choose between adopting the detective’s false account of events as his own and calling his own grandfather 10 See also United States v. Barnes, 713 F.3d 1200, 1204–05 (9th Cir. 2013) (finding custody where, inter alia, “The FBI agents directly confronted Barnes with evidence of guilt before administering the Miranda warnings”); United States v. Brobst, 558 F.3d 982, 995–96 (9th Cir. 2009) (finding custody where, inter alia, “[the defendant] was immediately confronted with evidence of the child pornography against him”); United States v. Wauneka, 770 F.2d 1434, 1439 (9th Cir. 1985) (finding custody where, inter alia, “[t]he questioning progressed for over an hour and turned accusatory—Wauneka was told that he supplied information that only a perpetrator would know, that he matched the description of the rapist, and that he had better tell the truth.”) UNITED STATES V. IMM 23 a liar. This last tactic directly played upon IMM’s close relationship with his grandfather, whom he called “dad,” and employed intense psychological coercion of a sort to which juveniles are uniquely vulnerable. See J.D.B., 131 S. Ct. at 2403 (noting that children “are more vulnerable or susceptible to . . . outside pressure than adults” (quotation marks omitted)). Further, although the detective did not explicitly threaten IMM, he bluntly warned that the situation would “turn into a big thing if you’re not going to be honest.” Thus, while the detective told IMM at the outset of the interview that IMM could stop it if he felt uncomfortable, the detective’s aggressive, coercive, and deceptive interrogation tactics created an atmosphere in which no reasonable twelve year old would have felt free to tell the detective, an adult making full use of his position of authority, to stop questioning him. See id. at 2405 (“Neither officers nor courts can reasonably evaluate the effect of objective circumstances that, by their nature, are specific to children without accounting for the age of the child subjected to those circumstances.”). In fact, IMM’s questioning ceased not when IMM asked that the detective stop but only when the detective had attained all the information he desired. Thus, from the beginning to the end of the interrogation, the detective made it clear that he believed that there was no doubt that IMM was guilty. It would only be normal for IMM to believe that, under all the circumstances, he would be required to remain at the police station or be transferred to some other detention site rather than be released whenever he decided to leave. Finally, given that the detective had driven him and his mother to the police station, more than a half hour from his home, IMM may well not have thought that he and his mother would be free to leave whenever they so desired. 24 UNITED STATES V. IMM The third Kim factor, “the physical surroundings of the interrogation,” also weighs strongly in IMM’s favor. While “[t]he fact that questioning takes place in a police station does not necessarily mean that such questioning constitutes custodial interrogation,” United States v. Coutchavlis, 260 F.3d 1149, 1157 (9th Cir. 2001) (emphasis added), it often does. That is especially true for juveniles, who are more likely to be overwhelmed by entry into a police station staffed by armed, uniformed officers. See Haley, 332 U.S. at 599. Here, IMM was placed in a small room with the door closed. Although the door was unlocked, there is no evidence that IMM was aware of this fact. To the contrary, the detective twice exercised control over IMM’s practical ability to enter and exit the room—first by ordering IMM to knock on the door if he needed to use the restroom and later by directing IMM to sit alone in the small room until the detective returned. Compare Crawford, 372 F.3d at 1059 (noting that a suspect is not in custody when, inter alia, “he does in fact leave without hindrance”). Similar to the suspect in United States v. Barnes, IMM’s confrontation with the police occurred “in a small office, behind a closed door, inside the [police station].” See 713 F.3d at 1204–05 (concluding that the suspect was in custody). IMM’s mother was present in the police station, but she was absent for the entire interrogation and there is no evidence that IMM believed he was free simply to stand up, leave, and find her. Cf. Kim, 292 F.3d at 977 (noting that “isolating the defendant from the outside world . . . largely neutralizes the familiarity of the location as a factor affirmatively undermining a finding of coercion”). In short, with respect to the third Kim factor, IMM was interrogated alone behind a closed door that appeared to be locked, in a small room in a police station located 30 to 40 UNITED STATES V. IMM 25 minutes away from his home. He was told that, if he wanted to leave to use the restroom, he needed to knock and obtain the detective’s permission. Faced with this situation and level of police control, a reasonable person would not likely have felt free to terminate the interrogation and leave the police station at will. The next Kim factor, “duration of detention,” strengthens the conclusion that IMM was in custody. IMM spent 30 to 40 minutes in the unmarked police car and then nearly an hour being questioned. Although our precedents do not specify a precise amount of time at which a detention turns custodial, we have found an adult defendant to have been in custody when she was interrogated for 45 to 90 minutes. See Kim, 292 F.3d at 972. Under all the circumstances, including the fact that IMM, as a juvenile, was likely more overwhelmed and intimidated than an adult would be by such prolonged direct questioning by an adult police officer, this Kim factor supports a finding of custody. The fifth and final Kim factor, “the degree of pressure applied to detain the individual,” confirms that IMM was in custody. As in Kim, “this was a full-fledged interrogation, not a brief inquiry,” in which IMM was “detained for ‘some time’” and then questioned for “at least [50 total] minutes.” 292 F.3d at 977. This questioning was both hostile and accusatory, and, when conducted in isolation in a small room in a police station, quite capable of causing IMM considerable concern regarding his future. Although IMM was neither handcuffed nor arrested, “the scenario was not without pressure resulting from a combination of the 26 UNITED STATES V. IMM surroundings and circumstances encompassed by the other factors.”11 Barnes, 713 F.3d at 1204–05. Ultimately, guided by the Kim factors, considering the totality of the circumstances of IMM’s detention, and taking into account IMM’s status as a juvenile, we conclude that a reasonable person in IMM’s position would not have felt free to terminate the questioning and leave the police station. We therefore conclude that IMM was “in custody” during his interrogation by the detective.