Seizing defendant’s money and cell phone and then spending only three minutes in the back of a police car was not “custody” for Miranda purposes. United States v. Broca-Martinez, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17077 (S.D.Tex. Feb. 11, 2016)*:
While the Court can give only little weight to the seizure of Mr. Broca-Martinez’s money and cell phone, the fact that he was detained in the backseat of Officer Leal’s squad car constitutes a much more significant restraint on his freedom. Upon learning from Mr. Broca-Martinez that he was not legally in the United States, Officer Leal placed him in the backseat of his squad car and shut the door. Mr. Broca-Martinez sat there for three minutes before Agent Fiorita arrived and initiated questioning. Hr’g Tr. 42:6-10; see also Doc. No. 41 at 1. During this time Mr. Broca-Martinez was clearly not free to leave; in fact, he was not even able to leave because the back doors of the squad car cannot be opened from the inside. Hr’g Tr. 42:6-10. As Agent Fiorita interviewed Mr. Broca-Martinez, he remained seated in the backseat, with the door open and Agent Fiorita standing next to him outside.
The detention of a suspect in the backseat of a police car, for any duration of time, is not something that transpires in the course of a routine traffic stop. Had the circumstances of Mr. Broca-Martinez’s detention been even slightly different, his situation might have crossed over into Miranda custody. However, there are a number of facts that mitigate the severity of the restriction that the detention placed on his liberty. First of all, the length of time that Mr. Broca-Martinez spent in the backseat of Officer Leal’s vehicle was brief: three minutes waiting for Agent Fiorita to arrive and less than five minutes undergoing questioning. Mr. Broca-Martinez was also allowed to exit the vehicle, as he got out from the backseat in order to sign the consent-to-search form. Hr’g Tr. 19:18-24. See United States v. Hampton, No. 3:07-CR-113, 2008 WL 1826059, at *18 (ED. Tenn. Apr. 23, 2008) (the fact that the “defendant exited the patrol car during his conversation with [the law enforcement officer] [is] further evidence of a lack of restraint on [d]efendant’s freedom of movement.”). Moreover, Officer Leal’s reason for further detaining Mr. Broca-Martinez was investigatory. Mr. Broca-Martinez was placed in the back of the patrol car because his statement to Officer Leal that he was in the United States illegally gave Officer Leal reasonable suspicion to believe that criminal activity other than the traffic offense was afoot and that it would be necessary to hold Mr. Broca-Martinez until HSI agents could arrive and confirm or dispel his suspicion.2 Hr’g Tr. 39:25; id. at 60:1-17. As in Coleman, “the length [of the detention] was extended primarily because reasonable suspicion had arisen regarding a different offense … and not because of any extending questioning.” 610 F. App’x at 353.
by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book www.johnwesleyhall.com
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams
v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold,
J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws,
or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp
v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that
bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the
police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater
than it is today."
— Terry
v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their
property."
—Entick
v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have
frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And
so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his
case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth
Amendment."
—United
States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated
here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman
v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the
bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona
v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly
exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth
Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in
an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz
v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to
protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born
to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United
States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted
intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by
government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose
it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United
States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want /
But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
"In Germany, they first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration
camp]
“You know, most men would get discouraged by
now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers,
is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which
reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that
those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being
judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting
out crime."
—Johnson
v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)
