Opinion ID: 3158132
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Miranda/Expert Witness

Text: Rowley claims that at one point during his interrogation he requested an attorney. After such a request an accused “is not subject to further interrogation by the authorities until counsel has been made available to him, unless the accused himself initiates further communication, exchanges, or conversations with the police.” Maryland v. Shatzer, 559 U.S. 98, 104 (2010) (internal quotation marks omitted). The prohibition against policeinitiated interrogation lasts for 14 days. See id. at 109–110. Rowley alleges, however, that Defendants merely took a short break and then resumed their questioning. Police recordings of Rowley’s interrogation do not reflect a request for counsel. 7 Rowley first mentioned his Miranda claim in his response to Defendants’ summary-judgment motion. The district court properly treated this new allegation as a request to amend the complaint. See Martinez v. Potter, 347 F.3d 1208, 1211 (10th Cir. 2003) (“[O]ur cases interpret the inclusion of new allegations in a response to a motion for summary judgment, as a potential request to amend the complaint.”). Noting that “[d]iscovery and dispositive motions deadlines have long since passed” and that “there is no excuse for failing to raise this claim earlier,” the district court denied the request to amend as untimely. Aplt. App., Vol. 3 at 362.2 We review the district court’s denial of a motion to amend under the abuse-ofdiscretion standard. Las Vegas Ice & Cold Storage Co. v. Far West Bank, 893 F.2d 1182, 1185 (10th Cir. 1990). There was no abuse here. “Untimeliness alone may be a sufficient basis for denial of leave to amend”; and factors informing the timeliness inquiry include “whether the request was unduly and inexplicably delayed” and whether “the party had sufficient opportunity to state a claim and failed.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Rowley’s counsel (who represented him in the criminal case as well as this one) knew of his alleged request for counsel by the time of the state-court suppression hearing in February 2009, when Rowley testified that there “was one point in 2 The court also denied Rowley’s Miranda claim on the ground that it would be precluded by the state court’s denial of his motion to suppress his confession. We need not address this alternative ground, because we affirm the untimeliness ruling. See Kirch v. Embarq Mgmt. Co., 702 F.3d 1245, 1249 (10th Cir. 2012) (“[A]lthough the district court relied on consent as an alternative ground for summary judgment, we need not consider the issue because we [affirm on the principal ground].”). 8 the statement that I kind of got upset, and I said that I wanted to stop talking to them, and that I thought it was time to get a lawyer.” Aplt. App., Vol. 3 at 259. And in his October 2013 deposition in the civil case, Rowley again testified in the presence of his counsel that he had requested an attorney during the interrogation. But Rowley did not seek to amend his complaint until April 2014. The only possible (and faintly argued) reason for delay is that Defendant was deterred from raising a Miranda claim because the video of his interrogation contradicted his memory of a request for counsel and he raised the claim only after realizing that the video had been tampered with. But the district court gave Rowley 90 days to produce expert evidence to support the tampering claim in a motion to reconsider, and he failed to deliver. Although he presented an affidavit from Jerry Goffe, who represented himself as a “forensic video examiner,” the court was unpersuaded of his expertise. Id., Vol. 4 at 1. All Rowley says in opposition to the court’s ruling is that the court failed to appreciate “Mr. Goffe’s decades of courtroom experience as a forensic video analyst dealing with the same issues or how his simple observations absolutely refute the notions advanced by the inexperienced Mr. Bennett [Defendants’ expert].” Aplt. Br. at 28. Rowley ignores the court’s explanation (1) that Goffe was “basically a court videographer. . . [with] no certifications, background or experience in information technology,” Aplt. App., Vol. 4 at 456; (2) that Goffe “merely viewed the recordings and compared them to the audio recording and transcript,” which the court could have done just as well, id. at 455; and (3) that “had Mr. Goffe made the most basic inquiry, [readily available facts] would have 9 precluded him from coming to any of the conclusions he made,” id. at 459. We can hardly say that the court abused its discretion in failing to credit Goffe as an expert. See Dodge v. Cotter Corp., 328 F.3d 1212, 1223 (10th Cir. 2003) (absent challenge to whether the district court applied the proper standard and performed its gatekeeper role, review of exclusion of expert testimony is for abuse of discretion). There remains no reason to overturn the district court’s rejection of the attempt to add a Miranda claim. We therefore affirm the district court’s denial of Rowley’s request to amend. See Las Vegas Ice & Cold Storage, 893 F.2d at 1185; Frank v. U.S. West, Inc., 3 F.3d 1357, 1365–66 (10th Cir. 1993).