U.S. v. Mashburn

• Citation: 406 F.3d 303
• Decision Date: 25 April 2005
• Docket Number: No. 03-4932.,03-4932.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Eric Kevin MASHBURN, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (4th Circuit)

406 F.3d 303

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Eric Kevin MASHBURN, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 03-4932.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: February 4, 2005.

Decided: April 25, 2005.

ARGUED: James B. Craven, III, Durham, North Carolina, for Appellant. Kearns Davis, Assistant United States Attorney, Office of the United States Attorney, Greensboro, North Carolina, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Anna Mills Wagoner, United States Attorney, Greensboro, North Carolina, for Appellee.

Before WILKINS, Chief Judge, and KING and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Chief Judge WILKINS wrote the opinion, in which Judge KING and Judge DUNCAN joined.

OPINION

WILKINS, Chief Judge:

Eric Kevin Mashburn appeals a decision of the district court denying his motion to suppress statements he made to police following his arrest for conspiracy to distribute, distribution of, and possession with the intent to distribute methamphetamine, see 21 U.S.C.A. §§ 841(a)(1), 846 (West 1999), as well as for possession of a firearm in connection with a drug trafficking offense, see 18 U.S.C.A. § 924(c)(1)(A) (West 2000). Mashburn argues that consideration of his statements by the district court at sentencing violated the Fifth Amendment. Finding no Fifth Amendment violation, we affirm.

I.

Federal agents, acting on information obtained through a controlled narcotics purchase, arrested Mashburn outside his home in Chatham County, North Carolina. When arrested, Mashburn was in possession of methamphetamine and a firearm. One of the agents placed Mashburn in handcuffs and held him outside his home for 10 to 15 minutes while several other agents executed a search warrant inside. Mashburn, still in handcuffs, was then brought into his home and seated on the couch in his living room.

One of the agents told Mashburn that he was facing 10 years in prison for the drug and firearm offenses and that "the only way that [he could] actually help [himself] in a federal system is, number one, by acceptance of responsibility, and number two is substantial assistance." J.A. 48. Mashburn then began to respond to the agents' questions. After "approximately two to three" questions, id. at 50, the agents realized that Mashburn had not yet been given the required Miranda warnings, see Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 479, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).¹ The agents immediately ceased questioning, and one of the agents retrieved a waiver-of-rights form from a patrol car. The agents informed Mashburn of his Miranda rights, Mashburn signed the waiver form, and the questioning resumed. To cover the material discussed before the Miranda warnings were given, the agents asked leading questions to which Mashburn responded "yes" or "no." In his postwarning statements, Mashburn detailed the extent of his involvement with drug trafficking, including the amounts and sources of his purchases.²

Mashburn pleaded guilty to possession with the intent to distribute and distribution of methamphetamine, as well as to possession of a firearm in connection with a drug trafficking offense. He moved to suppress consideration at sentencing of his statements made before and after he was warned of and waived his Miranda rights. After a hearing, the district court denied the motion to suppress and considered the substance of the postwarning statements at sentencing. Mashburn was sentenced to 168 months' imprisonment.³

II.

The Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment ensures that "[n]o person... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a wit-ness against himself." U.S. Const. amend. V. With "the advent of modern custodial police interrogation" there arose "an increased concern about confessions obtained by coercion" in violation of the guarantee against compelled self-incrimination. Dickerson v. United States, 530 U.S. 428, 434-35, 120 S.Ct. 2326, 147 L.Ed.2d 405 (2000). Recognizing that the pressure and isolation inherent in custodial interrogation could overcome the resilience of a suspect otherwise not inclined to incriminate himself, the Supreme Court in Miranda "conditioned the admissibility at trial of any custodial confession on warning a suspect of his rights: failure to give the prescribed warnings and obtain a waiver of rights before custodial questioning generally requires exclusion of any statements obtained." Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600, ___, 124 S.Ct. 2601, 2608, 159 L.Ed.2d 643 (2004) (plurality opinion). Statements obtained in violation of Miranda are admissible only in narrow circumstances. See Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. 298, 307, 105 S.Ct. 1285, 84 L.Ed.2d 222 (1985) (holding that statements obtained in violation of Miranda are irrebuttably presumed involuntary "for purposes of the prosecution's case in chief"); New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649, 655-57, 104 S.Ct. 2626, 81 L.Ed.2d 550 (1984) (establishing a narrow public-safety exception to Miranda); Harris v. New York, 401 U.S. 222, 226, 91 S.Ct. 643, 28 L.Ed.2d 1 (1971) (holding that voluntary statements obtained in violation of Miranda are admissible on cross-examination for purposes of impeachment).

Because Mashburn's initial statements preceded the administration and his voluntary waiver of Miranda rights, the parties agree that his initial statements are irrebuttably presumed involuntary. See Elstad, 470 U.S. at 307, 105 S.Ct. 1285. The issue presented here is whether those initial, unwarned statements rendered involuntary the statements Mashburn made after receiving and waiving Miranda rights. In reviewing the denial of Mashburn's motion to suppress, we must accept the factual findings of the district court unless clearly erroneous, but we review de novo the conclusion of the district court that Mashburn's postwarning statements were voluntary. See United States v. Braxton, 112 F.3d 777, 781 (4th Cir.1997) (en banc).

A.

In Elstad, the Supreme Court held that "[a] subsequent administration of Miranda warnings to a suspect who has given a voluntary but unwarned statement ordinarily should suffice to remove the conditions that precluded admission of the earlier statement." Elstad, 470 U.S. at 314, 105 S.Ct. 1285. There, police officers questioned Michael Elstad about an alleged burglary without first administering Miranda warnings. See id. at 301, 105 S.Ct. 1285. Seated in his living room, Elstad admitted to the officers that he was present when the burglary occurred. See id. The officers then took Elstad to police headquarters and, approximately one hour later, advised him of his Miranda rights. See id. After knowingly and voluntarily waiving those rights, Elstad gave a full confession. See id. At trial, Elstad moved to suppress his confession, arguing that his prior unwarned statement "let the cat out of the bag" and "tainted the subsequent confession as fruit of the poisonous tree." Id. at 302, 105 S.Ct. 1285 (internal quotation marks omitted). The trial court admitted the confession, but the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed. See id. at 302-03, 105 S.Ct. 1285. "Regardless of the absence of actual compulsion," the court of appeals explained, "the coercive impact of the unconstitutionally obtained statement remains, because in a defendant's mind it has sealed his fate." Id. at 303, 105 S.Ct. 1285 (internal quotation marks omitted).

After the Oregon Supreme Court denied further review, the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed. See id. at 303, 318, 105 S.Ct. 1285. The Court first rejected application of the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine— familiar from the Fourth Amendment context, see Taylor v. Alabama, 457 U.S. 687, 694, 102 S.Ct. 2664, 73 L.Ed.2d 314 (1982); Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 484-86, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963)—to voluntary, warned statements that come on the heels of unwarned but otherwise voluntary statements. See Elstad, 470 U.S. at 304-09, 105 S.Ct. 1285. Noting the "fundamental differences between the role of the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule and the function of Miranda in guarding against the prosecutorial use of compelled statements as prohibited by the Fifth Amendment," id. at 304, 105 S.Ct. 1285, the Court deemed it

an unwarranted extension of Miranda to hold that a simple failure to administer the warnings, unaccompanied by any actual coercion or other circumstances calculated to undermine the suspect's ability to exercise his free will, so taints the investigatory process that a subsequent voluntary and informed waiver is ineffective for some indeterminate period,

id. at 309, 105 S.Ct. 1285. Therefore, the Court ruled that "[t]hough Miranda requires that the unwarned admission must be suppressed, the admissibility of any subsequent [warned] statement should turn ... solely on whether it is knowingly and voluntarily made." Id.

The Court then rejected the "cat out of the bag" theory embraced by the state court. See id. at 309-14, 105 S.Ct. 1285. The Court first noted that even in extreme cases "in which police forced a full confession from the accused through unconscionable methods of interrogation, the Court has assumed that the coercive effect of the confession could, with time, be dissipated." Id. at 311-12, 105 S.Ct. 1285. The Court explained that "the causal connection between any psychological disadvantage created by [an earlier] admission and [the] ultimate decision to cooperate is speculative and attenuated at best." Id. at 313-14, 105 S.Ct. 1285. Therefore, the Court ruled that "absent deliberately coercive or improper tactics in obtaining the initial statement, the mere fact that a suspect has made an unwarned admission does not warrant a presumption of compulsion" as to any subsequent, warned statement. Id. at 314, 105 S.Ct. 1285.

B.

Last Term, in Seibert, the Court addressed the admissibility of statements obtained through a two-step police protocol: first, intentionally withholding Miranda warnings from a suspect, questioning the suspect until...