Opinion ID: 658545
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Rosa's Suppression Motion

Text: 17 Prior to trial, Rosa moved to suppress certain evidence against him, including postarrest statements and various weapons, as the product of Miranda violations (Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966)). Judge Arthur D. Spatt, to whom the case was then assigned, referred the motion to Magistrate Judge John L. Caden, who conducted an evidentiary hearing at which several law enforcement officers, including New York City Police Detective Stephen Peitler, testified. Peitler testified that the agents had sought to execute an arrest warrant for Rosa at about 1:30 A.M. on August 22, 1989. In the interest of safety, the agents decided to lure Rosa out of his home for the arrest. They did so by telling him, falsely, they had just caught a man breaking into Rosa's car. Having induced Rosa to get dressed and come out, the agents then arrested him. On cross-examination, Peitler acknowledged that he had lied to Rosa about his car being stolen in order to get Rosa out of his house, and expressed his willingness to engage in such a lie if necessary [i]n the course of [his] duties to protect the safety of others and [him]self and to protect the investigation. (Transcript of Hearing before Magistrate Judge, June 4, 1990, at 30-31.) 18 Peitler testified that he read Miranda warnings to Rosa, and suggested that Rosa cooperate and allow the agents to accompany him into the house. Initially Peitler testified that he read those warnings while outside. After other agents testified that Peitler had placed Rosa in a car, Peitler testified that he had indeed put Rosa in a government car and that he had read him the Miranda warnings in the car, suggesting cooperation thereafter. None of the other agents, including an agent who, according to Peitler, was in the government vehicle with Rosa, could remember whether Rosa was given Miranda warnings. According to Peitler, Rosa stated that he did not need an attorney and agreed to go inside his house with several agents. Thereafter, Rosa admitted he had an Uzi submachine gun, which the agents recovered. And although initially refusing Peitler's request for permission to search the house, after a few hours, during which Rosa was taken to DEA headquarters, Rosa gave a written consent for a search of the house. The search turned up, inter alia, a .380 caliber semiautomatic pistol and a .22 caliber gun in the form of a pen. 19 The magistrate judge recommended that Rosa's motion to suppress be granted, finding that Rosa had not been given Miranda warnings outside his home, had not consented to the entry of his home, and had not signed the consent-to-search form voluntarily. The magistrate judge discredited Peitler's testimony because, (1) Peitler had changed his testimony as to Rosa's location when Peitler gave him Miranda warnings, (2) none of the other agents had heard Peitler give Miranda warnings or heard Rosa agree to the entry of his home, and (3) Detective Peitler's credibility at least in this judge's mind has been severely weakened and destroyed by his admission during cross-examination in this hearing that he would lie to protect the integrity of this investigation. (Transcript of Hearing/Decision July 3, 1990, at 58.) 20 After the government objected to the magistrate judge's recommendation, Chief Judge Platt, to whom the case had been reassigned, reviewed the transcript of the evidentiary hearing and elected, over Rosa's objection, to hear live testimony from Peitler in order to make an independent assessment of Peitler's credibility. Peitler's testimony before Chief Judge Platt was generally consistent with his testimony before the magistrate judge; Peitler testified that he put Rosa into a government vehicle before reading Miranda warnings. He also testified that the arrest of Rosa occurred in the midst of a massive round-the-clock series of raids, culminating in some 30 arrests in a two-day period. He attributed the inability of his fellow agents to remember the warnings given Rosa to the fact that so many arrests had been made in a concentrated period of time in which the agents had had no sleep. Peitler also testified that although he was willing to tell a lie in the course of an investigation, he would not lie under oath. The court offered the parties the opportunity to call additional witnesses. Both sides declined. 21 In a ruling from the bench at the close of the hearing and in a Memorandum dated August 26, 1991 (D.Ct. Decision), the court rejected the magistrate judge's recommendation and denied Rosa's suppression motion, finding that Peitler had given Miranda warnings while Rosa was in the car, and that Rosa waived his rights, consented to enter his home with the agents for the purpose of having a discussion, and thereafter freely and voluntarily gave his consent to the search. The court found Peitler's testimony consistent and credible and his demeanor trustworthy. It discounted the magistrate judge's credibility assessment of Peitler, finding that the magistrate judge had misinterpreted Peitler's testimony that he would lie to protect the integrity of an investigation. The court concluded that Peitler had not intended to testify that he would commit perjury. The court also found it immaterial that the other agents could not specifically testify to seeing or hearing Detective Peitler read Rosa his Miranda rights or to hearing Rosa consent to the entry of his home, D.Ct. Decision at 17, noting that none of the witnesses contradicted Peitler's testimony that such warnings had been given, and finding it likely that the number of arrests made and the stress under which the officers were operating during the relevant period explained their inability to recall details of this arrest, id. at 17-20. 22 On appeal, Rosa contends that the district court could not properly reject the magistrate judge's recommendation without hearing live testimony from all the witnesses who testified before the magistrate judge. He also argues that the court's conclusions that Rosa voluntarily waived his Miranda rights and voluntarily consented to the search of his home were erroneous. We reject his contentions. 23 The Federal Magistrates Act, 28 U.S.C. Secs. 631-639 (1988), does not allow a magistrate judge to decide a motion for suppression of evidence in a criminal prosecution. See 28 U.S.C. Sec. 636(b)(1)(A); United States v. Raddatz, 447 U.S. 667, 673, 100 S.Ct. 2406, 2410, 65 L.Ed.2d 424 (1980). The district judge remains the ultimate decisionmaker. After a magistrate judge has heard such a motion and has submitted proposed findings of fact and recommendations to a district judge, see id. Sec. 636(b)(1)(B), the district judge is required to make a de novo determination of those portions of the report or specified proposed findings or recommendations to which objection is made, id. Sec. 636(b)(1). In making its decision, the court may accept, reject, or modify, in whole or in part, the findings or recommendations made by the magistrate, and may also receive further evidence. Id. 24 A court that has decided to receive further evidence need not hear live evidence from each of the witnesses who appeared before the magistrate judge. See Grassia v. Scully, 892 F.2d 16, 19 (2d Cir.1989); see also Peretz v. United States, --- U.S. ----, ----, 111 S.Ct. 2661, 2670, 115 L.Ed.2d 808 (1991) (court may opt to  'rehear the evidence in whole or in part' ) (quoting United States v. Raddatz, 447 U.S. 667, 685, 100 S.Ct. 2406, 2417, 65 L.Ed.2d 424 (1980) (Blackmun, J., concurring)). Although the rejection of a magistrate judge's credibility assessments without seeing and hearing the witness or witnesses whose credibility is in question could well give rise to serious questions, United States v. Raddatz, 447 U.S. at 681 n. 7, 100 S.Ct. at 2415 n. 7, a court having doubts as to those credibility findings need hear testimony from only the witnesses whose credibility is in question. See Grassia v. Scully, 892 F.2d at 20. 25 The district court in the present case acted entirely within this framework. It properly elected to hear live testimony from Peitler in order to make an independent assessment of Peitler's credibility. It afforded Rosa the opportunity, which was declined, to call other witnesses. The court was not required to call the other witnesses who had testified at the first hearing; their testimony merely failed to support, and did not contradict, Peitler's testimony. Thus, the decision whether or not to credit the testimony of Peitler did not hinge on an assessment of the credibility of his fellow officers. 26 Nor are we persuaded by Rosa's challenges to the merits of the court's rulings. A district court's finding, after an evidentiary hearing, that a defendant had received his Miranda warnings prior to making statements must be upheld unless it is clearly erroneous. See, e.g., United States v. Isom, 588 F.2d 858, 862 (2d Cir.1978). The same standard applies to a finding that the defendant voluntarily consented to a search. See, e.g., United States v. Ramirez-Cifuentes, 682 F.2d 337, 344 (2d Cir.1982); United States v. Forero-Rincon, 626 F.2d 218, 224 (2d Cir.1980); United States v. Vasquez, 612 F.2d 1338, 1347 (2d Cir.1979), cert. denied, 447 U.S. 907, 100 S.Ct. 2991, 64 L.Ed.2d 857 (1980). Assessments of the credibility of witnesses are the province of the district court, and we are not entitled to overturn those assessments on appeal. See, e.g., United States v. Maldonado-Rivera, 922 F.2d 934, 972 (2d Cir.1990), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 2811, 115 L.Ed.2d 984 (1991). 27 Although we could not have overturned a decision by the district court to reject Peitler's testimony, we cannot second-guess its decision to credit that testimony. There was no testimony that was contradictory, either by Rosa, who did not testify at either hearing, or by Peitler's fellow officers who said they simply did not remember. Peitler's testimony, once credited, was sufficient to support the findings that Peitler advised Rosa of his Miranda rights and that Rosa voluntarily waived those rights and voluntarily consented to the entry and search of his home. 28