Court Opinion

ID: 9461565
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:17:46.108314+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:08.011478
License: Public Domain

GEE, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
While appellant was in custody on a state charge an immigration officer routinely asked him his nationality. Mexico, he answered responsively, and added, not responsively, that he was in the United States illegally. Appellant claims the information that he was in the United States illegally, obtained from him without his having been given Miranda warnings, was employed to locate the INS file on him, and that the file is therefore to be seen as “fruit of the poisonous tree.” The evidence of appellant’s response was not introduced at trial but portions of the file were.
Though I am in general agreement with the majority opinion, I would decide no more than that since the information that appellant was in the country illegally was volunteered Miranda is inapplicable. Bishop v. Wainwright, 511 F.2d 664 (5th Cir.) [1975]; cf. United States v. McDaniel, 463 F.2d 129 (CA5 1972); United States v. LaMonica, 472 F.2d 580 (CA9 1972). And while I agree with the majority’s resolution of the Wong Sun problem, I am doubtful that one is presented. As we recently noted en banc, United States v. Castellana, 500 F.2d 325, 327 n. 7 (5th Cir. 1974), the Supreme Court has never extended Miranda to the fruit of in-custody interrogations made without requisite warnings. I see no present trend to expand Miranda; rather, if anything, the contrary. See Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U.S. 433, 94 S.Ct. 2357, 41 L.Ed.2d 182 (1974).