Court Opinion

ID: 9491428
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:13:53.821084+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:44.083082
License: Public Domain

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Peters, who turned records over to the IRS in an audit, wants to prevent their use in this criminal prosecution because, she insists, the IRS had “firm indications of fraud” on her part before or during the audit. She advances two propositions. The first is that acquisition of evidence must cease once the IRS acquires enough information to refer the case to a criminal prosecutor. The second is that “firm indications of fraud” are inconsistent with a representation that the audit is “civil”, rendering cooperation involuntary and the acquisition of documents a violation of the fourth amendment. (Peters also invokes the due process clause of the fifth amendment, but it is inapplicable to the seizure of evidence. Sacramento v. Lewis, — U.S. -, -, 118 S.Ct. 1708, 1715, 140 L.Ed.2d 1043 (1998); Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989). Cf. Fisher v. United States, 425 U.S. 391, 96 S.Ct. 1569, 48 L.Ed.2d 39 (1976) (no fifth amendment privilege in the contents of business records).) Although decisions can be found that accept both of these propositions, the first is antithetical to the fourth amendment and the second problematic.
Probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed is the constitutional requirement for a warrant; it is not an objection to a seizure. Why should a solid basis for believing that the suspect has committed a crime require the government to curtail its investigation? “Law enforcement officers are under no constitutional duty to call a halt to a criminal investigation the moment they have the minimum evidence to establish probable cause, a quantum of evidence which may fall far short of the amount necessary to support a criminal conviction.” Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293, 310, 87 S.Ct. 408, 17 L.Ed.2d 374 (1966). Peters relies heavily on statements in IRS publications that instruct auditors to hand cases over to their criminal counterparts when evidence begins to build — this is where the phrase “firm indications of fraud” comes from — but United States v. Caceres, 440 U.S. 741, 99 S.Ct. 1465, 59 L.Ed.2d 733 (1979), holds that the IRS’s violation of its own rules or procedures for conducting investigations does not justify use of the exclusionary rule. See also United States v. Mapp, 561 F.2d 685 (7th Cir.1977). What is more—and dispositive—is Beckwith v. United States, 425 U.S. 341, 96 S.Ct. 1612, 48 L.Ed.2d 1 (1976), which holds that so far as the Constitution is concerned revenue agents may interrogate and gather evidence from taxpayers who the IRS believes have engaged in criminal vfrongdoing.
Although the Constitution permits agents to keep gathering evidence long after they have “firm indications” of crime, Congress has blocked the use of one investigative tool. While “a Justice Department referral is in effect” it is not possible to enforce a summons for tax records. 26 U.S.C. § 7602(c)(1); United States v. Michaud, 907 F.2d 750 (7th Cir.1990) (en banc). This rule offers Peters no aid — first because the case was not “referred” to the Department of Justice until after the audit (see the definition of “referral” in § 7602(c)(2)), and second because a limitation on compulsory process does not imply a limitation on voluntary production. Agents are entitled to ask, however much (see Beckwith) or little (see Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 111 S.Ct. 2382, 115 L.Ed.2d 389 (1991)) evidence they possess. Taxpayers may find cooperation in their interests no matter how far along the road toward criminal prosecution the IRS has traveled; cooperation with auditors and prompt payment of civil penalties has staved off many a tax prosecution. So there is nothing to' Peters’ contention that “firm indications of fraud” oblige the IRS to stop *463inquiring and require the suppression of evidence voluntarily disclosed.
Was disclosure voluntary? If a revenue agent uses deceit to get a taxpayer to turn over documents that could not have been secured either by a summons under 26 U.S.C. § 7602(b) or by a search warrant, it might make sense to suppress the results in order to ensure that the statutory line is honored. But what role would “firm indications of fraud” play in such an inquiry? The statutory question is whether the case has been referred for criminal prosecution, not whether the IRS has “firm indications of fraud”. As for the constitutional standard: although the validity of consent obtained by overstating the weight of evidence in hand— making it look to the suspect like the jig is up, so there is no point in resisting — is questionable, why would understating the weight of existing evidence imperil voluntariness? A suspect who believes that the IRS lacks the evidence to commence a criminal prosecution, but who knows that records will furnish what the IRS needs,.has powerful reasons to withhold consent. If despite this the suspect provides tax records, it is hard to see how the decision could be called involuntary. Law enforcement agencies are understandably reluctant to tell suspects what evidence they have gathered (indeed, they do not have to provide this information even after prosecution has begun). How can reticence about the weight of evidence the government possesses overbear a suspect’s free will and prevent rational decision-making? That is the standard of voluntariness. Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U.S. 33, 117 S.Ct. 417, 136 L.Ed.2d 347 (1996); Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 93 S.Ct. 2041, 36 L.Ed.2d 854 (1973); Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534, 81 S.Ct. 735, 5 L.Ed.2d 760 (1961); United States v. Rutledge, 900 F.2d 1127, 1130-31 (7th Cir.1990). Peters knew that the IRS questioned the accuracy of information on her returns and that disclosure might either quell its doubts or reinforce them; she knew that she was entitled to withhold consent and force the IRS to use a summons, which she could resist in court; she had and used an opportunity to consult an accountant and could have consulted a lawyer as well. A person in Peters’ position can make a rational choice among known risks and opportunities, and the election therefore properly may be called voluntary. Schneckloth holds that a consent to search may be voluntary even when the suspect is unaware that he is entitled to refuse; Peters’ decision was much better informed than Bustamonte’s (or Robinette’s).
My colleagues opine that consent following an agent’s misstatement about the weight of existing evidence is involuntary. Several of our cases say that a suspect in a tax case cannot havé the evidence suppressed unless he shows, by clear and convincing evidence, that material misstatements of fact undercut the voluntariness of the consent to search. United States v. Serlin, 707 F.2d 953, 956 (7th Cir.1983); United States v. Lehman, 468 F.2d 93, 105 (7th Cir.1972); cf. United States v. Stern, 858 F.2d 1241, 1249 (7th Cir.1988). None of these holds, however, that agents’ deceit compels a finding of involuntariness, for in each ease the court held that the evidence was properly admitted. To hold that X, Y, and Z are necessary conditions of suppression is not to hold that they are sufficient. “[A]t least since Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, it cannot be said that ... deception [about the purpose of the investigation] is inherently incompatible with consent, for in Schneckloth the Court adopted the voluntariness test from the coerced confession cases, which has not been deemed to compel the exclusion of statements obtained by police misrepresentation of the crime under investigation.” Wayne R. LaFave, 3 Search and Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment § 8.2(n) at 710 (3d ed.1996) (footnotes omitted). A statement’s voluntariness is not undercut by the fact that the speaker was unaware that he was a target (unaware, that is, that the prosecutor had “firm indications” of his criminal conduct). See United States v. Washington, 431 U.S. 181, 188-90, 97 S.Ct. 1814, 52 L.Ed.2d 238 (1977); United States v. Mandujano, 425 U.S. 564, 96 S.Ct. 1768, 48 L.Ed.2d 212 (1976); cf. United States v. Wong, 431 U.S. 174, 97 S.Ct. 1823, 52 L.Ed.2d 231 (1977). If a misunderstanding of one’s status as a target — misunderstanding abetted by calculated silence and half-truths from agents and prosecutors — does not invariably make a statement involuntary, why should it make a disclosure of physical evidence involuntary?
*464Police engage in deceit all the time in order to induce suspects to reveal evidence. Think of the undercover officer posing as a buyer of drugs. Much evidence is properly acquired by concealing a person’s status as an agent of law enforcement. E.g., On Lee v. United States, 343 U.S. 747, 72 S.Ct. 967, 96 L.Ed. 1270 (1952); Hoffa, 385 U.S. at 300-03, 87 S.Ct. 408; Lewis v. United States, 385 U.S. 206, 87 S.Ct. 424, 17 L.Ed.2d 312 (1966); see also LaFave, Search and Seizure § 8.2(m). Deception plays an important and legitimate role in law enforcement. Even chicanery that creates the crime being prosecuted is constitutionally tolerable. See United States v. Murphy, 768 F.2d 1518, 1528-29 (7th Cir.1985). If dissimulation so successful that the suspect does not know that he is talking to an agent is compatible with volun-tariness, how could there be a rule that misdirection by a known agent always spoils consent? Professor LaFave is rightly puzzled by courts’ greater willingness to suppress evidence when agents who reveal their status give deceptive answers to inquiries about the purpose of the investigation than when agents he about their status as agents.
One of these days the Supreme Court will confront the tension between these lines of cases. Ah that matters today, however, is that lack of candor about the purpose of an investigation is no more fatal to a consent search than it is to a confession — and that in either case the court of first instance must take all of the circumstances into account. Any attempt to separate “firm indications of fraud” from “first indications of fraud” — the distinction my colleagues suggest — is a snipe hunt, for reasons developed in Hoffa and reiterated in Beckwith. Because voluntariness of a consent is a question of “fact” whose resolution by the trier of fact is subject to deferential appellate review, our role is limited. Robinette, 117 S.Ct. at 421; Schneckloth, 412 U.S. at 248-49, 93 S.Ct. 2041; United States v. Chi Fa Chan, 136 F.3d 1158 (7th Cir.1998); United States v. Sholola, 124 F.3d 803, 819 n. 16 (7th Cir.1997); United States v. Shelby, 121 F.3d 1118, 1120 (7th Cir.1997); United States v. Yusuff, 96 F.3d 982, 986 (7th Cir.1996); United States v. Stribling, 94 F.3d 321, 323-24 (7th Cir.1996). The district judge found that Peters’ consent was voluntary because the agents did not deceive her. That finding is not clearly erroneous. No more is necessary to resolve the appeal. If and when, in some future case, a judge concludes that agents prevaricated but that consent was nonetheless voluntary, our review should be equally deferential.