United States v. Leal

1 F.4th 545

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.Jorge L. LEAL, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 20-3102

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued May 18, 2021

Decided June 21, 2021

Thomas E. Leggans, Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Benton, IL, Peter Reed, Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Criminal Division, Fairview Heights, IL, for Plaintiff - Appellant.

Justin A. Kuehn, Stephen C. Williams, Attorneys, KUEHN, BEASLEY & YOUNG P.C., Belleville, IL, for Defendant - Appellee.

Before Easterbrook, Brennan, and Scudder, Circuit Judges.

Brennan, Circuit Judge.

Jorge Leal used an online dating application to solicit sex acts from a user he believed was an underage boy. That user turned out to be a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent conducting a sting operation. In an interview with law enforcement, Leal confessed. He was then arrested and charged with knowingly attempting to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b). Leal moved to suppress his incriminating statements, arguing that the agents failed to provide a Miranda warning before the interview. The district court granted the motion, and the government filed this interlocutory appeal. Because Leal was not "in custody" during the interview, we reverse.

I

In July 2019, Jorge Leal contacted a user on Grindr, an online dating application.¹ Unknown to Leal, that user was an undercover FBI agent looking to identify and locate individuals who have a sexual interest in children. The agent, posing as a teenage boy, informed Leal that he was 15 years old. Despite learning that the user was underage, Leal continued to engage in sexually explicit conversations and eventually solicited oral sex. A week after the initial conversation, Leal asked the user for his location. The agent provided Leal the address of a house in Herrin, Illinois, that the FBI was using for the operation.

Leal arrived at the house on the evening of July 19. An FBI surveillance team watched Leal drive around the block and stop in an alley behind the house. Wary of a potential trap, Leal asked the supposed minor to flick on the outside lights to the house. When one of the surveillance team officers, U.S. Marshal Clark Meadows, drove an unmarked vehicle up the alley, Leal sped off but did not get far. Meadows pulled Leal over approximately two blocks from the house.

Three law enforcement agents were present during the stop. Meadows wore a green tactical vest with a badge and "U.S. Marshal" written across the front and back. The other two—FBI special agent Adam Buiter and a local police officer—each wore plain clothes under a vest with the words "Police" displayed across the front and back. Buiter identified himself as an FBI agent and asked Leal if he would step out of the car. Leal agreed, exited the vehicle, and consented to a pat down during which Buiter retrieved Leal's wallet. When Buiter asked Leal if he had a cellphone, Leal pointed to it and handed it over. Buiter next explained to Leal that he was not under arrest and that he was stopped as part of an ongoing investigation. Buiter asked whether Leal would voluntarily consent to speak with other agents in a nearby house, and Leal said "yes." Before leaving, Buiter asked Leal for his car keys so an agent could move his car off the road to a nearby parking lot. Again, Leal consented and handed over his keys.

Meadows then drove Leal back to the house. There, another FBI agent escorted Leal through the back door. Leal passed the kitchen, where he encountered at least two other law enforcement personnel, before arriving at a first-floor bedroom. Two new FBI agents waited inside the room, which contained a table, three chairs, and a computer. They set Leal's wallet and cellphone on the table; his car keys remained with law enforcement. Leal agreed to the interview, which proceeded with the door closed and was audiotaped. The agents neither handcuffed nor restrained Leal during this entire episode.

Leal quickly confessed. After explaining to Leal that the interview was informal and that they are "just going to have a conversation," the agents began by asking, "What brings you out this way?" Within two minutes, Leal admitted to driving to the house after "chatting with a younger male through the Grindr app." A few minutes later, an agent asked, "What was the point of you coming here tonight?" Leal then admitted that he came to the house "to play around sexually" with and receive oral sex from a minor. Leal also confessed that he knew showing up to meet with a fifteen-year-old was wrong, but he did so anyway. Only after Leal's confession did the agents read aloud the Grindr chat log containing Leal's solicitation messages. Leal confirmed he had sent these messages. At the end of the interview, which lasted approximately eighteen minutes, the FBI arrested Leal.

In August 2019, a grand jury indicted Leal for knowingly attempting to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b). Leal moved to suppress his statements in the interview, arguing that the agents conducted a custodial interrogation without advising him of his Fifth Amendment rights. Applying the totality-of-the-circumstances test of Howes v. Fields , 565 U.S. 499, 132 S.Ct. 1181, 182 L.Ed.2d 17 (2012), the district court concluded that Leal was "in custody" for purposes of Miranda and granted his motion to suppress.

II

The government filed this interlocutory appeal, challenging the district court's grant of the motion to suppress. We have jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3731. On a grant of a motion to suppress, we review the district court's legal conclusions de novo and its factual findings for clear error. See United States v. Outland , 993 F.3d 1017, 1021 (7th Cir. 2021).

The Fifth Amendment protects individuals from self-incrimination. U.S. CONST . amend. V. Before conducting a custodial interrogation, law enforcement officers must inform suspects of their constitutional right to remain silent and to have counsel present. Miranda v. Arizona , 384 U.S. 436, 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). But the officers need not provide Miranda warnings unless the suspect is both "interrogated" and "in custody." Rhode Island v. Innis , 446 U.S. 291, 300, 100 S.Ct. 1682, 64 L.Ed.2d 297 (1980). In other words, "[a]n interrogation is custodial when ‘a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way.’ " United States v. Littledale , 652 F.3d 698, 701 (7th Cir. 2011) (quoting Miranda , 384 U.S. at 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602 ). To establish that he was in custody at the time of the questioning, a defendant must show that he was either "formally arrested" or "subjected to restraints of freedom such that the conditions of a formal arrest were closely approximated or actually attained." United States v. Patterson , 826 F.3d 450, 455 (7th Cir. 2016) (internal quotation marks omitted). A person who is "free to end the interrogation and leave is not in custody." United States v. Higgins-Vogt , 911 F.3d 814, 820 (7th Cir. 2018) (citing Howes , 565 U.S. at 509, 132 S.Ct. 1181 ).

Determining whether a person is "in custody" is an objective inquiry. J.D.B. v. North Carolina , 564 U.S. 261, 270, 131 S.Ct. 2394, 180 L.Ed.2d 310 (2011). Courts must ascertain whether "a reasonable person [would] have felt he or she was not at liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave." Howes , 565 U.S. at 509, 132 S.Ct. 1181 (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted). The "only relevant inquiry is how a reasonable man in the suspect's position would have understood his situation," Berkemer v. McCarty , 468 U.S. 420, 442, 104 S.Ct. 3138, 82 L.Ed.2d 317 (1984), in light of "all of the circumstances surrounding the interrogation." Stansbury v. California , 511 U.S. 318, 322, 114 S.Ct. 1526, 128 L.Ed.2d 293 (1994) (per curiam). Relevant factors include: the location of the questioning; its duration; statements made during the interview; the presence or absence of physical restraints during the questioning; and the release of the interviewee at the end of the questioning. Howes , 565 U.S. at 509, 132 S.Ct. 1181.

An individual's subjective beliefs are irrelevant in a Miranda custody determination. See Stansbury , 511 U.S. at 323, 114 S.Ct. 1526 ; see also Stechauner v. Smith , 852 F.3d 708, 715 (7th Cir. 2017) ("Because custody is determined by an objective standard, the subjective beliefs of the suspect and police officers are irrelevant."). The Supreme Court has explained that the custody inquiry "involves no consideration of the ‘actual mindset’ of the particular suspect subjected to police questioning." J.D.B. , 564 U.S. at 271, 131 S.Ct. 2394 (quoting Yarborough v. Alvarado , 541 U.S. 652, 667, 124 S.Ct. 2140, 158 L.Ed.2d 938 (2004) ). And for good reason: "the objective test avoids burdening police with the task of anticipating the idiosyncrasies of every individual suspect and divining how those particular traits affect each person's subjective state of mind." J.D.B. , 564 U.S. at 271, 131 S.Ct. 2394. True enough, "the line between permissible objective facts and impermissible subjective experiences can be indistinct in some cases." Alvarado , 541 U.S. at 667, 124 S.Ct. 2140. But, where possible, courts must draw the distinction. A subjective inquiry looks to the individual's idiosyncrasies, such as the suspect's own beliefs about the situation or his state of mind, that may impact how they perceive the questioning. See United States v. Ambrose , 668 F.3d 943, 954 (7th Cir. 2012). The objective test instead focuses on how a reasonable person would have perceived the events. Howes , 565 U.S. at 509, 132 S.Ct. 1181.

Whether we review this case under our court's decision in Patterson , or independently under the Howes factors, we conclude that Leal was not in custody while the agents interviewed him.

In Patterson , FBI agents identified the defendant as...