FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
December 20, 2007
Elisabeth A. Shumaker
PUBLISH Clerk of Court
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
TENTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
No. 06-5223
v.
SHEQUITA REVELS,
Defendant-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Oklahoma
(D.C. No. 06-CR-159-HDC-2)
Richard A. Friedman, Appellate Section, Criminal Division, United States
Department of Justice, Washington, D.C. (David E. O’Meilia, United States
Attorney; Janet S. Reincke, Assistant United States Attorney, Tulsa, Oklahoma,
with him on the briefs), for Plaintiff-Appellant.
J. Lance Hopkins, CJA Panel Member, Tahlequah, Oklahoma, for Defendant-
Appellee.
Before LUCERO, BALDOCK, and GORSUCH, Circuit Judges.
LUCERO, Circuit Judge.
In this interlocutory appeal, the United States seeks review of a district
court’s pretrial order suppressing several incriminating statements made by
Shequita Revels as having been obtained in violation of Miranda v. Arizona, 384
U.S. 436 (1966). The sole issue before us is whether Revels was “in custody” at
the time she made the statements at issue. Because we conclude that a reasonable
person in Revels’ position would have considered her freedom of movement to be
restricted to a degree consistent with formal arrest, we hold that Revels was in
custody for Fifth Amendment purposes and that she should have been advised of
her Miranda rights. Exercising jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3731, we take the
district court’s view of the matter and AFFIRM its decision to suppress the
incriminating statements.
I
A
Based on information provided by a confidential informant, officers from
the Tulsa, Oklahoma Police Department (“TPD”) and the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (“ATF”) obtained a warrant to search a
residence belonging to Marco Dewon Murphy and his girlfriend, Shequita Revels.
The informant indicated that Murphy possessed a large amount of cocaine and
that he was selling the drug from the joint residence. 1 On August 2, 2006, at
approximately 6:00 a.m., seven officers from TPD and ATF gathered to execute
the search warrant at the couple’s home. When no one answered the door after
1
Murphy was the only individual identified as a target in the search
warrant.
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officers knocked and announced their presence, the police forcibly entered the
residence. Once inside, the officers encountered Murphy and Revels, whom they
immediately handcuffed and placed face down on the floor in the hall near the
main living room. The officers then found a young girl and a small infant in
separate bedrooms in the house. As soon as the officers had located all of the
occupants of the home and otherwise secured the scene, they began their search
for contraband.
Having been roused from her bedroom in the early hours of the morning,
Revels was dressed only in her underwear when officers first detained her. After
approximately ten minutes of searching the home, however, the police removed
Revels’ handcuffs and escorted her to a rear bedroom where they permitted her to
dress. They also allowed Revels to care temporarily for her infant, who required
feeding through a tube inserted into his stomach. Once Revels had dressed
herself and cared for the child, an officer escorted her back to the living room,
where she remained with Murphy and the two children for a short time while the
officers continued their search of the residence. Revels was not again placed in
handcuffs at this point in time.
During the course of the search, officers seized several items of potential
evidence. They found 251 grams of cocaine powder and $6,014 in cash in an
open safe located in one of the rooms. They also discovered approximately 45
grams of crack cocaine hidden in a coffee can with a false bottom, as well as
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paraphernalia used in manufacturing crack cocaine. Finally, officers found a
loaded semiautomatic handgun “lying on the headboard” of the bed that Revels
and Murphy shared.
After approximately 30 minutes, the officers had substantially completed
their search efforts and uncovered all of the material evidence. At that time, the
officers decided to separate the two adults in order to interview each. According
to ATF Special Agent McFadden, the police intended to interview Revels and
Murphy to determine whether they “would be willing to cooperate with the
investigation.” Revels was interviewed first. Agent McFadden and TPD
Detectives Hickey and Henderson escorted her to a bedroom in the rear of the
home, and closed the door behind them. Murphy and the two children remained
in the main living room under the supervision of the other officers. Revels was
free from handcuffs at this time, and had not been told by any of the officers
whether she was under arrest. Each of three officers who took Revels to the back
bedroom was armed, but none had a weapon drawn. Inside the bedroom, there
were no chairs or other places to sit; Revels and the officers stood during the ten
to twelve minutes of questioning.
Revels’ questioning began with Agent McFadden’s explanation that the
police were executing a state search warrant at the residence and that, during their
search, they had discovered narcotics and a loaded firearm. Agent McFadden
then asked Revels whether she “would be willing to cooperate” with their
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investigation. Revels answered the agent’s question with several incriminating
statements. She stated that she knew Murphy was selling drugs from the
residence and that Murphy had recently obtained the handgun to protect her and
the children from the threat of robbery. 2 After Revels offered these initial
responses to the officer’s question, Agent McFadden and Detective Henderson
left the rear bedroom for a short time; both Revels and Detective Hickey remained
behind. Detective Henderson then returned to the room a few moments later,
conspicuously carrying a bag of cocaine that had been seized during the officers’
search of the residence. According to Detective Henderson, Revels responded to
this action by making another incriminating statement. She stated: “Oh, my god
I didn’t know he had that much.” 3 Indisputably, the officers did not advise Revels
of her Miranda rights at any time before or during this questioning.
Once the officers had completed their interview with Revels, they escorted
her back to the main living room and took Murphy to the bedroom for a similar
interview. Around that same time, a family member arrived and was asked to
care for the two young children. The officers then told Revels that she was under
arrest, handcuffed her, and transported her, along with Murphy, to the police
2
For purposes of this appeal, the government agrees that Revels’ response
to Agent McFadden’s question consisted of incriminating statements.
3
The government also admits that Revels’ response to Detective
Henderson’s action with the bag of cocaine constituted an incriminating
statement.
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station. Only upon arriving at the station was Revels advised of her rights under
Miranda, which prompted her to immediately request legal counsel.
B
On September 7, 2006, a federal grand jury indicted Revels on three counts:
(1) possession with intent to distribute five grams or more of crack cocaine in
violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) & (b)(1)(B)(iii); (2) possession of cocaine with
intent to manufacture crack cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) &
(b)(1)(C); and (3) possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking
crime in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)(i). Revels entered a plea of not
guilty to all charges.
Prior to her scheduled trial, Revels filed a motion to suppress the
incriminating statements that she made while officers interviewed her in the rear
bedroom of her home on the day of her arrest. She argued that the government
had obtained the statements in violation of her Fifth Amendment right against
self-incrimination, as articulated by the Supreme Court in Miranda. Specifically,
Revels contended that because she had been subjected to a custodial interrogation
and had not been advised of her rights under Miranda prior to the interview, the
statements she made were not voluntary within the meaning of the Fifth
Amendment. See 384 U.S. at 444-45. The government responded to the motion
by asserting that Revels was not in custody at the time of the interview and that
she had not been interrogated by the officers.
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At the suppression hearing, the district court received testimony from both
Agent McFadden and Detective Henderson. Finding that the search had been
completed and the incriminating evidence uncovered before the officers escorted
Revels to the rear bedroom for an interview, the court concluded that Revels was
subjected to a custodial interrogation for purposes of the Fifth Amendment. It
ordered that because the officers had not advised Revels of her rights under
Miranda, her incriminating statements would be suppressed and could not be
admitted at trial.
In seeking reconsideration, the government argued that Revels was subject
only to an “investigative detention” at the time of her interview, and that she was
therefore not “in custody” for Fifth Amendment purposes. The district court
denied the government’s motion for reconsideration, and the government
subsequently brought this timely interlocutory appeal under 18 U.S.C. § 3731.
II
“It is well established that ‘police officers are not required to administer
Miranda warnings to everyone whom they question.’” United States v. Erving L.,
147 F.3d 1240, 1246 (10th Cir. 1998) (quoting Oregon v. Mathiason, 429 U.S.
492, 495 (1977)). Rather, as the Supreme Court held in Miranda, police officers
must so advise individuals only when they are subject to a “custodial
interrogation.” 384 U.S. at 444-45. Miranda thus established a two-part analysis
for determining when the prescribed procedural safeguards must be provided: (1)
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the individual must be in custody, and (2) the individual must be subjected to
questioning that meets the legal definition of interrogation. United States v.
Perdue, 8 F.3d 1455, 1463 (10th Cir. 1993). Because the government concedes on
appeal that the police “interrogated” Revels when they questioned her in the rear
bedroom, we need only determine whether Revels was “in custody” when she
made the incriminating statements at issue.
A suspect is in custody for purposes of Miranda if the suspect has been
“deprived of [her] freedom of action in any significant way.” 384 U.S. at 444.
Such a deprivation occurs when the “suspect’s freedom of action is curtailed to a
‘degree associated with formal arrest.’” Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 440
(1984) (quoting California v. Beheler, 463 U.S. 1121, 1125 (1983) (per curiam)).
Our analysis of the circumstances is an objective one; we ask whether
“a reasonable [person] in the suspect’s position would have understood [her]
situation . . . as the functional equivalent of formal arrest.” Id. at 442. We
review de novo the district court’s determination that an individual is in custody,
but we give deference to the district court’s findings of fact and to its credibility
determinations. United States v. Rogers, 391 F.3d 1165, 1169 (10th Cir. 2004);
see also Erving L., 147 F.3d at 1246.
A
Before applying a reasonable person inquiry to the facts, we first address
the government’s primary argument against suppression. According to the
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government, the officers held Revels under a permissible “investigative
detention” when they questioned her in the rear bedroom, and therefore did not
have a duty to advise Revels of her Miranda rights prior to their interrogation. By
characterizing Revels’ detention in Fourth Amendment terms (i.e., “investigative
detention”), the government asks us to conflate Miranda’s traditional “in custody”
inquiry with the analysis we use to determine whether the “seizure” of a criminal
suspect is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. As a matter of precedent,
however, both the Supreme Court, in Berkemer, and this court, in United States v.
Perdue, have definitively foreclosed any attempt to equate the two analytically
distinct inquiries. See Berkemer, 468 U.S. at 435-42; Perdue, 8 F.3d at 1461-66.
In Berkemer, the Supreme Court held that motorists subjected to garden-
variety traffic stops—reasonable seizures within the meaning of the Fourth
Amendment—are not entitled to Miranda warnings. Berkemer, 468 U.S. at 440.
In reaching this determination, the Court applied the standard Miranda inquiry,
concluding that “the atmosphere surrounding an ordinary traffic stop is
substantially less ‘police-dominated’ than that surrounding the kinds of
interrogation at issue in Miranda itself . . . .” Id. at 438-39. It acknowledged that
when compared to formal interrogations, ordinary traffic stops are “comparatively
nonthreatening” and “noncoercive” in character. Id. at 440. The Court also
recognized, however, that when a given traffic stop becomes more coercive than a
routine traffic stop, police may well be required to advise a suspect of his
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Miranda rights even though the underlying seizure of the individual might qualify
as a reasonable investigative detention under the Fourth Amendment. See id. (“If
a motorist who has been detained pursuant to a traffic stop thereafter is subjected
to treatment that renders him ‘in custody’ for practical purposes, he will be
entitled to the full panoply of protections prescribed by Miranda.”). In drawing a
distinction between an ordinary traffic stop and those detentions where coercion
is present, the Supreme Court implicitly, if not explicitly, appreciated a critical
fact: Although some detentions not rising to the level of a formal arrest may be
reasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, those same detentions
may nonetheless create the custodial situation in which Miranda was designed to
operate.
In Perdue, we faced the precise scenario contemplated by the Supreme
Court in Berkemer and unequivocally recognized the analytical distinction
between the Fourth Amendment reasonableness analysis and Miranda’s in custody
inquiry. We inquired in Perdue whether several incriminating statements made by
a criminal defendant had been admitted in violation of either the defendant’s
Fourth or Fifth Amendment rights. 8 F.3d at 1464. While executing a search
warrant in a remote area, officers observed a vehicle approach the rural property
where the search was being conducted and then immediately reverse direction
upon spotting the police. Id. at 1458. Aware that the search had uncovered
weapons, two of the officers present stopped the vehicle and ordered the
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occupants, at gunpoint, to exit and lie face down on the ground. Id. With their
guns drawn and the driver lying prone on the road, one of the officers began to
question the driver, Perdue, who responded to the officer’s inquiries by making
several incriminating statements. Id. at 1459.
We held on appeal that the officers’ detention of Perdue was reasonable
under the Fourth Amendment as a lawful investigative detention. Id. at 1463.
Both the officers’ concerns for their own safety and their reasonable suspicion
that Perdue had committed a crime justified the intrusiveness of their actions for
purposes of the Fourth Amendment. Id. Notwithstanding our Fourth Amendment
ruling, we also held, for purposes of the Fifth Amendment, that the officers’ very
same actions in detaining Perdue “created the ‘custodial’ situation envisioned by
Miranda and its progeny.” Id. at 1464. Noting that “[a]ny reasonable person in
Mr. Perdue’s position would have felt ‘completely at the mercy of the police’” at
the time of his detention, we concluded that Perdue was in custody as a matter of
law when he made the incriminating statements. Id. at 1465 (quoting Berkemer,
468 U.S. at 438). We thus recognized, consistent with Berkemer, that whether an
individual is subject to a lawful investigative detention within the meaning of the
Fourth Amendment does not necessarily answer the separate question of whether
a suspect is in custody for purposes of Miranda.
In short, both Berkemer and Perdue establish that merely because a
particular police-citizen encounter can be neatly packaged under the label
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“investigatory detention” for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, it does not
necessarily follow that police are freed of their obligation to inform the citizen of
her rights under Miranda in appropriate cases. Consequently, and counter to the
government’s argument, whether the police subjected Revels to a lawful
investigative detention in this case is not dispositive of whether the officers
should have advised Revels of her Miranda rights. See Berkemer, 468 U.S. at
441-42 (“[T]he only relevant inquiry is how a reasonable man in the suspect’s
position would have understood his situation.”); see also Perdue, 8 F.3d at 1463-
66; United States v. Smith, 3 F.3d 1088, 1097 (7th Cir. 1993).
B
We turn then to the proper question raised—whether, within the meaning of
the Fifth Amendment, Revels was in custody at the time she made the
incriminating statements at issue. Taking into account the totality of the
circumstances, we must decide whether a reasonable person in Revels’ position
would have understood her freedom of action to have been restricted to a degree
consistent with formal arrest. See Berkemer, 468 U.S. at 442. In engaging in this
analysis, we ignore the subjective views of the interrogating officers and focus
only on what a reasonable person would have understood from the situation. See
Stansbury v. California, 511 U.S. 318, 323 (1994) (per curiam). Several relevant
factors inform our fact-specific analysis, including: (1) whether the
circumstances demonstrated a police-dominated atmosphere; (2) whether the
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nature and length of the officers’ questioning was accusatory or coercive; and (3)
whether the police made Revels aware that she was free to refrain from answering
questions, or to otherwise end the interview. See United States v. Griffin, 7 F.3d
1512, 1518-19 (10th Cir. 1993). Considering these factors in light of the record
before us, we conclude that the officers should have advised Revels about the
procedural safeguards required by Miranda before initiating their questioning.
First, a reasonable person in Revels’ position would have perceived a
police-dominated atmosphere. Relatively early in the morning, at approximately
6:00 a.m., seven police officers abruptly roused Revels and Murphy from their
bedroom after forcibly entering their home. Revels was immediately detained,
restrained in handcuffs, and placed face down on the floor. She was made to sit
under the supervision of officers while police executed the search warrant. Then,
before any questioning began, three male officers separated Revels from her
boyfriend and two children, and escorted her to a rear bedroom for questioning.
Once inside the room, the officers isolated Revels from the other occupants of the
home, and closed the door behind her. For much of the interview, all three of the
officers remained in the room with Revels. Taken together, these facts
demonstrate that the police were unequivocally in control of the circumstances
both before and during Revels’ questioning. See Griffin, 7 F.3d at 1519 (noting
that relevant circumstances for finding custody include “separation of the suspect
from family or colleagues who could offer moral support . . . [and the]
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threatening presence of several officers”); United States v. DiGiacomo, 579 F.2d
1211, 1214 (10th Cir. 1978) (holding that Miranda warnings were required when,
among other things, the “[d]efendant was kept apart from his companion,” and
“was confronted simultaneously by four federal agents”); see also United States v.
Mittel-Carey, 493 F.3d 36, 39-40 (1st Cir. 2007) (finding custody for Miranda
purposes in part because police officers conducted a search of the defendant’s
home at an early hour of the morning and exercised physical control over the
defendant during that search).
That Revels was in her own home at the time of the interview does nothing
to alter our conclusion that this was a police-dominated environment. We accept
that the home is generally a more familiar, comfortable atmosphere than a police
interrogation room. See United States v. Ritchie, 35 F.3d 1477, 1485 (10th Cir.
1994) (“[C]ourts are much less likely to find the circumstances custodial when the
interrogation occurs in familiar or at least neutral surroundings, such as the
suspect’s home.” (quotations omitted)). However, the facts belie any conclusion
that Revels’ home, on the morning of the questioning at issue, was the traditional
comfortable environment that we normally would consider a neutral location for
questioning. The police had recently breached Revels’ front door with force,
handcuffed her, and placed her prone on the hall floor. Officers had also
discovered a substantial amount of evidence relating to the distribution of drugs
while Revels sat under their supervision. Given the temporal proximity of her
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initial detention and the overall development of events that morning, we decline
to accord formalistic significance to the fact that the interrogation occurred in
Revels’ own home. See, e.g., Mittel-Carey, 493 F.3d at 40 (“While an
interrogation in a defendant’s residence, without more, certainly weighs against a
finding of custody, . . . the level of physical control the agents exercised . . .
weighs heavily in the opposite direction.”); Sprotsy v. Buchler, 79 F.3d 635, 641
(7th Cir. 1996) (“More important than the familiarity of the surroundings where
[the defendant] was being held is the degree to which the police dominated the
scene.”); United States v. Griffin, 922 F.2d 1343, 1354-55 (8th Cir. 1990)
(“Questioning which occurs in the suspect’s own home may provide a margin of
comfort, but . . . the setting of the interrogation is not so important to the inquiry
as the question of police domination of that setting.”); see also Orozco v. Texas,
394 U.S. 324, 326-27 (1969) (holding that a suspect within his own residence was
in custody for Miranda purposes). Nor does the limited freedom that the officers
afforded Revels by allowing her to dress herself and tend to her infant alter our
conclusion that the atmosphere in the home was dominated by the police.
Handcuffed or not, Revels reasonably understood that the officers were
unambiguously in control of the events, and that she was not free to leave. See
Griffin, 7 F.3d at 1518-19 (“Where police are in full control of the questioning
environment, custody is more easily found.”).
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Second, the nature of the questioning indicates that Revels was in custody.
Officers purposefully separated Revels from her boyfriend and children and
removed her to a back room. Then, once Revels was inside the room, one of the
officers confronted her with a bag of cocaine that had been seized during the
search. Although she was not questioned directly on point, it is difficult to ignore
the effect that this display of the recently seized drugs had on the tone of the
interrogation. Cf. United States v. Rith, 164 F.3d 1323, 1332 (10th Cir. 1999)
(holding that a suspect “was not in police custody until the point at which he was
confronted with the illegal shotgun”). After being confronted with the drugs in an
accusatory manner, we have no doubt that Revels would have reasonably felt
compelled to cooperate with the police.
Turning to the third factor, the police never indicated to Revels that she
was free to leave or otherwise at liberty to terminate the police questioning.
Although none of the officers expressly told Revels that she was under arrest,
they did not indicate to the contrary. 4 See Griffin, 7 F.3d at 1518 (“[T]he lack of
a police advisement that the suspect is at liberty to decline to answer questions or
free to leave is a significant indication of a custodial detention.”). This is
4
Revels devotes much of her argument to the fact that Agent McFadden
testified at the suppression hearing that Revels was not free to leave at any point
in time. Because Agent McFadden never disclosed this viewpoint to Revels,
however, we decline to consider the agent’s subjective understanding of the
situation. See Stansbury, 511 U.S. at 324 (“It is well settled . . . that a police
officer’s subjective view, . . . if undisclosed, does not bear upon the question
whether the individual is in custody for purposes of Miranda.”).
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particularly significant given that police had just engaged in an intrusive search
warrant operation in Revels’ home and had earlier placed Revels in handcuffs. In
the face of the officers’ dominance of the scene throughout the 30 minutes before
her interview, Revels would have reasonably assumed that she was not free to
leave her home or otherwise decline an interview with the officers.
We also consider it significant that the district court specifically found that
the search had been completed prior to Revels’ questioning. With the search
concluded, there was little remaining for the officers to do inside the home other
than to formally place Revels and Murphy under arrest. Considering the
extensive discovery of evidence, an arrest was likely and a reasonable person in
Revels’ position would have recognized as much.
Taking the totality of the circumstances into account, we conclude that a
reasonable person in Revels’ position would have considered herself under a
degree of restraint equivalent to formal arrest and that officers should have
extended Miranda advisements prior to their questioning. The undisputed facts
demonstrate that the officers’ actions created the type of coercive environment
that Miranda was designed to address.
III
For the forgoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district court’s decision to
suppress Revels’ statements.
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