Opinion ID: 1401670
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The District Court's Supplemental Findings

Text: Stewart argues as a general matter that in a custodial interrogation, a police officer's deferral of Miranda warnings until after the suspect makes an incriminating statement should always give rise to an inference of deliberateness. For support he cites the Ninth Circuit's decision in United States v. Williams, 435 F.3d 1148, 1160 (9th Cir.2006), but that case does not help him here. In Williams, the Ninth Circuit analyzed the split opinions in Seibert and observed that once a suspect is in custody and subjected to interrogation, there is rarely, if ever, a legitimate reason to delay giving a Miranda warning until after the suspect has confessed. 435 F.3d at 1159. Instead, the court noted, the most plausible reason for the delay is an illegitimate one, which is the interrogator's desire to weaken the warning's effectiveness. Id. The Ninth Circuit went on to hold, however, that [t]he court should consider any objective evidence or available expressions of subjective intent to determine whether the officer acted deliberately to undermine and obscure the warning's meaning and effect. Id. at 1160. Justice Kennedy's concurrence in Seibert suggested a number of plausible reasons why an officer might legitimately wait to deliver Miranda warnings, including that [a]n officer may not realize that a suspect is in custody and warnings are required. Seibert, 542 U.S. at 620, 124 S.Ct. 2601 (Kennedy, J., concurring). Indeed, that was the officer's explanation here, and the district court found it credible. Stewart attacks Nelson's testimony as inherently incredible. He argues that Nelson's explanation for deferring Miranda warningsthat he mistakenly believed Stewart was not in custody until he implicated Felders, with himself as an accompliceis simply unworthy of belief. But the task of defining custody is a slippery one, and policemen investigating serious crimes cannot realistically be expected to make no errors whatsoever. Elstad, 470 U.S. at 309, 105 S.Ct. 1285 (internal quotation marks & brackets omitted). The point at which a suspect is in custody is determined objectivelya suspect is in custody when a reasonable person in the suspect's circumstances would not have felt free to leave. United States v. Thompson, 496 F.3d 807, 810-11 (7th Cir.2007). The subjective belief of the officers involved is generally irrelevant. Stansbury v. California, 511 U.S. 318, 323-24, 114 S.Ct. 1526, 128 L.Ed.2d 293 (1994). In this context, however, Nelson's subjective belief about Stewart's custodial status is relevant to the evaluation of his reasons for deferring Miranda warnings. Although we held in Stewart I (and the parties agreed on appeal) that Stewart was in custody when Winters rehandcuffed him at the checkpoint and the detectives took him to the police station, the district court was entitled to credit Nelson's contrary, though mistaken, subjective belief. In this regard, Stewart also maintains the district court misinterpreted the import of his demand to take me downtown. He argues Nelson could not reasonably have believed this made his trip to the police station a voluntary encounter. When Stewart made this demand, however, he was not handcuffed and had himself suggested to Winters, Let's get in your car. In initially denying Stewart's suppression motion, the district court had concluded that Stewart was not in custody at the checkpoint. In Stewart I, we disagreed, but the court was entitled on remand to credit Nelson's explanation that he waited to give Miranda warnings because he mistakenly believed Stewart was accompanying the officers voluntarily. Stewart also attacks Nelson's failure to give Miranda warnings at an earlier point during the interrogation at the station houseimmediately after he incriminated himself as an accomplice to Felders. Nelson acknowledged that he knew, at this point, that the warnings were required, and Stewart suggests that the failure to immediately provide them suggests that they were deliberately withheld. The district court accepted Nelson's explanation that he failed to deliver the warnings at this point in the interrogation in his rush to get a BOL out on Felders and because of his subsequent encounter with the FBI agents in the hall. Nelson said: [W]hen I came back in the room, by that time the FBI was coming in the room, and they started talking to him. He also testified: When I came back in the room, of course, the agents came in and identified themselves, so I'm sure that had something to do with it, but it's still my error. Stewart's counsel suggested at oral argument that Nelson did not leave the interview room to get information out on Felders but instead to tell the arriving FBI agents that Stewart was about to break. Nothing in the record supports this assertion. Special Agent Williams testified that Detective Winters first came into the hall to inform him of the information on Felders; then Detective Larry Nelson exited the same interview room and came out and indicated thatbasically the same information that Detective Winters had indicated. Agent Williams testified that he and Special Agent Beck then went into the interview room to question Stewart along with Nelson, and at that point Stewart began to cry and admitted committing the robbery. This corroborates Nelson's explanation. The existence of a plausible alternative explanationthat Nelson deliberately withheld Miranda warnings because he wanted to capitalize on Stewart's weakened emotional state does not itself undermine the district court's credibility determination. The court did not clearly err in accepting Nelson's explanation for delaying the Miranda warnings. Stewart raises two additional challenges to the district court's deliberateness findings. First, he contends the district court applied an incorrect legal standard when it considered the degree of overlap between his pre- and post- Miranda confessions in analyzing whether the two-step interrogation method was deliberately employed. The district court noted that the content of the pre- and post- Miranda statements did not overlapStewart's pre-warning statement was limited to his admission that he committed the robbery alone, and his postwarning statement was not just a repetition of the first but contained far more detail. For the Seibert plurality, the degree of overlap between pre- and post- Miranda statements bears upon the question whether  Miranda warnings delivered midstream could be effective enough to accomplish their object. Seibert, 542 U.S. at 615, 124 S.Ct. 2601. For Justice Kennedy, an inquiry into the differences in time and circumstances between the first and second statement is necessary only when the interrogating officer uses a deliberate two-step strategy, predicated upon violating Miranda during an extended interview. Id. at 621, 124 S.Ct. 2601 (Kennedy, J., concurring). If the deliberate two-step strategy has been used, postwarning statements that are related to the substance of prewarning statements must be excluded unless curative measures are taken before the postwarning statement is made. Id. at 622, 124 S.Ct. 2601. Justice Kennedy suggested that a substantial break in time and circumstances between the two statements may suffice as adequate curative measures in most circumstances. Id. Here, the district court cited the relative lack of overlap between Stewart's pre- and post- Miranda statements as objective evidence that Detective Nelson had not deliberately used a two-step interrogation strategy not as in the Seibert plurality, as a measure of the effectiveness of midstream Miranda warnings or, as in Justice Kennedy's concurrence, to evaluate whether sufficient curative measures were proven. Nevertheless, the district court's approach was not error. The Seibert plurality noted that the point of using a two-step process is that with one confession in hand before the warnings, the interrogator can count on getting its duplicate, with trifling additional trouble. Id. at 613, 124 S.Ct. 2601. Conversely, the lack of overlap between the warned and unwarned statements is evidence that the interrogator did not deliberately use a two-step strategy designed to circumvent Miranda. Stewart also argues the district court's failure to consider Detective Winters's reasons for omitting Miranda warnings was error. We disagree. The court's factual findings establish that Nelson was the lead detective and that Winters's involvement in the actual interrogation was collateral. Nelson confronted Stewart with information about the cell phone found at the scene. Nelson questioned Stewart during the short ride to the police station and initially in the interrogation room. After Winters left the interrogation room, Nelson asked the question that elicited Stewart's initial admission to committing the robbery alone, and Nelson subsequently advised Stewart of his rights and obtained a Miranda waiver. Under cross-examination by Stewart's counsel, Winters testified explicitly that Detective Nelson was the lead investigator on this. The determination of whether a question-first strategy was deliberately used does not require an inquiry into the state of mind of every officer involved in the interrogation. It is enough here that the district court credited Detective Nelson's reasons for omitting Miranda warnings. He was the lead investigator and was responsible for the bulk of the interrogation. That Detective Winters played only a supportive role in the interrogation is borne out by the record; the absence of any inquiry into his reasons for omitting Miranda warnings does not undermine the district court's acceptance of Nelson's explanation.