United States v. Williams

681 F.3d 35

UNITED STATES of America, Appellant–Cross–Appellee,

v.Robert Steven Brodie WILLIAMS, Defendant–Appellee–Cross–Appellant.

Docket No. 11–324–cr.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued: March 5, 2012.

Decided: May 17, 2012.

Justin Anderson, Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York (Rachel P. Kovner, Jesse M. Furman, Assistant United States Attorneys, of counsel, on the briefs), for Preet Bharara, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, New York, NY, for Appellant–Cross–Appellee.

Melinda Sarafa, Sarafa Law LLC, New York, NY, for Defendant–Appellee–Cross–Appellant.

Anthony S. Barkow, Sara H. Mark, Center on the Administration of Criminal Law at New York University School of Law, New York, NY, for Amicus Curiae the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law at New York University School of Law.

Before: McLAUGHLIN, B.D. PARKER and WESLEY, Circuit Judges.

BARRINGTON D. PARKER, Circuit Judge:

This appeal arises out of the suppression of defendant Robert Williams's station house confession to unlawful dealings in firearms.¹ That confession followed an incriminating statement made in response to brief questioning at the apartment where he was arrested earlier that day. The confession followed Miranda warnings; the earlier incriminating statement did not. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Gardaphe, J.) suppressed the station house confession as the product of a deliberate, two-stage interrogation strategy barred by Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600, 124 S.Ct. 2601, 159 L.Ed.2d 643 (2004). Relying on this Court's decision in United States v. Capers, 627 F.3d 470 (2d Cir.2010), the district court reasoned that the admissibility of defendant's station house confession turned on whether the decision to forego Miranda warnings at the apartment was “legally justifiable.” United States v. Williams, 758 F.Supp.2d 287, 310 (S.D.N.Y.2010). Finding that it was not, the district court suppressed the station house confession. We conclude that the district court's determination rested on a misapplication of Capers. Accordingly, we reverse and remand for further proceedings.

BACKGROUND

In October 2009 Williams, along with his cousin Forenzo Walker, was arrested in a Bronx, New York, apartment following the execution of a search warrant that led to the recovery of four firearms. According to Williams's subsequent confession, he, Walker, and a man named Charles Smith had arrived in New York City the previous morning from Birmingham, Alabama. Williams and Smith planned to sell thirteen guns they had procured in Alabama.

Williams was not the primary target of the search warrant; Smith was. For a year and a half, officers of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (“ATF”) and the New York City Police Department (“NYPD”) had, based on the report of a confidential informant, been investigating a man known to the informant as “Alabama” whom they suspected of buying firearms in Alabama for resale in New York. J.A. at 135. On the day of defendant's arrest, the informant spotted “Alabama” and two other men selling firearms at the Bronx apartment, and notified an NYPD detective. At the detective's instruction, the informant returned to the apartment and purchased a firearm from “Alabama” in the presence of the two other men. He then reported to the detective that multiple firearms were being sold by the three men at the apartment.

The detective relayed the information to ATF Special Agent Peter D'Antonio, who prepared an application for a search warrant that was issued around 8:30 p.m. that evening. D'Antonio, whom the district court found credible, testified at a suppression hearing that it was important to obtain the search warrant promptly because

we had information that there was multiple firearms at the location being sold by two or three of those individuals. And there were totaling over 10 firearms.... At that point, we wanted to get the firearms off the street. We did not want them to get out of the apartment ... [and] sold and used for illegal purposes up there.

Id. at 239–240.

Law enforcement officers executed the search warrant at approximately 10:30 p.m. NYPD personnel entered the apartment first and secured its four occupants: Williams, Walker, and two women. Five ATF agents, including D'Antonio and Special Agent Thomas Kelly, and several more NYPD police officers, including Detective Hector Santiago, then entered the apartment. They found Williams and Walker seated and handcuffed on the floor of the living room. Four semi-automatic handguns and ammunition lay beside them. They also observed one of the women “afraid” and “shaking” in the kitchen. Id. at 243.

On entering the apartment and observing the guns, D'Antonio asked Williams “whose firearms they were?” Id. at 244. Williams responded “that the firearms were all his” and “that he didn't want to get his cousin [—Walker—] involved.” Id. Expecting to find closer to ten firearms in the apartment, D'Antonio also asked where the other firearms were, and where the third gun trafficker was. The record indicates no response from Williams to these latter two questions.

Following this brief questioning of Williams, D'Antonio, who is an ATF medic, turned his attention to the frightened woman, whom he “saw was progressively getting a little worse.” Id. at 245. After checking her vital signals, he requested an ambulance. Approximately an hour later, following a search of the apartment, Williams was transported to the police station by D'Antonio.

Once at the station house, D'Antonio took Williams to a small interview room containing a desk and three to four chairs and removed the handcuffs. D'Antonio, in the presence of Kelly, then read Williams, who was “relatively calm,” his Miranda rights, and he signed a form waiving them. Id. at 251. At that point, nearly two hours after Williams had initially been arrested, Kelly left the room and D'Antonio and Santiago proceeded to question him.

According to D'Antonio, Williams then gave a detailed statement. The statement contained information on a range of incriminating activity in connection with his conspiracy with Smith to buy guns in Alabama, transport them to New York, sell them, and divide the proceeds. During the interrogation, Williams did not ask the officers to stop the questioning, nor did he ask to speak to a lawyer.

When asked at the suppression hearing why he did not administer Williams Miranda warnings before questioning him at the apartment, D'Antonio responded, “Because we were still trying to find who we thought was [‘Alabama’]. We thought [he] would still be around and would lead to multiple firearms that were not present at that location.” Id. at 244–245. When asked by defense counsel, “I guess what you're trying to do here is get the guns off the street, right?” D'Antonio responded,

It's a public safety issue at that point. We had information that there was more than four guns, that there was approximately nine guns. And there was one individual and approximately five guns that were not there, so we were trying to mitigate the exposure to any other violence by trying to locate those additional five guns.

Id. at 301.

D'Antonio further testified that he viewed the station house interrogation as “a separate interview from the one [he] conducted in the apartment,” not as “a continuation” of it:

[T]he interview at the [ ] station house was the formal interview of Mr. Williams.... That was where we sat down with the individual, advised him of his rights, gave him the opportunity to either waive them or not and to speak with me if he chose to or not at that point.... [The purpose] was also ... to establish evidence against the defendant at that point. And, also, to attempt to locate the individual that the defendant calls Charles Smith. And to try to locate him and the additional firearms.

Id. at 317–318.

Following his indictment, Williams moved to suppress his station house confession as the product of a two-step interrogation practice proscribed by Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600, 124 S.Ct. 2601, 159 L.Ed.2d 643 (2004). In Seibert arresting officers were taught to intentionally omit Miranda warnings until their interrogation produced a confession, administer the warnings, and then question the defendant based on his pre- Miranda confession, in order to get him to restate it. Id. at 605–06, 124 S.Ct. 2601. Williams argued that D'Antonio was required to administer Miranda warnings prior to questioning him in the apartment and that, under Seibert, his failure to do so required suppression of the later “step two” station house confession.²

The Government contended in response that D'Antonio had not employed the two-step technique barred by Seibert. It further argued that the public safety exception to Miranda justified D'Antonio's asking immediate questions “aimed at determining whether there had indeed been an additional gun-seller on the premises; whether the people responsible for the firearms that the officers had found [were] among those secured in the apartment or [were] instead elsewhere; and where the additional male they had expected to find was.” J.A. at 404; see New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649, 655–56, 104 S.Ct. 2626, 81 L.Ed.2d 550 (1984) (establishing public safety exception to Miranda ).

Initially, the district court offered its view that, while the public safety exception might excuse D'Antonio's questions about the location of the missing guns and the third trafficker, his inquiry about who owned the guns “stepped outside the public safety exception ... into a situation where the agent [wa]s trying to elicit an incriminating statement.” J.A. at 435. Regardless, the district court

[didn't] think the record would support a finding that [ ] D'Antonio pursued a deliberate strategy of trying to elicit incriminating statements that he could then use later to cross-examine the...