Court Opinion

ID: 9483855
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:33:06.168173+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:52.153520
License: Public Domain

KELLEHER, Senior District Judge,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent.
As the majority notes, Henley failed to bring his motion to suppress 1 in compliance with Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12(b)(3). Rule 12(b)(3) requires in simple, direct language that motions to suppress evidence be raised prior to trial. Henley first brought his motion to suppress his admission that he owned the automobile in the midst of the trial.
The majority speculates vaguely that “the government may have been unfairly prejudiced by the way the defendant raised this issue below.” Opinion at 1044. I think it self evident that the government was so prejudiced. The government asserted at oral argument that had it been given timely notice of the objection to Henley’s statement of ownership it could have provided other evidence of Henley’s ownership of the ear. In other words, had the government been put on timely notice, as it must be under Rule 12(b)(3), it would have obtained and placed in evidence a certificate of title. To allow Henley to escape conviction as a reward for the ploy of misleading the government is to encourage more of the same by defense lawyers in criminal cases.
The majority, perhaps insinuating sloth on the government’s part, mentions other proof of ownership the government could have presented, such as a certificate of title, Department of Motor Vehicles (“DMV”) registration form, or testimony. Id. at 1044. This glib reference to the availability of other forms of evidence does the government a disservice. Despite the *1046simplicity of obtaining a certificate of title, from the DMV, it takes time. Bureaucracy being what it is, a week or longer is required to obtain a certificate of title sufficiently authenticated to be received in evidence.
The notion that midway through the course of a criminal jury trial the district court could just continue the trial for a week is naive at best. Sending an impaneled jury off to bide its time for a week while evidence is obtained presents a scenario rife with potential problems. However, had the defendant tipped his hand before the trial, as Rule 12(b)(3) requires, the evidence would have been readily and timely available.2 Indeed, the very purpose of the Rule is to prevent what happened here.3
The majority appears to fault the government for neither objecting to holding the suppression hearing in the middle of trial nor seeking a continuance in order to obtain more evidence. The majority apparently considers the government to have exhibited poor judgment by accepting its victory in the suppression hearing and proceeding with the remainder of the trial. My colleagues stress that the government knew Henley’s statement was “put in doubt” by the motion to suppress. Opinion at 1045. They seem to find it remarkable that the government “nonetheless chose to rely on the statement ...,” id., commenting that it did so at its own peril, id.
This depiction seems to cast the government’s common sense course of conduct in an exceedingly uncharitable light. To begin with, the government prevailed on the motion to suppress. In addition, my reading of the record reveals nothing to undermine the veracity of Henley’s statement that he owned the car at the time he was arrested. That fact appears to be beyond dispute.
Given the facts that Henley’s ownership of the car appears to be an indisputable fact and that the district court denied Henley’s motion to suppress, the most sensible course for the government to have taken is the one it took. Henley’s statement had been ruled admissible. Its introduction in evidence clearly was the most efficient way to establish on the record the fact of Henley’s ownership. To expect the government to insist on an apparently unnecessary continuance in order to obtain another form of evidence for the purpose of buttressing the establishment of an evidently incontrovertible fact is unrealistic.
I find most difficult to accept the majority’s characterization of its decision to reverse the district court as a form of deference to the district court’s discretion. Responding to this dissent, the majority interprets the district court’s decision to hold the midtrial suppression hearing as being “based on an implicit finding” that Henley’s extremely dilatory bringing of his motion to suppress involved no strategy. Id. at 1045 n. 4. The majority bases this assumption on defense counsel’s patently un-creditable claim that he had no idea the government might use Henley’s admission of ownership of the car. Id. at 1045 n. 4. Assuming this supposed implicit finding as the basis for the district court’s decision to hold the suppression hearing, the majority opines “it is unthinkable that we would hold that the court abused its discretion.” Id. at 1045 n. 4.
I am unpersuaded that the majority has correctly divined the reasoning or supposed *1047“implicit” finding underlying the district court’s decision to hear Henley’s motion to suppress in the middle of trial. It seems at least equally plausible to suppose that the district court reserved its judgment as to whether defense counsel had shown sufficient cause to justify its delay in bringing the motion, and allowed the impromptu hearing to go forward in order to understand more fully what there might be to Henley’s position vis á vis his admission of ownership — both in terms of his substantive objection to the admission’s introduction in evidence and the credibility of defense counsel’s representation that he had no reason to anticipate the government’s use of Henley’s admission.
It seems reasonable for the government not to have objected to the midtrial hearing because, quite properly, Henley’s motion was regarded as unmeritorious. Indeed, the government’s confidence was justified — the motion was denied.
Correction of the sole error on which the majority predicates its ruling cannot alter the outcome in this case. Rather, by reversing the jury’s verdict below, the majority merely requires the government and court system to spend their already inadequate time and funds on the retrial of an indisputably guilty felon. Therefore, I dissent.

. The evidence Henley moved to suppress is his statement that he owned the automobile in which were found the baseball cap, sunglasses, and gun used in the bank robbery for which he was convicted. The district court’s admission of this statement is the error upon which Henley’s appeal is predicated.

. At oral argument, the government represented that had it been notified in a timely fashion that it could not rely on Henley's statement, it would have been able to provide other evidence linking the car to Henley. On the record before us, there does not appear to be any doubt regarding the veracity of Henley’s admission that the car was his. Thus, there is no reason to doubt the government’s claim that, given adequate time, it could have obtained and produced other admissible evidence establishing Henley's ownership of the car.

. ”[S]ubdivision (b)(3) makes clear that objections to evidence on the ground that it was illegally obtained must be raised prior to trial." Fed.R.Crim.P. 12, Notes of the Advisory Committee on Rules, 1974 Amendment. The Advisory Committee made clear that the provision of Rule 12(b)(3) was both modeled on and adopted to address the same concerns as Rule 41(e), namely "to eliminate from the trial disputes over police conduct not immediately relevant to the question of guilt.’’ Id. (quoting Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 264, 80 S.Ct. 725, 732, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960)).