Miranda v. Leibach

• Decision Date: 20 January 2005
• Docket Number: No. 02-3452.,02-3452.
• Citation: 394 F.3d 984
• Parties: Brian MIRANDA, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Blair J. LEIBACH, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

394 F.3d 984

Brian MIRANDA, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Blair J. LEIBACH, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 02-3452.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued February 10, 2004.

Decided January 20, 2005.

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Gabriel G. Tsui (argued), Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, Chicago, IL, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Domenica A. Osterberger (argued), Office of the Attorney General, Chicago, IL, for Respondent-Appellee.

Before RIPPLE, ROVNER, and WOOD, Circuit Judges.

ROVNER, Circuit Judge.

A jury convicted Brian Miranda of first-degree murder, and the trial court sentenced him to serve 30 years in prison. After exhausting his state court remedies, Miranda petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The district court denied his petition. We affirm.

I.

In the early evening of October 13, 1993, 15-year-old Michael Ryan was killed on the northwest side of Chicago by a gunshot to the back of his head. On the following day, having learned that 16-year-old Frank Perez had been seen in the vicinity of the shooting and that Ryan had been having trouble with a boy named Frankie, police officers went to the Perez apartment to speak with him.

When the officers arrived at around 2:30 in the afternoon, Frank Perez was watching television along with Michael Chavez and Brian Miranda (ages 15 and 17, respectively) in the living room of the residence. Perez was summoned to the kitchen, where the rear entrance to the second-floor apartment was located. What happened next was disputed.

According to police officers, Perez, followed by Miranda and Chavez, voluntarily stepped outside of the apartment at the officers' request to answer questions about the shooting. After Chavez revealed to one of the officers that it was Perez who shot Ryan, Perez was arrested, handcuffed, and taken to a police station. Miranda and Chavez were not arrested, but voluntarily accompanied the police to the station for further questioning.

Miranda, Perez, and Chavez told a different story. They testified that as soon as Perez entered the kitchen, the police, who had entered the apartment without permission, handcuffed him on the spot. Officers then entered the living room with guns drawn, ordered Miranda and Chavez against the wall, frisked them, and handcuffed both of them. All three were then taken to the police station in handcuffs.

Miranda and Chavez were questioned separately at the station. Again, the circumstances surrounding that questioning were disputed. Police officers testified that neither Miranda nor Chavez was under arrest at that time, and that both young men voluntarily cooperated with the questioning. By contrast, Miranda testified that on arrival at the station, he was taken to a windowless holding room and handcuffed to a ring on a wall. Chavez testified that although his handcuffs were removed on arrival at the station, he did not feel free to leave the station and, in fact, was not released until the following day, after he testified before a grand jury.

At approximately 3:30 that afternoon, Chavez told a detective during questioning that Miranda had supplied the gun that Perez had used to shoot Ryan. Armed with this information, police resumed questioning of Miranda.

Upon being confronted with Chavez's statement at around 4:00 p.m., Miranda confessed his involvement in the shooting and led police to the gun that Perez had used to kill Ryan. Shortly before 8:00 p.m., after the gun had been recovered, Miranda gave a formal statement under questioning by an Assistant State's Attorney and after being apprised, on the record, of his rights under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). That statement was transcribed by a court reporter and signed by Miranda.¹

Miranda was charged with first-degree murder pursuant to an accountability theory. Under Illinois law, one person is legally accountable for a crime committed by another when, before or during the offense, he aids (or tries to aid) the planning or commission of the crime with the intent to facilitate or promote the commission of the crime. 720 ILCS 5/5-2(c); see Huynh v. Bowen, 374 F.3d 546, 548-49 (7th Cir.2004); McFowler v. Jaimet, 349 F.3d 436, 439 (7th Cir.2003).

Prior to trial, Miranda moved to quash his arrest and to suppress any and all statements (including the court-reported confession) that authorities had elicited from him pursuant to the arrest. It was Miranda's contention that police had arrested him at the Perez residence, well before they had any information linking him to the shooting and thus without probable cause. The trial judge conducted an evidentiary hearing at which Miranda, Perez, Chavez, three of the police officers who were present at the Perez residence, and a number of other individuals testified. At the conclusion of that hearing, the judge found that Miranda had been arrested without probable cause at the Perez residence. G2-3. The focus of the proceeding then turned to whether, as the State argued, Miranda's statements at the police station were sufficiently attenuated from his arrest as to demonstrate that those statements were the product of free will rather than the illegal arrest. See Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 603-04, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 2261-62, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975). After entertaining further argument on that point, the trial judge concluded that Chavez's statement implicating Miranda in the crime was a sufficient intervening cause of Miranda's confession so as to purge the taint of the illegal arrest and render Miranda's confession voluntary and admissible at trial. C7, M38.

Miranda was tried before a jury. The State's evidence at trial revealed that Miranda, Perez, Chavez and Ryan had all belonged to a street gang known as the Imperial Gangsters. Perez headed the small, local section of that gang. Ryan and another member, Sean Joyce, had decided to withdraw from the gang, but neither had undergone what gang members referred to as a "violation," which entailed a three-minute beating from head to toe by the entire gang and was considered a prerequisite to a member being allowed to depart the gang. As a result, the gang had issued what members referred to as an S.O.S. or "smash on sight" order against Ryan and Joyce. Apparently, it was that order that culminated in Ryan's death. Two months earlier, Ryan's mother had heard Perez threaten Ryan's life. On the evening of the shooting, Perez and Chavez went to Miranda's house, where Miranda supplied Perez with a .38-caliber automatic revolver that he had obtained from another gang member. Perez told Miranda that he needed the gun in order to "take care of business" with Ryan and Joyce. The three of them then rode their bikes around the neighborhood looking for Ryan and Joyce. They found Ryan at a nearby J.J. Peppers convenience store. After some discussion between Perez and Ryan, Ryan left the store with the others, ostensibly to take Perez to meet with Joyce. Ryan and Perez rode together on Perez's bike, with Ryan at the handles and Perez behind him. As the group bicycled to the meeting with Joyce, Perez took the gun that Miranda had given him from his pocket and shot Ryan in the head. Ryan fell to the ground; the others fled. Miranda and Perez rode their bikes to Perez's house, where Perez returned the revolver to Miranda, along with a sawed-off shotgun. After cleaning the revolver, Miranda hid the guns in his bedroom, where they remained until he led the police to them the next day.

Miranda's court-reported confession was published to the jury during the trial. P237-P249. In that statement, Miranda acknowledged, among other things, that he had given the revolver to Perez at Perez's request, that Perez told him he needed a gun in order to "take care of business," that he understood Perez to mean that he wanted to kill someone, that Perez told him it was either Ryan or Joyce that he meant to kill, that he accompanied Perez on the night of the shooting knowing this was Perez's intent, that he witnessed the shooting, that Perez used the gun he had given to him to kill Ryan, and that he hid that gun in his bedroom following the shooting.

Miranda testified in his own defense and repudiated certain aspects of his court-reported statement. He denied, for example, that Perez told him on the night of the shooting that he was going to "take care of business" or that he was going to shoot anyone. He asserted that he had accompanied Perez on Perez's order. He denied seeing Perez take the gun out of his pocket to shoot Ryan. But he acknowledged having given the gun to Perez and then hiding that gun and the shotgun in his bedroom following the shooting. He testified that he and Ryan were good friends who had known each other since they were three years old.

The jury convicted Miranda of first-degree murder. The trial judge later sentenced Miranda to a prison term of 30 years. Miranda filed a written motion for a new trial, R03, which the trial judge denied. Omitted from the boilerplate arguments made in that motion was any challenge to the judge's attenuation ruling.

Miranda appealed his conviction to the Illinois Appellate Court, arguing that the trial court had erred in finding that his confession was sufficiently attenuated from his illegal arrest to be considered voluntary and admissible at trial. Miranda conceded, however, that he had not properly preserved the issue for appeal by raising it in his motion for a new trial. R. 9 Ex. A at 12; id. Ex. C at 3. In view of the omission, Miranda asked the appellate court to review this issue for plain error. R. 9 Ex. A at 12; id. Ex. C at 3. Miranda contended that the trial court, in holding that Chavez's inculpatory statement was a sufficient intervening cause of his confession, had overlooked the fact that Chavez's statement was the fruit of Chavez's own illegal arrest; consequently Chavez's statement could not serve to purge the taint of...