U.S. v. Czichray

Decision Date11 August 2004
Docket NumberNo. 03-3336.,03-3336.
Citation378 F.3d 822
PartiesUNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Michael S. CZICHRAY, Appellee.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, John R. Tunheim, J.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

John Richard Marti, argued, Asst. U.S. Attorney, Minneapolis, MN (Erica H. MacDonald, Asst. U.S. Attorney, Minneapolis, MN on the brief), for appellant.

Peter B. Wold, argued, Minneapolis, MN, for appellee.

Before WOLLMAN, MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, and COLLOTON, Circuit Judges.

COLLOTON, Circuit Judge.

The government appeals from an order of the district court suppressing a written statement that Dr. Michael Czichray, a chiropractor, signed at the conclusion of an interview with FBI agents. The district court determined that the statement should be suppressed because it was the product of custodial interrogation that was conducted without informing Czichray of his Miranda rights. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). We respectfully disagree, and we reverse.

I.

The district court, after receiving a report and recommendation from a magistrate judge, made extensive findings of fact concerning Czichray's encounter with the FBI, and the government does not assert on appeal that any of these findings were clearly erroneous. FBI agents Timothy Bisswurm and Sean Boylan went to Czichray's home the morning of February 16, 2001, to interview him regarding a health care fraud investigation. Prior to their arrival, the agents called Czichray at 4:30 a.m. to ensure that Czichray was home, stating they had the wrong number. At 6:30 a.m., the agents approached the home. When Czichray did not answer the door, Agent Boylan called Czichray by telephone and told him that he needed to come to the front door. When Czichray appeared, Boylan identified himself and Bisswurm as FBI agents and told Czichray they would like to speak with him for a few minutes. Boylan further informed Czichray that he need not speak with the agents. Although he was dressed in a t-shirt and boxer shorts, Czichray admitted the agents into his home, and the three men proceeded to the living room to discuss the investigation.

Over the course of the ensuing interview, which lasted nearly seven hours, Czichray was informed several times that his participation was voluntary, and that he was free to ask the agents to leave his home. About three hours into the interview, Czichray told the agents that he was late for work. The agents instructed Czichray to call in sick, and directed him not to inform his office about the investigation. Czichray complied. Although the telephone rang several times as the interview progressed, the agents instructed Czichray not to answer, and Czichray did not do so. When Czichray moved about his home on two occasions to go to the bathroom and his bedroom, Boylan accompanied him to check the rooms for telephones. During the interview, Czichray was told that if he did not cooperate, the agents would interview his 75-year-old father and others. The agents further told Czichray that they would "light up his world," and also suggested that if he did not cooperate, then they could use the power of the FBI to pressure insurance companies to withhold payments from his business.

Czichray did not resist the agents' questioning during the interview, and he never asked them to leave. At the conclusion of the meeting, Czichray signed a written statement (after making one correction and initialing each page) acknowledging that "no one has threatened, coerced or promised me anything." The written statement contained admissions that Czichray had knowingly caused insurance companies to reimburse at least one hundred false claims, and knowingly paid illegal fees to persons who referred new patients to Czichray's chiropractic clinic. There was no threat of arrest during the encounter, and the agents never displayed weapons. Czichray was not arrested until weeks later.

Czichray was charged in a twenty-seven count indictment with various crimes relating to an alleged health care billing fraud scheme. He brought a motion to suppress his signed statement. After concluding that Czichray was in custody and had not been given Miranda warnings, the district court granted the motion. In reviewing the district court's grant of Czichray's motion to suppress, we review its conclusions of law de novo, and its findings of fact for clear error. United States v Guevara-Martinez, 262 F.3d 751, 753 (8th Cir.2001).

II.

The ultimate question in determining whether a person is in "custody" for purposes of Miranda is "whether there is a formal arrest or restraint on freedom of movement of the degree associated with a formal arrest." California v. Beheler, 463 U.S. 1121, 1125, 103 S.Ct. 3517, 77 L.Ed.2d 1275 (1983) (internal quotation omitted). The "only relevant inquiry" in considering that question is how a reasonable person in Czichray's position would have understood his situation. Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 442, 104 S.Ct. 3138, 82 L.Ed.2d 317 (1984); see generally Yarborough v. Alvarado, ___ U.S. ___, ___-___, 124 S.Ct. 2140, 2147-50, 158 L.Ed.2d 938 (2004). In making that evaluation, we consider the totality of the circumstances that confronted the defendant at the time of questioning. United States v. Axsom, 289 F.3d 496, 500 (8th Cir.2002).

We have observed that "[t]he most obvious and effective means of demonstrating that a suspect has not been taken into custody... is for the police to inform the suspect that an arrest is not being made and that the suspect may terminate the interview at will." United States v. Griffin, 922 F.2d 1343, 1349 (8th Cir.1990) (internal quotation omitted). The FBI agents who interviewed Czichray exercised this "obvious and effective" means of demonstration in spades. Boylan and Bisswurm testified that they informed Czichray at least eight times that his participation in the interview was voluntary, and that he was free to ask the agents to leave his home. The magistrate judge recommended that "[g]iven this evidence, which is not controverted," the district court should find that Czichray was advised of his freedom to terminate the interview at will. (Add.114). The district court ultimately found that "[a]s the Magistrate Judge noted, it is clear from the record that the agents informed Czichray several times that he could refuse to speak with them, and that he could tell them to leave." (Add.23).

We believe that this abundant advice of freedom to terminate the encounter should not be treated merely as one equal factor in a multi-factor balancing test designed to discern whether a reasonable person would have understood himself to be in custody. That a person is told repeatedly that he is free to terminate an interview is powerful evidence that a reasonable person would have understood that he was free to terminate the interview. So powerful, indeed, that no governing precedent of the Supreme Court or this court, or any case from another court of appeals that can be located (save one decision of the Ninth Circuit decided under an outmoded standard of review, United States v. Lee, 699 F.2d 466, 467-68 (9th Cir.1982) (per curiam)), holds that a person was in custody after being clearly advised of his freedom to leave or terminate questioning.

The weighty inference that Czichray was not in custody after receiving such advice is strengthened further by the context in which the interview occurred — the living room of Czichray's home. When a person is questioned "on his own turf," United States v. Rorex, 737 F.2d 753, 756 (8th Cir.1984), we have observed repeatedly that the surroundings are "not indicative of the type of inherently coercive setting that normally accompanies a custodial interrogation." United States v. Helmel, 769 F.2d 1306, 1320 (8th Cir.1985); see also United States v. Wolk, 337 F.3d 997, 1007 (8th Cir.2003); Axsom, 289 F.3d at 502; United States v. Sutera, 933 F.2d 641, 647 (8th Cir.1991). Even our court's one brief suggestion to the contrary, see Griffin, 922 F.2d at 1355 n. 15, also cited Miranda itself for the "accepted logic" that "an interrogation in familiar surroundings such as one's home softens the hard aspects of police interrogation and moderates a suspect's sense of being held in custody."

In the Supreme Court's only decision involving whether Miranda applied to questioning of a suspect in a private home absent formal arrest, the Court concluded that the suspect "hardly found himself in the custodial situation described by the Miranda Court as the basis for its holding." Beckwith v. United States, 425 U.S. 341, 347, 96 S.Ct. 1612, 48 L.Ed.2d 1 (1976). Elaborating on the "custodial surroundings" described in Miranda, the Beckwith Court explained that "the principal psychological factor" of concern was "isolating the suspect in unfamiliar surroundings `for no purpose other than to subjugate the individual to the will of his examiner.'" 425 U.S. at 346 & n. 7, 96 S.Ct. 1612 (emphasis added) (quoting Miranda, 384 U.S. at 457, 86 S.Ct. 1602). The teaching of Beckwith, which involved a three-hour interrogation by two IRS agents in the dining room of a residence, was that such "noncustodial interrogation" might possibly in some situations lead to an involuntary confession inadmissible under the Fifth Amendment, id. at 347-48, 96 S.Ct. 1612, but that the prophylactic rule of Miranda was not applicable.

In reaching its conclusion that Czichray was nonetheless in custody, the district court relied on the presence of certain "coercive factors" identified in United States v. Griffin, 922 F.2d at 1349, which were said in Griffin to "aggravate the existence of custody." Id. In Griffin, while emphasizing that our list of considerations was "merely intended to be representative of those indicia...

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