United States v. Cooper

• Decision Date: 11 February 2020
• Docket Number: C/w 18-3021,No. 17-3057,17-3057
• Citation: 949 F.3d 744
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee v. Tarkara COOPER and Brian Bryant, Appellants
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

949 F.3d 744

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee

v.Tarkara COOPER and Brian Bryant, Appellants

No. 17-3057

C/w 18-3021

United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued October 28, 2019

Decided February 11, 2020

Dennis M. Hart, Washington, DC, appointed by the Court, argued the cause and filed the briefs for appellant Tarkara Cooper.

Brian J. Young, appointed by the Court, argued the cause and filed the briefs for appellant Brian Bryant.

Katherine M. Kelly, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause for appellee. With her on the brief were Jessie K. Liu, U.S. Attorney, and Elizabeth Trosman and John P. Mannarino, Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

Before: Srinivasan and Rao, Circuit Judges, and Randolph, Senior Circuit Judge.

Randolph, Senior Circuit Judge:

Several individuals in the District of Columbia acted together to steal millions of dollars from the Federal Treasury. Their method of operation was this. First beg, steal, purchase or borrow other people’s identities including, most importantly, their Social Security numbers. Then file false income tax returns seeking refunds in their names. Keep the refund requests relatively small. List on the tax returns the addresses, not of the purported filers, but of one or another co-conspirator. Then, when the refund checks from the Treasury arrive, compromise bank tellers, negotiate the checks, and deposit the proceeds in the conspirators’ personal accounts. This multi-year conspiracy netted a total of nearly $5 million in tax refunds from the Treasury.

Antonio Cooper, a bus driver and the hub in the wheel in this conspiracy, entered a plea of guilty and testified for the prosecution against others, including his niece, Tarkara Cooper. The jury convicted her and Brian Bryant of theft of public money and conspiracy to defraud the United States. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 641, 371. The jury also convicted Bryant of aggravated identity theft. See 18 U.S.C. § 1028A. The court sentenced Ms. Cooper to 63 month’s imprisonment, 36 month’s supervised release, and ordered her to pay nearly $2 million in restitution. The court sentenced Bryant to 100 month’s imprisonment, 36 month’s supervised release, and ordered him to pay some $650,000 in restitution. Both defendants appeal their convictions and their sentences.

The evidence showed that Antonio Cooper gathered names, birth dates and Social Security numbers from friends, family members, strangers, and "wherever [he] could." Using this information, he filed more than a thousand fraudulent federal income tax returns seeking refunds. The typical refund check was between $1,000 and $3,000. To receive the refunds from the Treasury, the fraudulent tax returns listed Mr. Cooper’s address or the addresses of other participants in his scheme, one of whom was his niece Tarkara Cooper. More than 450 fraudulent tax returns seeking refunds of more than $1,200,000 listed Ms. Cooper’s address. When the refund checks arrived she handed them to her uncle, who paid her $50 to $100 per check. He then deposited the checks in his bank account or the accounts of other co-conspirators. Antonio Cooper also sold some of the checks to others, including Bryant.

For his part, Bryant helped Mr. Cooper cash the refund checks and received half of the face value of those checks in exchange. Brianna Turner, a former Bank of America employee, testified that she helped Bryant deposit some of these checks. She said that Bryant expressed a willingness to compensate her in exchange for violating the Bank’s rules on third-party deposits. Bryant paid Turner between $300-$600 per check deposited. He controlled dozens of bank accounts into which refund checks were deposited.

At some point in 2010, Postal Inspector Maria Couvillion opened an investigation after detecting what appeared to be fraudulent tax returns being sent through the mail. Not until six years later did a grand jury return indictments against Antonio Cooper, Tarkara Cooper, Bryant and others. In the interim, the conspirators carried on, filing more fake returns and cashing more refund checks.

I.

We take up first the district court’s rejection of Tarkara Cooper’s pretrial motion to suppress statements she made to federal agents. The evidence at the suppression hearing showed that before dawn on December 1, 2010, twelve law enforcement officers – eleven federal agents and one from the local police – arrived at the door of Cooper’s home in a "multi unit residential complex" in the District of Columbia.¹ The officers were there to execute a search warrant. An agent knocked and announced their presence. Cooper opened the door and some of the agents entered. Inside were Cooper’s six-to-seven year old daughter and an adult female friend of Cooper’s. After being interviewed, the friend left.

About an hour into the search, two agents began interviewing Cooper in her living room. At some point in the questioning, she admitted receiving in the mail at her address one to five refund checks each week, and that her uncle paid her when she turned over the checks to him. She argues here, as she did in the district court, that the government could not introduce these statements at trial because the agents did not first give her Miranda warnings. See Miranda v. Arizona , 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).

The district court denied Cooper’s motion. The court found that Cooper "was not coerced into answering questions" and that she was not in custody within the meaning of Miranda . At trial, an agent who interrogated Cooper testified about her statements.

Before a suspect in custody is interrogated, she must be advised of her Miranda rights. See Stansbury v. California , 511 U.S. 318, 322, 114 S.Ct. 1526, 128 L.Ed.2d 293 (1994). If the interrogating officers do not provide Miranda warnings, any statements the suspect makes are generally inadmissible at trial. Id . The obligation to apprise the suspect of her rights attaches "only where there has been such a restriction on a person’s freedom as to render [her] ‘in custody.’ " Id . (quoting Oregon v. Mathiason , 429 U.S. 492, 495, 97 S.Ct. 711, 50 L.Ed.2d 714 (1977) ).

A suspect is "in custody" if the circumstances of the questioning "present a serious danger of coercion." Howes v. Fields , 565 U.S. 499, 508-09, 132 S.Ct. 1181, 182 L.Ed.2d 17 (2012). To determine whether such a danger existed, courts first consider whether a reasonable person in the suspect’s position would have felt that "she was not at liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave." Id . at 509, 132 S.Ct. 1181 (internal quotation marks omitted). Relevant factors in this assessment include the location of the questioning, statements made during the interview, the presence of any physical restraints, and whether the interviewee was released once the interrogation ended. Id .

Because "[n]ot all restraints on freedom of movement amount to custody for purposes of Miranda ," a finding that a person in the suspect’s shoes would not have felt free to leave does not end the inquiry. Id . Rather, courts must then ask "the additional question whether the relevant environment presents the same inherently coercive pressures as the type of station house questioning at issue in Miranda ." Id . We review de novo the district court’s custody determination, and we review the underlying factual findings for clear error. United States v. Brinson-Scott , 714 F.3d 616, 621 (D.C. Cir. 2013).

Examination of the evidence before the district court at the suppression hearing and at trial reveals no clearly erroneous factual findings.² Instead, the evidence amply supports the conclusion that Cooper was not in custody when she admitted that she was aware of, and participated in, her uncle’s fraud.

The agents questioned Cooper in her living room. When an interview takes place in a suspect’s home, that circumstance usually weighs against finding the kind of custodial situation that merits a Miranda warning. See, e.g. , Beckwith v. United States , 425 U.S. 341, 342, 347-48, 96 S.Ct. 1612, 48 L.Ed.2d 1 (1976) ; United States v. Luck , 852 F.3d 615, 621 (6th Cir. 2017) ; 2 Wayne R. LaFave et al., Criminal Procedure § 6.6(e) (4th ed. 2014).

Before the interview began, the agents told Cooper that she was a subject of an investigation and described "the voluntary nature of the interview." They asked her "if she would agree to" answer their questions. She agreed.³ The evidence shows, in other words, that Cooper’s statements were given freely and voluntarily. Such statements "remain a proper element in law enforcement." Miranda , 384 U.S. at 478, 86 S.Ct. 1602.

In addition, no weapons were brandished and no handcuffs were used. Cooper was "cooperative," and the agents employed a "professional and cordial tone." At no point did Cooper ask to end the questioning. And once the interview was over, the agents left without arresting her. Put simply, these facts do not portray an environment presenting a meaningful danger of coercion.

Cooper’s argument to the contrary focuses on a fifteen-minute break during the questioning. She needed to take her daughter to school, and so the agents drove them to the school, dropped her daughter off, and returned to the house with Cooper to resume the interview. Cooper alleges that the agents refused to let her leave the house unaccompanied, and that this refusal illustrates the custodial nature of the questioning.

Not so. Cooper offers no evidence that she asked to take her daughter to school alone but was prevented from leaving. For safety reasons, if a person leaves her residence during the execution of a search warrant, she is not typically allowed to return until the search is completed. It is thus as likely as not that the agents gave Cooper a ride so that she could return to her house while the search was ongoing. And while she was in the agents’ car, Cooper was not asked any questions.

These circumstances do not amount to custody within the meaning of Miranda . Indeed, to hold otherwise would be...