United States v. Sicilia, 72-1366.

• Decision Date: 01 March 1973
• Docket Number: No. 72-1366.,72-1366.
• Citation: 475 F.2d 308
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Anthony SICILIA, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

475 F.2d 308 (1973)

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Anthony SICILIA, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 72-1366.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued December 8, 1972.

Decided March 1, 1973.

Rehearing Denied April 13, 1973.

James R. Thompson, U. S. Atty., Matthias A. Lydon and William T. Huyck, Asst. U. S. Attys., Chicago, Ill., for appellant.

Louis Carbonaro, Chicago, Ill., for appellee.

Before SWYGERT, Chief Judge, and PELL and STEVENS, Circuit Judges.

PELL, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal by the Government, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3731, from an order of the district court finding that special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had failed to advise Sicilia of his constitutional rights pursuant to the mandate of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), and that, therefore, all of "the evidence procured was illegally seized and inadmissible."¹ On February 26, 1970, four F.B.I. agents went to the A & S Cartage Company pursuant to information given them by a confidential informer that one of three Clark fork lift trucks stolen from an interstate shipment was on the premises. Only Agents DiStefano and Mieseler went inside. Agent Mieseler, who had not previously been involved in the investigation, had gone on this trip because he had known the president of A & S Cartage, Anthony Sicilia, from a previous but unrelated investigation.

There is a substantial discrepancy between the parties' versions as to what the agents said and did during the initial interview with Sicilia. The agents both testified that they informed him of the nature of the investigation and that he told them that he had recently purchased a Clark fork lift. The agents, according to their testimony, then asked him to sign a consent to search form, which he did. Thereafter they searched the building and found the stolen vehicle. When they returned to the office, the agents then read Sicilia the standard statement of rights (Miranda). He refused to sign the waiver or discuss the fork lift truck further.

On the other hand, Sicilia testified, and the district court in its findings of fact found Sicilia's testimony in this respect to be true, that the agents did not inform him of the nature of the investigation, that they did not read him the consent to search form, that he never knowingly signed such a form, and that the only form he signed was what he thought was a receipt for the seized fork lift. Sicilia also testified, and the district court found to be true, that the agents asked him questions about his recent purchases of fork lifts. On the basis of these findings the district court concluded that at the time the agents arrived on the premises "the investigation was no longer a general inquiry into an unsolved crime but began to focus on a particular suspect, to-wit: the defendant. This court finds that the defendant was entitled to be given the Miranda warnings prior to being questioned. . . ."

The only citation of authority by the district court in support of its order was the Miranda case. We note that the Court stated that the principles there announced "deal with the protection which must be given to the privilege against self-incrimination when the individual is first subjected to police interrogation while in custody at the station or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way." 384 U. S. at 477, 86 S.Ct. at 1629. Here it cannot be contended that Sicilia was the subject of in-custody interrogation. Rather he was at most the subject of limited questioning in the comforting confines of his own office at a company of which he was the chief executive officer. To avoid this obvious limitation on the applicability of Miranda to this case, the district court apparently adopted the focus theory enunciated in United States v. Dickerson, 413 F.2d 1111 (7th Cir. 1969).

In Dickerson, this court held that once a taxpayer was under criminal investigation he must be given a warning of his constitutional rights as spelled out in Miranda before any further questioning can take place. It is from this decision that Sicilia on appeal, and apparently the district court in the proceedings below, extrapolates the theory that once a criminal investigation "focuses" on an individual he must be warned of his constitutional rights. In our view this analysis is inaccurate. The nature of the facts in Dickerson limits its general applicability. That case revolves about the distinction between two types of I. R.S. agents: revenue agents and special agents. In general, special agents are concerned with criminal investigations. On the other hand, the audit type of investigations are handled by revenue agents with no particular contemplation of criminal prosecution. There, therefore, is considerable potential for the taxpayer being misled as to the nature of the investigation. In the case of the F.B.I. agents, they are ordinarily associated in the public view with criminal investigation. Specifically in the present case there was no ambiguity in the investigative call on Sicilia—the agents were out to catch a thief. Thus, the underlying rationale for Dickerson, the potential for confusion in the mind of the person being interviewed as to the nature of the inquiry, can be said to justify an expansion of the Miranda requirements beyond the in-custody case for the warning to be required.

The potential for confusion not being present in the case before us, we decline to extend the Dickerson requirement of Miranda warning to it. We find no special risk that Sicilia was misled as to the nature of the investigation. He was neither in custody nor "otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way." See Orozco v. Texas, 394 U.S. 324, 327, 89 S.Ct. 1095, 1097, 22 L.Ed.2d 311 (1969).

At the time the agents initially interrogated Sicilia, there is no indication in the record which would have brought about an in-custody type of situation. Even if the agents had had positive proof that the stolen fork lift was on the premises of A & S Cartage, rather than just the uncorroborated tip of an informant, there would have been no reason to assume that Sicilia, even though he was president of the corporation, had been the individual who had purchased the stolen fork lift, or that he even had any special knowledge of its presence on the premises. The fact that after the F.B.I. agents had specifically identified the Clark fork lift as one of those stolen and Sicilia had stated that he had purchased it, the agents then gave Sicilia a Miranda warning is irrelevant to the issue of the first interview. We can only attribute this to some feeling on their part in the nature of an abundance of caution. United States...