United States v. Tyrone Dale ( 2012 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 11-4986
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff – Appellee,
v.
TYRONE DALE,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
Maryland, at Baltimore. Richard D. Bennett, District Judge.
(1:10-cr-00144-RDB-1)
Submitted: August 23, 2012 Decided: September 12, 2012
Before KING, KEENAN, and WYNN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Joseph M. Owens, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellant. Rod J.
Rosenstein, United States Attorney, Clinton J. Fuchs, Assistant
United States Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Tyrone Dale appeals from his convictions for robbery,
possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and possession of
a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence. On appeal, he
raises various claims. We affirm.
I.
First, Dale challenges the denial of his motion to
suppress his confession and certain physical evidence. Dale
contends that his arrest was improper and that his confession
was physically coerced. However, Dale admits that the success
of either claim depends upon a finding that the Government
witnesses perjured themselves at the suppression hearing.
Following the denial of a motion to suppress, we
construe the evidence in the light most favorable to the
Government and review the district court’s legal conclusions de
novo and its factual findings for clear error. United States v.
Foster, 634 F.3d 243, 246 (4th Cir. 2011). A factual finding is
clearly erroneous if this court “on the entire evidence is left
with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been
committed.” United States v. Harvey, 532 F.3d 326, 337 (4th
Cir. 2008) (internal quotation marks omitted). We “defer to a
district court’s credibility determinations, for it is the role
of the district court to observe witnesses and weigh their
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credibility during a pre-trial motion to suppress.” United
States v. Abu Ali, 528 F.3d 210, 232 (4th Cir. 2008) (internal
quotation marks omitted).
Here, the district court rejected Dale’s testimony and
found that the officers’ assertions were credible. Dale
presents nothing on appeal to support his version of the facts
except his own self-serving statement. Because Dale has not
shown that the district court’s finding was clearly erroneous,
we affirm the district court’s denial of the motion to suppress.
II.
Dale next asserts that the fingerprint cards from his
prior convictions were improperly admitted in violation of the
Confrontation Clause because he did not have the opportunity to
cross examine the person who obtained the prints and prepared
the card. * He argues that the fingerprint cards were testimonial
in nature, citing Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 557 U.S. 305
(2009), and Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004).
We review a Confrontation Clause objection to an
evidentiary ruling de novo. United States v. Summers, 666 F.3d
*
The cards contained fingerprints, demographic information,
charge information, and a tracking number. At trial, an expert
testified that the fingerprints on the cards and Dale’s
fingerprints matched, which was probative of whether Dale was a
convicted felon.
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192, 197 (4th Cir. 2011), petition for cert. filed (May 31,
2012). “A statement must be ‘testimonial’ to be excludable
under the Confrontation Clause.” United States v. Udeozor, 515
F.3d 260, 268 (4th Cir. 2008). Crawford explicitly states that
routinely kept business records are not testimonial evidence.
541 U.S. at 56. In Melendez-Diaz, the Supreme Court applied
Crawford, finding that it precluded the admission into evidence
of “certificates of analysis” detailing the results of forensic
testing performed on seized cocaine. However, the Supreme Court
reaffirmed Crawford’s holding that traditional business records
are not testimonial evidence: “Business and public records are
generally admissible absent confrontation not because they
qualify under an exception to the hearsay rules, but because —
having been created for the administration of an entity’s
affairs and not for the purpose of establishing or proving some
fact at trial — they are not testimonial.” 557 U.S. at 324; see
also Michigan v. Bryant, 131 S. Ct. 1143, 1155 (2011) (finding
out-of-court statements are testimonial when they describe past
conduct and are made for the purpose of creating a record for
trial).
Here, the non-testifying official took fingerprints
and demographic information from Dale. The official did no
analysis and came to no conclusions. The cards are compiled
routinely and maintained for 100 years for identification
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purposes. The cards serve no prosecutorial function on their
own and do not (without additional testimony and analysis)
implicate Dale in criminal activity. The cards contain only
ministerial, objective observations. As such, the relevant
information on the cards was not “testimonial” in nature and,
therefore, did not implicate the Confrontation Clause. See
United States v. Weiland, 420 F.3d 1062, 1075 (9th Cir. 2005)
(“[F]ingerprinting and photographing a suspect . . . are the
types of routine and unambiguous matters to which the public
records hearsay exception . . . is designed to apply.”); see
also United States v. Cabrera-Beltran, 660 F.3d 742, 752 (4th
Cir. 2011) (holding that border records regarding the license
numbers of vehicles crossing the border are routine and
mechanical, and concern unambiguous factual matters and, as
such, are nonadversarial and not testimonial), cert. denied, 132
S. Ct. 1935 (2012).
III.
Dale next contends that the Government failed to prove
that he possessed a “firearm” under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)
(2006), because the firearm in question was inoperable.
However, he concedes that this court has found that an
inoperable firearm is nonetheless a “firearm” for purposes of
the statute. See United States v. Williams, 445 F.3d 724, 743
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n.3 (4th Cir. 2006); see also United States v. Brown, 117 F.3d
353, 355 (7th Cir. 1997) (collecting cases holding that firearm
need not be operable to meet definition of firearm under 18
U.S.C. § 921(a)(3) (2006)). Accordingly, this claim is without
merit.
IV.
Finally, Dale contends that evidence that the firearm
was manufactured outside the state where he possessed it was
insufficient to satisfy the interstate commerce nexus required
by § 922(g). However, he admits that this evidence is
sufficient under existing precedent. See Williams, 445 F.3d at
740. As such, the claim fails.
Based on the foregoing, we affirm Dale’s convictions.
We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal
contentions are adequately presented in the materials before the
court and argument would not aid the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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