United States v. Smith

• Decision Date: 29 April 2016
• Docket Number: No. 13–15476.,13–15476.
• Citation: 821 F.3d 1293
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Michael SMITH, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

821 F.3d 1293

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee

v.Michael SMITH, Defendant–Appellant.

No. 13–15476.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

April 29, 2016.

Erin Aslan, Christine A. Monta, Lisa J. Stark, Mark L. Gross, Patricia Ann Sumner, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC, Jerusha T. Adams, George L. Beck, Jr., U.S. Attorney's Office, Montgomery, AL, for Plaintiff–Appellee.

Patricia Vanessa Kemp, Christine A. Freeman, Stephen Ganter, Laronda Renee Martin, Federal Defender Program, Inc., Montgomery, AL, for Defendant–Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.

Before JORDAN and JULIE CARNES, Circuit Judges, and ROBREÑO,^* District Judge.

JORDAN

, Circuit Judge:

Under Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U.S. 493, 87 S.Ct. 616, 17 L.Ed.2d 562 (1967)

, “a public employee may not be coerced into surrendering his Fifth Amendment privilege by threat of being fired or subjected to other sanctions.” United States v. Vangates, 287 F.3d 1315, 1320 (11th Cir.2002). So, if a state threatens an employee with termination unless he provides a statement in the course of an internal investigation, it may not use that statement against the employee in any criminal proceeding or prosecution. See

id. at 1320–21.

The main question we address today, one of first impression, is whether a state employee can, after he has been fired, waive his Garrity rights and allow his prior compelled and protected statements to be used by the federal government in a criminal investigation. Our answer is that Garrity rights may be waived in such circumstances, as long as the employee's waiver is voluntary, knowing, and intelligent. And because we conclude that Michael Smith voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently waived his Garrity rights when he spoke to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation following his termination by the Alabama Department of Corrections, we hold that the government did not violate the Fifth Amendment when it used his prior statements in a federal criminal investigation concerning the beating and death of an inmate. We therefore affirm Mr. Smith's convictions for violating civil rights, making false statements, obstructing justice, and conspiring to obstruct justice. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 242

, 1001, 1512(b)(3), 1512(k), & 1519.

I

We begin with the events leading to the 2010 death of Rocrast Mack, an inmate at the Ventress Correctional Facility. We set out the facts in the light most favorable to the government, see, e.g., United States v. Browne, 505 F.3d 1229, 1253 (11th Cir.2007)

, and then chronicle what transpired afterwards.

A

Mr. Smith worked as a lieutenant at Ventress, a state prison in Alabama. Though built for 650 inmates, Ventress housed over 1600 prisoners at the time of trial. The federal charges against Mr. Smith were based on his involvement in the beating and death of Mr. Mack, and his subsequent attempts to cover up his conduct.

On August 4, 2010, at around 7:30 p.m., Mr. Mack got into a physical altercation with Officer Melissa Brown after she found him masturbating in his bunk at Ventress' D Dorm. During the fight, Officer Brown and Mr. Mack hit each other with their fists. Officer Brown also struck Mr. Mack with her baton several times, and at one point, Mr. Mack took the baton away from her. Officer John Nolin tried to intervene, but by that point Mr. Mack had left his cell and gone out to the lobby of D Dorm. Nearby inmates were watching the scuffle.

Officer Brown called for help on her radio. Mr. Smith, who was the shift commander at the time, mistakenly thought that the incident was taking place elsewhere, and did not immediately go to D Dorm. Several other officers, however, responded to D Dorm. Those officers surrounded Mr. Mack and began kicking and punching him. As the officers were trying to handcuff him, Mr. Mack somehow escaped. Officer Nolin thought he heard Mr. Smith say over the radio “y'all better be beating that motherfucker when I get there,” and “we're going to kill that motherfucker.”

When Mr. Smith finally reached Officer Brown, she had blood on her mouth and uniform, some of her fingernails were broken or missing, and her hair was in disarray. Mr. Smith told her, “don't worry about it, we're going to kill that motherfucker.”

Once he got to E Dorm, Mr. Mack raised his arms over his head, dropped to his knees, and surrendered. As he did so, an officer tackled him and punched him in the head. After Mr. Mack was handcuffed, a few of the officers escorted him to Mr. Smith's office in F Dorm.

While waiting for Mr. Smith to arrive, some of the officers hit Mr. Mack—who was still handcuffed—numerous times in the chest and stomach. Before Mr. Smith returned to his office, the other officers removed Mr. Mack's handcuffs.

Upon his arrival at F Dorm, Mr. Smith grabbed a fiberglass baton from the shift office and went inside his own office. Mr. Mack was arguing with the officers who were there, but was not being physically aggressive. Mr. Smith beat Mr. Mack with the baton and ultimately broke the weapon with a blow to his head. When an officer tried to pull Mr. Smith away from Mr. Mack, who had fallen to the floor, Mr. Smith said: “[D]o you see my officer down there? She got blood on her uniform, and this motherfucker gonna die.” Mr. Smith then repeatedly stomped on Mr. Mack's body, neck, and head. He also pepper-sprayed Mr. Mack in the face at close range. Mr. Mack did not attempt to fight back during Mr. Smith's attack.¹

After the beating in Mr. Smith's office, several officers handcuffed Mr. Mack and, together with a nurse, wheeled him to the Health Care Unit because he was unable to walk. They placed him on a bed so that he could be treated for his injuries. Twice Mr. Mack fell from the bed and onto the tile floor.

Mr. Smith followed the group into the HCU and ordered the nurses to leave. After the nurses were gone, Mr. Smith, with two other officers present, pulled Mr. Mack—who was still handcuffed—off the bed and, again, stomped on his head several times until he passed out. At one point, when one of the officers tried to pull him away from Mr. Mack, Mr. Smith said: “[T]rust me, I got this.... I'll take some days for my officers.”

Once Mr. Smith left the HCU, and the ruckus had ended, the nurses came back in and found Mr. Mack lying unconscious on the floor. He was unresponsive and hemorrhaging from both sides of his skull. He also had severe brain swelling, multiple facial fractures, massive bruising on his face and body, and a ruptured spleen.

Emergency personnel transported Mr. Mack to a hospital before midnight on August 4, but he died around 10:00 a.m. the next day. The neurosurgeon who was on call at the hospital opined that Mr. Mack likely died from a culmination of all the trauma he suffered the previous evening. The medical examiner testified that Mr. Mack died from multiple blunt force trauma and traumatic brain injury

.

B

Within hours of his attack on Mr. Mack, Mr. Smith began covering up his conduct. He met with some of the other officers who were involved in the beatings and told them to “get [their] stories straight” and submit statements. He instructed the officers to “document everything” and to indicate in their reports that Mr. Mack was not handcuffed and that he fought continuously from D Dorm to the HCU.

As required by the regulations of the Alabama Department of Corrections, Mr. Smith prepared a duty report and part of an incident report, but lied in those reports about the details of the beatings. He falsely claimed, for example, that he had to use pepper spray on Mr. Mack and hit him on the thigh and arms with his baton in order to stop him from fighting and allow the other officers to handcuff him. He also omitted all of the details regarding his beating (and that of others) of Mr. Mack in the HCU. To account for the head injuries

Mr. Mack sustained, Mr. Smith stated that he fell off the bed several times while in the HCU.

Early in the morning of August 5, 2010, the Investigative & Intelligence Division of the ADOC (the internal affairs arm of the agency) began an administrative investigation into what had happened to Mr. Mack. Scottie Wells, an I & I investigator, interviewed Mr. Smith in the course of that investigation. At that time Mr. Mack had not passed away. During the interview, Mr. Smith told Mr. Wells the same false story that was in his duty and incident reports.

On August 20, following Mr. Mack's death, Ronald Cooper—another I & I investigator—spoke to Mr. Smith after obtaining copies of his duty and incident reports. Again Mr. Smith stuck to his untruthful version of events.

Mr. Wells did not advise Mr. Smith of his rights under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966)

. Nor did he tell Mr. Smith about his Garrity rights. Mr. Cooper generally discussed Miranda with Mr. Smith, and told him that if he invoked his Miranda rights, then he (Mr. Cooper) “would charge him with [his] Garrity rights.” When Mr. Smith did not understand what that meant, Mr. Cooper told him that “Garrity rights are what [was] required to answer [his] questions on an administrative level,” and that what he (Mr. Smith) said could not be used against him in criminal court. After Mr. Smith waived his Miranda rights, Mr. Cooper told him that he was duty-bound to tell him everything, and Mr. Smith said he understood.

Several days after Mr. Mack's death, the Alabama Bureau of Investigation (a division of the Alabama Department of Public Safety) launched its own criminal investigation. Investigator Timothy Rodgers of the ABI spoke with a sergeant at Ventress to schedule interviews of correctional officers and other personnel at the institution. Mr. Rodgers did not specify who he wanted to speak to, and left it up to the sergeant to determine which persons had been witnesses to the incidents with Mr. Mack. Warden J.C. Giles told those who were going to be interviewed by the ABI to report to the Eufala office of the ...