Court Opinion

ID: 9462649
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:46:35.470514+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:42.152155
License: Public Domain

CHAMBERS, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
I concur. I reach the result this way.
It is stipulated, when placed in the car, Casimiro-Benitez was in custody. (One may doubt it, but we must accept the stipulation.) I have no trouble with the officers placing the appellant under restraint. There is little reason to doubt the defendant (and his companions), crouching behind a wall at 4:30 a. m. near the Toreador, had committed some crime or were in the process of committing one. The chance for error on this guess would be less than one in a thousand.
The officers, therefore, had a right to find out who Casimiro-Benitez was. Of course, the officers at the beginning should have given him a Miranda warning. But at that point, they had a right to immediately take Casimiro-Benitez away and fingerprint him. That would have unraveled the whole thing. Surely the failure to give a Miranda warning didn’t grow a poisoned tree that entitled the defendant to be permanently acquitted or to remain in the country.
We could reverse and the government could prove its case by official records, plus the testimony of the officers as to where they found Casimiro-Benitez. Thus, I do believe that the Miranda error was harmless.