United States v. Ramirez

• Decision Date: 10 January 2014
• Docket Number: Case No. 13–20866–CR.
• Citation: 991 F.Supp.2d 1258
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Carlos Luna RAMIREZ, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Florida

991 F.Supp.2d 1258

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff,

v.Carlos Luna RAMIREZ, Defendant.

Case No. 13–20866–CR.

United States District Court, S.D. Florida.

Jan. 10, 2014.

Christopher Barrett Browne, United States Attorney's Office, Miami, FL, for Plaintiff.

Noticing FPD–MIA, for Defendant.

ORDER ON MOTION TO SUPPRESS

ROBIN S. ROSENBAUM, District Judge.

This matter is before the Court on Defendant Carlos Luna Ramirez's Motion to Suppress Statements [ECF No. 14] and Ramirez's Additional Motion to Suppress [ECF No. 19]. The Court has carefully reviewed Defendant's Motions, all supporting and opposing filings, and the record. In addition, the Court held an evidentiary hearing on Defendants' Motions on December 13, 2013. See ECF No. 20. For the reasons set forth below, the Court now grants Defendants' Motions.

I. Background and Factual Findings

Defendant Carlos Luna Ramirez is charged by Indictment with one count of possession of child pornography, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252(a)(4)(B) and (b)(2). The Government obtained much of the evidence it intends to use against Ramirez through Ramirez's own statements to law-enforcement officers during the course of the execution of a search warrant on Ramirez's residence. Through the pending Motions to Suppress, Ramirez asserts that his statements did not result from a voluntary, knowing, and intelligent waiver of his rights, and, therefore, they must be suppressed.

On December 13, 2013, the Court held a hearing on Ramirez's Motions to Suppress. During that hearing, Homeland Security Investigation Special Agent Timothy Devine, Miami Beach Police Department Detective Jenny Velazquez, Miami–Dade Police Department Detective Jeannette Azcuy, and Defendant Ramirez testified. Based on their testimony, the Court finds the following facts to have occurred in connection of the November 5, 2013, search of Ramirez's residence.

Agent Devine specializes in child-exploitation crimes. Through the use of law-enforcement software employed in child-exploitation investigations, Devine identified the Internet Protocol address of a computer involved in downloading child pornography. After determining that the computer was located at 1495 Northeast 180th Street, North Miami Beach, law enforcement obtained a search warrant to search that premises, believing that the owner of the property may have been the individual involved in the child-pornography offense. On the pending Motions to Suppress, Ramirez does not challenge the validity of the search warrant.

When law enforcement arrived at the residence at approximately 6:30 a.m., Agent Devine was in charge of the team that executed the search warrant. Team members knocked and announced their presence, waiting for someone to open the front door. Juan Jarra, his brother, and their mother, Herclea Perez, went to the front door and opened it. Law enforcement detained them and entered the residence. During a security sweep, law enforcement found Ramirez in the bathroom. At the time, the bathroom door was closed, and law enforcement knocked and announced their presence. Ramirez told the officers to wait a minute. When Ramirez did not promptly open the door, eventually, the officers entered the bathroom through the unlocked door. Ramirez was wrapped in a towel, and the officers restrained him, removing him from the residence while he was wearing the towel.

Officers then took Ramirez, who was handcuffed behind his back, outside on the driveway, leaning up against the residence, along with the other residents that they had removed from the dwelling. Vehicles were parked in the driveway, and according to all evidence presented during the hearing, people driving by the home did not have a clear view of Ramirez.

At the time that Ramirez was placed outside the residence, a secondary security sweep was performed. Thereafter, while Ramirez was sitting in the driveway, Agent Devine was organizing the search-warrant execution team, ensuring that the search of the residence was being video-recorded, coordinating and meeting with computer forensic agents to decide which computer to examine first, and speaking with other agents who were detaining residents, determining their legal status in the United States and ascertaining whether they had criminal histories.

At some point, Ramirez asked a Spanish-speaking individual to ask a law enforcement officer that Ramirez be permitted to put on some clothes. The officer agreed. An officer then took Ramirez back inside the house, where he obtained clothing from a packed suitcase ¹ located in the room where the computer that allegedly was used to download the pornography was found. After Ramirez dressed himself, law-enforcement officers escorted him back outside the house, this time with his hands cuffed in front. Once again, Ramirez was placed in front of the garage with the other residents of the home.

Agent Devine instructed the computer-forensic analyst to conduct a preliminary analysis on the computer found in Ramirez's room. The analysis confirmed that the computer contained child pornography and peer-to-peer software often used to download such child pornography. Thereafter, Agent Devine took Ramirez from in front of the garage to Detective Velazquez's police vehicle to interview him. Agent Devine and Detectives Velazquez and Azcuy all testified that Agent Devine sat in the back seat with Ramirez, who was handcuffed in front, while Detectives Velazquez and Azcuy were in the front seat of the car. Agent Devine began speaking to Ramirez in English. The precise sequence of events once Ramirez was taken to the car is a matter of some controversy. Based on the evidence adduced at the hearing, however, the Court concludes that the following occurred: Ramirez was asked what the law-enforcement witnesses described as “preliminary questions,” including Ramirez's name, date of birth, address, and length of time at his address. Detective Velazquez testified to this sequence of events, as did Ramirez. In addition, Detective Azcuy, who took notes of the events as they occurred during the interview, wrote a report memorializing this sequence of events.²

After Ramirez answered these questions, Ramirez indicated that he had difficulty understanding, so Agent Devine asked Ramirez whether he would prefer to be spoken to in Spanish. When Ramirez indicated that he would, Detective Velazquez primarily, but with occasional questions from Detective Azcuy, conducted the rest of the proceedings in Spanish. Ramirez claims that Detective Azcuy was present for only a short period of the interview after Detective Velazquez read Ramirez his rights and only because he requested another Spanish speaker since he stated that he could not understand Detective Velazquez. For reasons discussed later in this Order, this Court does not find Ramirez's assertions in this regard to be credible.

Detective Velazquez next read Ramirez his rights in Spanish from a standard Homeland Security Investigations Spanish Miranda rights form. She further testified that after reading each specific right, she asked Ramirez whether he understood, and he said “yes” and nodded affirmatively. At one point, Detective Velazquez attested, Velazquez became tongue-tied while attempting to pronounce the word “proporcionara,” and Ramirez interjected, saying the word for her. After Velazquez finished reading the form, she stated, she gave it to Ramirez, and she heard him read it to himself out loud before writing and signing his name to the form.

For his part, Ramirez claims that Detective Velazquez's Spanish was “very bad” and that he could not understand anything that she said after she read him the first three sentences of the Miranda form. He further testified that although he was given the form, he could not read it because he was handcuffed but was nonetheless required to somehow sign the form. According to Ramirez, he was told that if he did not cooperate and speak with the officers, “it would be worse” and that he could not cooperate unless he signed the Miranda form. ³ Therefore, he felt that he had no choice but to sign, so he signed. The Government did not present evidence suggesting that Ramirez's recollection that he was told that if he did not speak with the officers, “it would be worse” was inaccurate.

This Court does not find Ramirez's assertions that he did not understand Detective Velazquez to be credible. First, Detective Velazquez, who is of Cuban heritage, testified that she speaks, reads, and writes fluently in Spanish. Second, Detective Velazquez recalled that, at one point, well after she read the first three sentences of the form to Ramirez, Ramirez chimed in to help Detective Velazquezpronounce the word “proporcionara,” indicating that he understood what she was saying.

Third, the only evidence of record reflects that Detective Velazquez did no more than read the rights to Ramirez from the Spanish form; she did not provide her own translation. Thus, unless something was wrong with the translation on the form—a fact to which Ramirez did not testify, it seems extremely difficult to believe that Detective Velazquez's pronunciation could have been so bad as to preclude Ramirez from understanding her mere reading of the form. This is particularly true in view of the fact that he did not testify to having any problem understanding Detective Velazquez's questions during the interview following the administration of the Miranda rights, and he exhibited no difficulty understanding either of the two interpreters during the hearing on his Motions, even though one testified that she originally learned Spanish in Cuba, and Ramirez testified that he is from Peru, and his attorney suggested that he could not understand Detective Velazquez because she spoke “Cuban American Spanish.” See ECF No. 19 at 3. Moreover, both interpreters described the Spanish on the Miranda-rights as “standard Spanish,” ⁴ and Ramirez himself admitted that he understood the...