Opinion ID: 3014665
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Mirandized Statements

Text: Latz submits that the District Court erred in refusing to suppress his mirandized statements in the police car and at the booking center because these statements resulted from the initial umirandized interrogation by Kauffman. The Supreme Court recently considered a two-step interrogation process in Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600 (2004). In step one, officers questioned a suspect without giving Miranda warnings and obtained a confession; in step two, they obtained a second confession in a mirandized interrogation. Id. at 604. The Court held that 2 We do not address whether Staley’s full sweep of Latz’s house conducted after Kauffman’s initial entry violated the Fourth Amendment. Police officers did not discover any evidence during the full sweep, and thus the full sweep did not provide a basis for the subsequent search warrant. 16 statements obtained during the second interrogation are inadmissible if “the two step interrogation was used in a calculated way to undermine the Miranda warning.” Id. at 622 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment). Because only four Justices joined the opinion of the Supreme Court in Seibert, and because Justice Kennedy’s concurrence in the judgment is more narrow than the plurality opinion, Justice Kennedy’s opinion is the holding of the Court. United States v. Naranjo, 426 F.3d 221, 231-32 (3d Cir. 2005). Therefore, we inquire whether Kauffman’s failure to provide Miranda warnings was “a simple failure to administer the warnings rather than an intentional withholding that was part of a larger, nefarious plot.” Reinert v. Larkins, 379 F.3d 76, 91 (3d Cir. 2004). Kauffman testified that he asked Latz about weapons in the house due to officer safety concerns, and no evidence contradicts this testimony. Thus, Seibert does not apply because Kauffman did not deliberately attempt to circumvent Miranda. This does not end our inquiry. Although we see no evidence of a deliberate withholding of Miranda warnings under Seibert, we must still apply the traditional rule of Oregon v. Elstad, 17 470 U.S. 298 (1985). See Naranjo, 426 F.3d at 232 (“[U]nless the agents deliberately withheld warnings, Elstad controls [the defendant’s] Miranda claim.”). Under Elstad, “[a] subsequent administration of Miranda warnings to a suspect who has given a voluntary but unwarned statement ordinarily should suffice to remove the conditions that precluded admission of the earlier statement.” 470 U.S. at 314. To determine whether the subsequent Miranda warnings are sufficient, we must consider “who initiated the [initial] interrogation, the time that elapsed between the two interrogations, the extent to which the same police were involved in both interrogations, the manner in which the [initial] interrogation was conducted,” and any other relevant factors. United States v. Tyler, 164 F.3d 150, 158 (3d Cir. 1998) (footnote omitted). Considering all of these factors, we do not think that Elstad requires the suppression of either set of mirandized statements. As discussed above, Kauffman’s statements to Latz were sufficiently probing to constitute an interrogation. However, we glean from Kauffman’s testimony that he did not question Latz directly, but instead stated his concern about possible weapons in Latz’s home. 18 Furthermore, the unmirandized interrogation appears to have been brief. Less than fifteen minutes separated Kauffman’s unmirandized interrogation from the first mirandized interrogation (in Staley’s police car), but Kauffman was not in Staley’s car. Kauffman did participate in the second round of mirandized questioning (at the booking center), but this occurred at least three hours and twenty minutes after the unmirandized interrogation. Thus, we find that both sets of mirandized statements are admissible. Relying on Taylor v. Alabama, 457 U.S. 687 (1982), Latz also argues that District Court erred in refusing to suppress his mirandized statements because “they were inextricably intertwined with the illegal search.” Leaving aside the fact that Taylor addresses the taint of illegal arrests, as opposed to illegal searches, we see no connection between Latz’s mirandized statements and any illegal search. As discussed above, Kauffman’s initial entry into Latz’s home was not an illegal search. The full protective sweep may (or may not) have been illegal, but none of the items about which Latz were questioned were discovered during the sweep. Thus, the questioning and the sweep were not intertwined, 19 and the District Court did not err in refusing to suppress Latz’s mirandized statements. E. Application of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(a)(2) Finally, given our determination that the District Court erred in refusing to suppress Latz’s unmirandized statements but ruled correctly on the balance of the suppression motion, we must determine what becomes of Latz’s conditional plea. The plea is governed by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(a)(2), which provides: Conditional Plea. With the consent of the court and the government, a defendant may enter a conditional plea of guilty or nolo contendere, reserving in writing the right to have an appellate court review an adverse determination of a specified pretrial motion. A defendant who prevails on appeal may then withdraw the plea. The Rule makes it clear that when the Court of Appeals reverses the denial of a suppression motion in full, the defendant has the right to withdraw his plea. In such circumstances, the defendant has “prevail[ed] on appeal.” However, the Rule does not state whether a defendant can withdraw his plea if he persuades the Court of Appeals that the District Court erred in denying part of his motion to suppress. See United States v. 20 Leake, 95 F.3d 409, 420 (6th Cir. 1996) (“The question not addressed is the effect of a partially successful appeal.”). The Ninth Circuit has suggested that a defendant has the right to withdraw his plea when the Court of Appeals reverses any part of the denial of a suppression motion. “If any ruling that forms a basis for the conditional plea is found to be erroneous, we are required to permit the defendant to withdraw his plea.” United States v. Mejia, 69 F.3d 309, 316 n.8 (9th Cir. 1995). Meija, however, involved two suppression motions, both of which were critical to the defendant’s case. See id. at 311. In Leake, the Sixth Circuit held that the defendant had the right to withdraw his plea because the District Court had erroneously admitted “what appears to be the most damning evidence against him.” Leake, 95 F.3d at 420. The Court then stated: We do not mean to imply that every time a defendant manages to exclude any evidence on appeal following a conditional plea of guilty, he is entitled to withdraw his plea. The inquiry requires an examination of the degree of success and the probability that the excluded evidence would have had a material effect on the defendant’s decision to plead guilty. Id. at 420 n.21. 21 We agree with the Sixth Circuit that a defendant “prevails on appeal” only when he persuades the Court of Appeals to exclude a piece of evidence that is material to his case. Here, we have stated that the District Court erred in admitting Latz’s unmirandized statements regarding the rifle, the homemade knife, and the knives in the backpack. However, the District Court properly admitted the rifle, the explosive device, and Latz’s mirandized admissions that he owned the rifle and the explosive device. These were the very items that he was charged with possessing. Thus, Latz’s unmirandized statements were entirely cumulative, and not material. We therefore conclude that Latz has not “prevail[ed] on appeal” under Rule 11(a)(2), and he does not have the right to withdraw his plea. The judgment of the District Court will therefore be affirmed. 22 23