Opinion ID: 1037055
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Pretrial Evidentiary Motions

Text: Prior to trial, Flowers moved to suppress: (1) the evidence found in his home on the grounds that Detective Caris’s affidavit, supporting the search warrant, contained material omissions and lacked probable cause; and (2) Flowers’s postMiranda statements about the gun found in his home because he had made them to police after he had invoked his right to silence. Flowers also filed a motion in limine to preclude the government from introducing evidence of the Alabama Georgia Grocery Store robbery-homicide or of Flowers’s criminal history on the 4 Case: 12-14930 Date Filed: 08/12/2013 Page: 5 of 21 grounds that this evidence was irrelevant and unduly prejudicial under Federal Rule of Evidence 403. After hearing argument, a magistrate judge recommended: (1) denying Flowers’s motion to suppress the evidence found in his home and his request for an evidentiary hearing pursuant to Franks;2 (2) granting in part and denying in part Flowers’s motion to suppress his post-Miranda statements. The magistrate judge concluded that Flowers had selectively invoked his right to silence when he stated to investigators that he would not talk anymore about the gun found in his home and that any statements about the gun after that point should be excluded. The district court adopted the magistrate judge’s recommendations. The district court denied the motion to suppress the evidence found pursuant to the search warrant. The district court granted in part the motion to suppress Flower’s post-Miranda statements, but found admissible Flowers’s statements about the gun made before he invoked his right to silence. As for Flower’s motion in limine, the district court ruled, inter alia, that: (1) evidence of Flowers’s prior conviction for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon was admissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b); and (2) “some discussion” of the Alabama Georgia Grocery Store robbery-homicide would have to come in at trial because the investigation into the robbery and Flowers’s gun 2 Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 98 S. Ct. 2674 (1978). 5 Case: 12-14930 Date Filed: 08/12/2013 Page: 6 of 21 possession were so intertwined, but that the court could not “anticipate every question that might be asked.”