CA3: Reframing issues outside of the original argument below requires plain error review

Fed. R. Crim. P. 12(c)(3)’s good-cause standard applied to defendant’s specific suppression arguments that were raised for the first time on appeal rather than plain error review under Fed. R. Crim. P. 52(b). Because defendant did not demonstrate good cause for his failure to raise the arguments before the district court, their merits could not be considered on appeal. United States v. Sok, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 21209 (3d Cir. Aug. 22, 2024):

Yet Sok contends that he functionally made the same or similar arguments before the District Court and can reframe them on appeal. In this regard, we require litigants to preserve specific arguments for appeal, not merely issues. United States v. Joseph, 730 F.3d 336, 341 (3d Cir. 2013) (“[R]aising an issue in the District Court is insufficient to preserve for appeal all arguments bearing on that issue. Instead, to preserve a suppression argument, a party must make the same argument in the District Court that he makes on appeal.”). In other words, “raising an issue is not sufficient to preserve all arguments within the issue.” Id. Determining whether an argument raised on appeal is the same as one raised in the trial court requires at least that “they depend on the same legal rule or standard” and “on the same facts.” Id. at 342. And while “[p]arties are free … to place greater emphasis and more fully explain an argument on appeal than they did in the District Court [and] may even, within the bounds of reason, reframe their argument,” “they may not change [its] substance.” Id. at 341.

Sok simply did not raise, in any form, his two arguments against inevitable discovery before the District Court. While he cited the legal rule for inevitable discovery and noted some of the steps in the Live Stop Policy’s procedure for impoundment in his supplemental briefing, he did not argue that the Government failed to demonstrate an impoundment would have been lawful or inevitable. Instead, as discussed, his trial attorney appears simply to have confused the inevitable-discovery and independent-source doctrines. By arguing that no impoundment under the Live Stop Policy actually occurred, Sok’s trial counsel did not address the Government’s inevitable-discovery defense, which relies on the premise that an impoundment, although it did not occur, would inevitably have occurred under the Policy. Nor did Sok’s counsel otherwise attempt to raise the arguments he presses here, such as through a motion for reconsideration of the suppression ruling.

Because Sok failed to raise before the District Court the two suppression-related arguments he presses on appeal, we cannot consider them under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12 unless he shows good cause for us to do so.