U.S. v. Kiam

Citation432 F.3d 524
Decision Date03 January 2006
Docket NumberNo. 05-1384.,05-1384.
PartiesUNITED STATES of America v. Long Tong KIAM Appellant.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

Patrick L. Meehan, Robert A. Zauzmer, Barry Gross (Argued), Office of the United States Attorney, Philadelphia, PA, for the Government.

Stephen J. Britt (Argued), Donnelly & Associates P.C., Conshohocken, PA, for Appellant.

Before RENDELL, FISHER, and VAN ANTWERPEN, Circuit Judges.

OPINION OF THE COURT

VAN ANTWERPEN, Circuit Judge.

Appellant Long Tong Kiam was convicted by a jury on November 3, 2004, of three counts of alien smuggling in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(2)(B)(iii). His conviction arose from his arrest at Philadelphia International Airport after bringing three Chinese nationals illegally into the country. On February 4, 2005, the District Court sentenced Kiam to five years imprisonment and two years of supervised release. This appeal stems from the District Court's denial of Kiam's motion to suppress a confession he gave to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent while being questioned at the airport. Kiam contends the confession was invalid under Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600, 124 S.Ct. 2601, 159 L.Ed.2d 643 (2004), because, although it was obtained after Miranda1 warnings were given, Kiam had already given inculpatory statements to another agent without the benefit of Miranda. We disagree and will affirm the District Court's denial of the motion to suppress.

I.

On April 27, 2004, Long Tong Kiam, a Singaporean citizen with a valid Singapore passport, arrived on a Frankfurt-Philadelphia flight at Philadelphia International Airport. He — along with three Chinese nationals who had been sitting together but apart from Kiam — was escorted by Customs and Border Protection inspectors to a secondary inspection area.2 In the previous week, Customs and Border Protection agents had uncovered several alien smuggling schemes whose characteristics matched those of Kiam and the Chinese nationals. Each of the Chinese nationals on Kiam's flight had presented Singaporean passports in Frankfurt, although they did not have passports with them in Philadelphia.

Kiam was first interrogated by Customs and Border Protection Senior Inspector Daniel Roman for about twenty five minutes. During the interrogation, Inspector Roman suspected Kiam of lying regarding: (1) whether he had recently traveled to Thailand, Turkey, and Europe, as reflected by his passport; and (2) whether he knew the three Chinese nationals on the airplane who had been traveling together. After Inspector Roman confronted Kiam with discrepancies based upon his passport entries and statements by the Chinese nationals, Kiam admitted that he knew the aliens, and was "illegally help[ing] them enter this country." United States v. Kiam, 343 F.Supp.2d 398, 401 (E.D.Pa.2004). Inspector Roman did not give Kiam Miranda warnings at any time during this interrogation.

Inspector Roman then contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which dispatched Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Richard Kozak to the airport. Inspector Roman did not further question Kiam. Upon arrival, Agent Kozak called a Chinese interpreter who determined that Kiam spoke many languages; Kiam indicated that he wished to speak in English. Agent Kozak then administered Miranda warnings, both in English and through the interpreter. Kiam waived these rights and filled out an official waiver form. Over the next three hours Agent Kozak interrogated Kiam about the smuggling scheme, and eventually Kiam described the alleged scheme's mastermind along with their past dealings and the current trip to America. Kiam then wrote down his confession and signed it with amendments. He was subsequently arrested.

Kiam was indicted by a federal grand jury on three counts of alien smuggling. In the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which had jurisdiction pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3231, Kiam sought to suppress the confession he had given to Agent Kozak on the ground that it was elicited through an unconstitutional two-round interrogation strategy which was designed to sidestep his Miranda protection. The District Court denied the motion to suppress on October 22, 2004, holding that while Inspector Roman should have given Kiam Miranda warnings during the first interrogation, any alleged taint from the pre-Miranda statement did not extend into the second, post-Miranda confession. On November 3, 2004, after the written confession was presented at trial along with the testimony of the three Chinese nationals Kiam allegedly smuggled into the country, Kiam was found guilty by a jury of all three counts of alien smuggling. On February 4, 2005, the District Court sentenced Kiam to 60 months imprisonment, a special assessment of $300, and 24 months of supervised release. Kiam now appeals the District Court's denial of his motion to suppress. We have jurisdiction over the appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

II.

Our review of the District Court's factual findings in a suppression hearing is for clear error. United States v. Naranjo, 426 F.3d 221, 226 (3d Cir.2005). Our review of legal rulings and mixed questions of law and fact is plenary. Id.

III.

We will address both elements of the District Court's decision not to suppress Kiam's second statement. First, we conclude that the District Court erred in holding that Kiam was entitled to Miranda warnings before he made his inculpatory statements to Inspector Roman. Second, however, we agree with the District Court's ultimate conclusion that regardless of whether the first statements were unwarned, these pre-Miranda statements did not taint the post-Miranda confession. Accordingly, whether or not the first statements required Miranda, the District Court properly denied the motion to suppress the second confession.

A. Initial Interrogation

The District Court first held that Inspector Roman should have administered Miranda warnings during the initial interrogation because the questioning went beyond "routine" admissibility inquiries, and that the failure to do so might have rendered his second confession inadmissible. Kiam, 343 F.Supp.2d at 406. The District Court found that both traditional triggering elements — custody and interrogation — were present. Id. at 403-04. The District Court acknowledged that customs officials are permitted to ask aliens stopped at the border questions without Miranda warnings. Id. at 406. However, the District Court concluded, the questions here went beyond merely "routine" immigration issues because Inspector Roman had a "particularized suspicion" that Kiam was involved in criminal conduct. Id.

This was error. For the reasons set forth below, we hold that Kiam was not entitled to Miranda warnings until the criminal investigator was called in because, inter alia, Inspector Roman's questions still had a bearing on Kiam's admissibility.

As the Supreme Court has emphasized repeatedly, the inquiry in Miranda cases is not into the officer's subjective intent, suspicion, or views. Stansbury v. California, 511 U.S. 318, 324, 114 S.Ct. 1526, 128 L.Ed.2d 293 (1994) (per curiam) ("It is well settled, then, that a police officer's subjective view that the individual under questioning is a suspect, if undisclosed, does not bear on the question whether the individual requires Miranda warnings"); see also Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412, 423, 106 S.Ct. 1135, 89 L.Ed.2d 410 (1986) ("[T]he state of mind of the police is irrelevant...."); Seibert, 124 S.Ct. at 2616 (O'Connor, J., dissenting) ("[T]he plurality correctly declines to focus its analysis on the subjective intent of the interrogating officer."). Moreover, the District Court cited no positive authority in this Circuit or otherwise — nor did Kiam — for the proposition that non-"routine" immigration questions implicate Miranda.3 Instead, the District Court's analysis involved cases, none of which come from this Court, which stated merely that "the fifth amendment guarantee against self-incrimination is not offended by routine questioning of those seeking entry to the United States." United States v. Moya, 74 F.3d 1117, 1119 (11th Cir.1996) (quoting United States v. Lueck, 678 F.2d 895, 899 (11th Cir.1982)).

While it appears that other courts have repeatedly upheld the authority of immigration inspectors to question aliens without Miranda, they have done so by forcing the non-analogous immigration context into normal Miranda jurisprudence and thereby avoiding the issue we address today. The District Court ruled as it did partly because these other courts spoke in the negative — "routine" immigration questions were not held to require Miranda, but no situation presented non-"routine" questions.

We recognize the facially-appealing nature of differentiating between "routine" and non-"routine" questions. However, an inspection of Circuit cases that apply this delineation shows that courts have gone to great pains to label almost all questioning "routine." In Moya, an immigration inspector asked an alien, in a secondary inspection area, pointed questions about past deportations after a computer system had previously confirmed the alien's earlier deportation. As in the present case, the Moya inspector questioned the alien about the exact elements of a crime, yet the Moya court deemed this simply "routine." 74 F.3d at 1119-20 (quoting older Eleventh and Fifth Circuit cases); see also United States v. Bengivenga, 845 F.2d 593, 599 (5th Cir.1988) (en banc) (admitting statements obtained through pre-Miranda questioning even after border agents' "activity shifted from a routine checkpoint stop aimed at detecting illegal aliens to an investigation of drug smuggling").

The Seventh Circuit confronted a situation virtually identical to the case at hand in United States v. Gupta, 183 F.3d 615 (7th Cir.1999). A suspected alien smuggler in secondary inspection...

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