Court Opinion

ID: 9378160
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-03-09 18:00:44.524979+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:17:19.244376
License: Public Domain

NOT FOR PUBLICATION                           FILED
                    UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                        MAR 9 2023
                                                                      MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
                                                                       U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
                           FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,                       No.    18-50393

                Plaintiff-Appellee,             D.C. No.
                                                3:11-cr-00671-WQH-1
 v.

MICHAEL CAREY, AKA Garrocha,                    MEMORANDUM*

                Defendant-Appellant.

                   Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Southern District of California
                   William Q. Hayes, District Judge, Presiding

                     Argued and Submitted February 15, 2023
                              Pasadena, California

Before: WALLACE, HURWITZ, and BADE, Circuit Judges.

      After Michael Carey was indicted for conspiracy to distribute cocaine, he

moved to suppress evidence obtained by federal agents, claiming that the evidence

was the fruit of a wiretap targeting a different drug-trafficking conspiracy (the

“Escamilla conspiracy”). The district court denied the motion to suppress, and Carey

pleaded guilty, reserving the right to challenge the district court’s order on appeal.

      *
             This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
We vacated the suppression order and remanded for further proceedings because

“[t]he record does not indicate what evidence was obtained before the agents knew

or should have known they were listening to calls outside of the Escamilla

conspiracy.” United States v. Carey, 836 F.3d 1092, 1098 (9th Cir. 2016). On

remand, the district court held an evidentiary hearing and found that the critical

wiretap evidence was obtained before agents knew or should have known that they

were listening to calls outside the targeted conspiracy, and the district court denied

the motion to suppress. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 over Carey’s

appeal from that ruling and affirm.

      1. As a preliminary matter, we reject the government’s argument that the plea

agreement waived some of the issues Carey now raises on appeal. The agreement

reserved Carey’s right to “appeal the district court’s ruling . . . denying his motion

to suppress the wiretap.” Each issue raised in this appeal attacks the denial of the

suppression motion.

      2. Regardless of the standard of review employed, the district court did not

err in finding that there were “no interceptions on the T-14 line after any agent knew

or should have known that the phone calls on the T-14 line could involve callers

outside the scope of the Escamilla conspiracy.” Finding the testimony of the federal

investigators “entirely consistent and credible,” the court credited their statements

that the relevant intercepted calls involved the same activity expected from members

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of the Escamilla conspiracy. The court also found credible the investigators’

testimony that a five-day gap between initiation of the T-14 wiretap and the first

intercepted conversation was not unusual and that not all Escamilla conspirators

discarded their phones every twenty days. And although the first call intercepted

under the wiretap order was in English—which Ignacio Escamilla had not previously

used when talking to a government informant—the investigators declared that all

other calls intercepted thereafter were in Spanish. Because the intercepted calls

discussed a similar drug-trafficking operation, the investigators reasonably believed

they “had found a previously undiscovered aspect of our subjects’ drug trafficking

activities,” not an unrelated conspiracy.

      Carey asserts that the federal investigators should have used border-crossing

information to identify him and his co-conspirators, then discovered an ongoing

Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation into them, and then

determined that the calls related to a distinct conspiracy. The seizure of the evidence

occurred only one week after the first intercepted call, and the record does not show

that the information Carey cites was readily accessible to the investigators or that

protocol reasonably required them to query multiple databases during that brief

period.

      3. We also reject Carey’s argument that he had a reasonable expectation of

privacy in using T-14 during the relevant period. Under the “plain hearing” doctrine,

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the “government may use evidence obtained from a valid wiretap prior to the

officers’ discovery of a factual mistake that causes or should cause them to realize

that they are listening to phone calls erroneously included within the terms of the

wiretap order.” Carey, 836 F.3d at 1098 (cleaned up).

      4. Carey argues for the first time on appeal that investigators’ declarations

and testimony were perjurious. But there “can virtually never be clear error,” let

alone plain error, if a district court credits the testimony of a witness who “has told

a coherent and facially plausible story that is not contradicted by extrinsic evidence.”

Earp v. Davis, 881 F.3d 1135, 1145–46 (9th Cir. 2018) (cleaned up). Carey also

asserts that the government improperly withheld “signal intelligence,” but has not

shown that any such information either exists or “would have changed the result of

the proceeding.” United States v. Zuno-Arce, 44 F.3d 1420, 1425 (9th Cir. 1995)

(cleaned up).

      5. Citing a statement in United States v. Rodriguez that a “different district

court judge must decide any motion to suppress wiretap evidence, creating a second

level of review in the district court,” 851 F.3d 931, 937 (9th Cir. 2017), Carey argues

for the first time on appeal that the judge who authorized the T-14 wiretap should

not have considered the motion to suppress. But Carey’s motion to suppress did not

require the issuing judge to engage in a second level of review of his own wiretap

authorization because Carey did not attack the validity of the wiretap in the district

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court following remand. Rather, the sole issue concerned information obtained after

the issuance of the order.

      6. Carey also challenges the district court’s rejection of his request to replace

retained counsel with appointed counsel. Reviewing for abuse of discretion, see

United States v. Rivera-Corona, 618 F.3d 976, 978 (9th Cir. 2010), we find none.

The district court rejected Carey’s informal pro per motion for substitution of

counsel as improperly formatted but did not preclude the refiling of a properly

formatted motion. Carey never refiled, and the district court did not abuse its

discretion in failing to sua sponte grant the request, particularly given the need to

control its docket in light of an imminent deadline for briefing on the motion to

suppress. See United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. 140, 152 (2006) (stating

that a district court has “wide latitude in balancing the right to counsel of choice

against the needs of fairness and against the demands of its calendar” (cleaned up)).

      7. Carey argues that the district court abused its discretion in denying

discovery of various recorded calls, investigative material, and grand jury

transcripts. Carey, however, has failed to show how the discovery was “material to

preparing the defense.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 16(a)(1)(E). The additional material would

not have been relevant to the investigators’ belief that they were intercepting

Escamilla conspiracy calls before the seizure.

      8. For the first time on appeal, Carey argues that the affidavit submitted in

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support of the wiretap application contained intentionally false or misleading

statements and that intercepts were extraterritorial. Even assuming these arguments

are not waived under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12(c)(3) and are “thus

reviewed for plain error,” United States v. Mongol Nation, 56 F.4th 1244, 1252 (9th

Cir. 2023), the arguments fail. Carey made no “substantial preliminary showing” of

a “false statement” or that investigators acted “knowingly and intentionally, or with

reckless disregard for the truth.” Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 155–56 (1978).

Nor has he demonstrated interception of relevant calls outside of the territorial

jurisdiction of the district court, 18 U.S.C. § 2518(3), which includes both “where

the tapped phone is located and where law enforcement officers first overhear the

call,” United States v. Luong, 471 F.3d 1107, 1109 (9th Cir. 2006).1

      AFFIRMED.

1
     The government’s motion to strike, Dkt. 82, is denied. Carey’s motion to
compel delivery of mail, Dkt. 61, is denied.

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