Lentz v. Kennedy

967 F.3d 675

Christy LENTZ, Petitioner-Appellant,

v.Teri KENNEDY, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 18-2659

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Submitted June 10, 2020^*

Decided July 28, 2020

Nicholas M. Curran, Douglas Henry Johnson, Kathleen Zellner, Attorneys, KATHLEEN T. ZELLNER & ASSOCIATES, Downers Grove, IL, for Petitioner - Appellant.

Jason Foster Krigel, Attorney, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Criminal Appeals Division, Chicago, IL, for Respondent - Appellee.

Before Flaum, Barrett, and St. Eve, Circuit Judges.

St. Eve, Circuit Judge.

For nearly a week Christy Lentz feigned ignorance as she pretended to help investigators locate her missing father. Officers soon discovered the father's decaying body hidden at the office building the two shared, and all signs pointed to Lentz as the murderer. Lentz, with her young daughter in tow, voluntarily accompanied officers to the police station under the pretense of follow-up questioning for the missing persons investigation. For the first hour and a half, officers asked general questions, like when and where she last saw her father, to commit Lentz to her story. They then took a cigarette break. When the interview resumed, the tone changed. The officers read Lentz her Miranda rights and confronted her with the mounting evidence against her. Over the next four hours, Lentz slowly confessed to shooting her father.

In the state trial court, Lentz moved to suppress her videotaped confession but the court denied her motion. She proceeded to trial, where the confession was admitted into evidence, and a jury found her guilty of first-degree murder. The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed the conviction on direct review. Lentz then tried her hand at state postconviction proceedings but was unsuccessful.

Now on federal habeas review, Lentz claims the interrogation violated her constitutional rights in two ways: that she was "in custody" during the pre- Miranda portion of the interview, and that her confession was involuntary. Because our review is deferential and the state court's decision with respect to both issues was not an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law, we affirm the district court's denial of habeas relief.

I. Background

We take the facts from the Illinois Appellate Court's opinion, People v. Lentz , 2011 IL App (2d) 100448-U, 2011 WL 10452300 ( Lentz I ).¹ The state court's findings are "presumed to be correct" and Lentz bears the burden of rebutting that presumption by clear and convincing evidence. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1). She has not attempted to do so and the material facts related to the interrogation are generally undisputed, as the entire event was videotaped. Lentz challenges the application of clearly established law to those facts.

A. General Background

Lentz's father, Michael Lentz, Sr., owned his own business, Industrial Pneumatics Supply—a pneumatic tools distributor—in Villa Park, Illinois. Lentz had worked for her father since she graduated high school. She first began as a secretary but over time her responsibilities at the business increased to include handling customer service, paying bills, balancing the checkbook, and paying taxes. At the time of the incident, the company had only one other employee besides Lentz and her father, a part-time secretary. According to Lentz, she was in the process of taking over the business from her father because he wanted to retire.

On June 9, 2006, Lentz and her sister, Jill Baker, asked the police to check on their father because they had not seen or heard from him since late May. The police opened a missing persons investigation and interviewed Lentz on June 14, 2006. A week later, on June 21, 2006, the police stopped by the business's office building. The door was locked and there was a handwritten sign saying that the business was closed due to a family emergency. The officers, however, noticed a smell of decomposition. They obtained a search warrant and searched the business, where they discovered Mr. Lentz's dead body in a wrapped and taped bundle head-down in a plastic bin. It also appeared that there had been unsuccessful attempts to burn the body in the bin.

Following this discovery, the police then went to the house of Chuck Minauskas, Lentz's boyfriend, and arrived just before 10:00 p.m. on June 21st, where they found Lentz, her seven-year-old daughter Taylor, and Minauskas. Lentz agreed to speak with the officers down at the Villa Park police station and the officers then transported all three there. Two detectives questioned Lentz over the course of approximately five and a half hours, the details of which we discuss below. They videotaped the entire interview. (A third officer was in the room operating the video camera.) In short, after about two hours of questioning, shortly before 2:00 a.m., Lentz admitted to killing her father. Over the next three and a half hours, until about 5:30 a.m., the detectives elicited more details about the shooting and cover-up. At the conclusion of her statement, Lentz was arrested and charged with murder.

Before trial, Lentz moved to suppress her videotaped statement. The Illinois trial court heard evidence and arguments related to the motion over the course of several days between May and December 2008. The court denied the motion. Lentz then went to trial, during which the prosecution played the videotaped confession in full for the jury. The jury found Lentz guilty of first-degree murder, and the court sentenced her to fifty years’ imprisonment. On direct appeal to the state appellate court, Lentz challenged the trial court's denial of her motion to suppress.

B. The Illinois Appellate Court's Decision

Lentz made the two arguments on direct appeal that she raises on federal collateral review: (1) that the circumstances in which she gave her statement violated Miranda v. Arizona , 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), because she was in a custodial setting once she went to the police station, but the officers did not give her the Miranda warnings until part way through her questioning; and (2) that even if her questioning did not violate Miranda, her confession was involuntary and should have been suppressed. Lentz I , 2011 IL App (2d) 100448-U, ¶ 6.

1. The interrogation

The Illinois Appellate Court undertook an extensive review of the evidence presented at the suppression hearing and the entire videotaped interrogation. Its opinion was thorough and detailed. We have reviewed the video for ourselves as well, and add some facts or details where we deem helpful.

Villa Park police officer Tiffany Wayda was one of the officers assigned to the missing persons investigation for Lentz's father, Michael Lentz, Sr. She testified that on June 21, 2006, between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., she and a fellow detective went to the father's business, where Lentz worked, looking for Lentz to get some phone records. No one was at the business, but after walking around the back of the building they "noticed the smell of decomposition and saw flies near a window." Lentz I , 2011 IL App (2d) 100448-U, ¶ 9. Wayda and her partner obtained a warrant to enter the building and search for a body, and returned to the building sometime between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. Once they discovered the body in the building, they obtained a second search warrant for the entire premises. Wayda got back to the Villa Park police station at about 8:30 p.m.

Jordan Anderson is a Wood Dale police officer. On June 21, 2006, he was told to go to the Villa Park police station, where he and other officers were assigned to find Minauskas, Lentz's boyfriend. Anderson and three other officers drove together to Minauskas's home, while two other officers drove separately. Both cars were unmarked and all six officers were dressed in plain clothes, albeit with police identification. Anderson testified that the officers arrived at Minauskas's home at about 9:52 p.m. Upon arrival, officers encountered Minauskas, Lentz, and their seven-year-old daughter, Taylor, standing in the driveway. Anderson and another officer approached Lentz, and Anderson testified that he said, "Hi, Ms. Lentz. My name is Detective Anderson. I'm from the major crimes task force, and we'd like to talk to you in reference to the missing persons case that we're investigating." Lentz I , 2011 IL App (2d) 100448-U, ¶ 10. He asked Lentz if she would come to the police station with him so they could talk there, and Lentz agreed but said that she would need to bring her daughter. Anderson agreed and offered to give them a ride to the station. According to Anderson, Lentz "did not display any hesitation in accompanying them to the police station." Id . Lentz and Taylor got into the back of one police car and four officers got into the same car (one on either side of them in the back seat and two in front). At the police station, Lentz got out of the police car herself. She entered the police station through a secured door, not the front door that is open to the public.

The appellate court noted that the witnesses all "agreed that there was no ‘cage’ or secure divider between the back and front seats of either of the police cars." Id . ¶ 11. Furthermore, "[a]t no point did the police handcuff anyone, use physical force on anyone, or raise their voices." Id . "The officers did not say that anyone was under arrest." Id .

At the station, Wayda and fellow Villa Park police officer Todd Kubish interviewed Lentz. There was a third, unnamed officer in the room who operated the video recorder. "All of the officers were in civilian dress and none of them displayed their weapons at any point during the questioning." Id . ¶ 12. The video picks up with Lentz already talking, which Kubish explained was because the video operator was trying to get the recorder started and that the only discussion missed was Wayda introducing Kubish to Lentz.

The appellate court characterized Lentz's demeanor at the start of the tape as "relaxed and helpful." Id . ¶ 13. They...