Opinion ID: 2995473
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Guadalupe’s Claims

Text: We first address Guadalupe’s challenge to the district court’s decision to forego an evidentiary hearing before denying the motion to suppress. We review this determination for clear error, reversing only if we are left with a definite and firm conviction that an error has occurred. United States v. Rodriguez, 69 F.3d 136, 140 (7th Cir. 1995). Upon examination of the record, we cannot say that the district court committed clear error in concluding that a hearing was unnecessary. It was Guadalupe’s burden to establish the necessity of a hearing by demonstrating that there was a disputed material issue of fact justifying relief. United States v. Randle, 966 F.2d 1209, 1212 (7th Cir. 1992). For the most part, Guadalupe’s motion simply recited the facts contained in the DEA agent’s affidavit supporting the criminal complaint. Contrary to the government’s assertions, there was one potential area of dispute. DEA Agent Freyberger’s affidavit stated that Guadalupe gave his consent to search the van while agents were questioning him in the residential neighborhood. Guadalupe’s motion had a different version of the timing: he claimed that he signed the consent to search form after he returned to the McDonald’s parking lot and saw the agents trying to open his van with a slim jim. This dispute would have been material, however, only if Guadalupe had argued that seeing the slim jim procedure somehow made his subsequent consent involuntary. But Guadalupe made no such argument in his motion, and it is not up to us to construct something along these lines for him. (This holding is reinforced by Guadalupe’s appellate counsel’s statement in his brief that [d]efendant’s motion assumed as correct the facts averred in the [government’s] Affidavit in Support of Criminal Complaint for purposes of arguing that those facts . . . do not constitute probable cause. Br. at 6, 13-14.) Guadalupe also suggests that when he was forcibly brought back from the neighborhood to the van, the investigatory stop became an arrest for which probable cause was required. He maintains that a hearing was necessary to determine whether the encounter was either an arrest or merely a Terry stop. The problem with this argument is that it comes too late in the day. Nowhere in his motion to suppress did Guadalupe mention to the district court that the DEA agents used force when detaining him. Indeed, even in his brief to this court, Guadalupe did not describe the method by which he was brought back to the van. Although a careful look at the record reveals that Guadalupe mentioned at the plea hearing that the police handcuffed him and then brought him back in a police cruiser, he never focused on those facts as a ground for granting his suppression motion. Neither the district court nor this court is required to dig through the record to construct arguments a litigant has not made. Guadalupe’s repeated failure to clarify what specific force distinguished his case from other Terry stops amounts to a forfeiture of any possible argument he might have made based on those facts. His lack of attention to this point also means that the district court did not err in refusing to hold a hearing on the question of the degree of force used. Given the state of this record, we express no view on the question whether the exercise of control over his freedom of movement employed by the police here was enough to escalate the stop from a Terry stop to a full-blown arrest.
The district court found that the agents’ stop of Guadalupe in the neighborhood was a Terry investigatory stop supported by a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. We review this determination de novo, although we review findings of historical fact for clear error and give due weight to inferences drawn from those facts by district judges and local law enforcement officers. See Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, 699 (1996). We see no clear error in the underlying facts the district court found, and on the basis of that record, we conclude that the agents’ questioning of Guadalupe in the residential neighborhood qualified as at most an investigatory stop. Indeed, initially the agents were not even detaining him forcibly. They had not patted him down; they were simply questioning him about his identity and his whereabouts that day. To the extent that there was an investigatory stop, it was justified by a reasonable suspicion that drug trafficking was either about to happen or had already happened. Guadalupe had been observed in known drug- trafficking locations using pay phones. Earlier, the agents had found a large amount of cash and weapons in his apartment. On the day of the encounter, Guadalupe drove a van to a restaurant parking lot but then let someone else drive it, only to have it returned a few minutes later. Guadalupe then left the van behind after deliberately leaving the keys on the ground in the parking lot. These circumstances, taken as a whole, were enough to arouse the suspicions of reasonable DEA agents and to justify the detention as a Terry stop.
Guadalupe also contends that he did not voluntarily consent to the search of the van. Thus, he claims, all of the evidence found in the van was the result of an illegal search. Had the consent to search the van been made in the midst of an illegal arrest, it may very well have been invalid as fruit of the poisonous tree. See United States v. Sanchez- Jaramillo, 637 F.2d 1094, 1099-1100 (7th Cir. 1980) (excluding evidence found after consent given during illegal arrest). But if the investigatory stop was justified, as we have concluded this one was, we examine the consent only to see if it was the product of an essentially free and unconstrained choice. . . . Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 225 (1973). Guadalupe has offered nothing to support a finding of involuntariness. The consent form was written in Spanish, Guadalupe’s native language, and he signed it. He makes no argument that he was threatened or otherwise coerced into giving the consent. The fact that he was being questioned by police at the time is no basis for establishing involuntariness. See United States v. Cipriano, 765 F.2d 610, 612 (7th Cir. 1985) ([T]here is nothing inherently coercive in an officer’s identification of himself as a law enforcement agent and subsequent questioning.) Looking at the totality of the circumstances, see Schneckloth, 412 U.S. at 227, Guadalupe has not shown that his consent was given unknowingly or involuntarily.
Guadalupe also argues that any statements he made should be suppressed because the agents violated his rights under the Vienna Convention in failing to notify him that he had the right, as a Mexican citizen, to communicate with the Mexican consulate. He asserts that had he been informed of his right, he would not have given the incriminating statements. Although the district court judge found that the notice requirements of the Convention were not met, the judge found that exclusion was not proper because Guadalupe had not shown that he was prejudiced by the violation of the Convention. The district court decided this issue without the benefit of United States v. Lawal, 231 F.3d 1045 (7th Cir. 2000), in which this court held that exclusion of evidence was not the proper remedy for violation of a defendant’s consular access rights under the Vienna Convention. See also United States v. Carrillo, 269 F.3d 761 (7th Cir. 2001); United States v. Chaparro-Alcantara, 226 F.3d 616, 624-25 (7th Cir. 2000). Although he acknowledged Lawal, Guadalupe has asked for exclusion anyway, in the hope that the Supreme Court would overturn Lawal. However, the Supreme Court has since denied certiorari in Lawal, 121 S.Ct. 1165 (2001). We too are not inclined to revisit the issue, and thus even if the Convention was violated, the district court correctly refused to suppress evidence on that ground.