United States v. Bryon Quackenbush ( 2018 )

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JUN 28 2018
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 17-10210
Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No.
2:14-cr-00079-KJD-PAL-1
v.
BRYON QUACKENBUSH, MEMORANDUM*
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Nevada
Kent J. Dawson, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted June 13, 2018
San Francisco, California
Before: SCHROEDER, EBEL,** and OWENS, Circuit Judges.
Defendant Bryon Quackenbush appeals the district court’s denial of his
motion to suppress statements he made during a law enforcement interview in his
apartment. As the parties are familiar with the facts, we do not recount them here.
We affirm.
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The Honorable David M. Ebel, United States Circuit Judge for the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, sitting by designation.
The Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), adopted
procedural safeguards to guarantee that suspects are advised of certain rights
before a “custodial interrogation.” Id. at 444-45. A defendant is “in custody” for
Miranda purposes if “in light of ‘the objective circumstances of the interrogation,’
a ‘reasonable person [would] have felt he or she was not at liberty to terminate the
interrogation and leave.’” Howes v. Fields, 565 U.S. 499, 509 (2012) (citations
omitted) (alteration in original).
In United States v. Craighead, 539 F.3d 1073 (9th Cir. 2008), we identified
four relevant considerations in determining whether an interrogation at a
defendant’s home was custodial: “(1) the number of law enforcement personnel
and whether they were armed; (2) whether the suspect was at any point restrained,
either by physical force or by threats; (3) whether the suspect was isolated from
others; and (4) whether the suspect was informed that he was free to leave or
terminate the interview, and the context in which any such statements were made.”
Id. at 1084. While we concluded in Craighead that the defendant was in custody
during an interrogation at his home, this case differs from Craighead in at least
four material respects:
First, the interview environment in this case did not have the military
undertone present in Craighead. The defendant in Craighead was a member of the
military—as were many of the officers who came to question him, and he was
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living on an Air Force base, increasing the likelihood that he would not feel free to
leave during questioning. See id. at 1078. Quackenbush was not a member of the
military, and neither were the law enforcement agents who were present during his
interview.
Second, the number and appearance of the officers involved in the
questioning here made the interview less imposing than the one in Craighead.
There were fewer officers involved in the interview in this case. Compare
Craighead, 539 F.3d at 1085. The officers wore plain clothes rather than uniforms
or tactical gear. And the officers’ firearms were concealed and not drawn, whereas
officers involved in the interview in Craighead unholstered their weapons at
various points. Indeed, the magistrate judge and district court credited testimony
from Special Agent Nicholas Bugni that the interactions in this case were low-
intensity throughout the arrest of Quackenbush’s roommate and later interview.
Third, Quackenbush was far less isolated than the defendant in Craighead.
The defendant in Craighead was interviewed in a dark storage room at the back of
his house. Id. at 1087. He was separated from his supervisor who had specifically
come with the search and interview teams to offer emotional support to the
defendant. Id. The door to the storage room was closed. Id. at 1086. And an
armed officer wearing a “raid vest” stood blocking the closed door. Id. Here,
Quackenbush was interviewed in the dining room, in view of his apartment’s open
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front door. And there is no evidence that anyone was barred from entering the
apartment.
Fourth, the statements from law enforcement that the defendant did not need
to answer questions were clearer here than they were in Craighead. The district
court and magistrate judge found that Bugni told Quackenbush he was not under
arrest, was free to leave, and did not need to answer questions.1 “We have
consistently held that a defendant is not in custody when officers tell him that he is
not under arrest and is free to leave at any time.” United States v. Bassignani, 575
F.3d 879, 886 (9th Cir. 2009). We observed in Craighead that although the
defendant was told he was free to go, the circumstances of the interview and
number of different agencies involved in the search of his home left the defendant
justifiably concerned that the one officer who told him that he was not under arrest
and that his statements were voluntary did not speak for the other officers.
Craighead, 539 F.3d at 1088-89. There was no such cause for concern here.
Given the totality of the circumstances, Quackenbush was not in custody
during his interview with Bugni. Therefore, no Miranda warnings were needed,
1
While Quackenbush testified at an evidentiary hearing that Bugni told him
he was free to remain silent only by following his roommate to jail, Bugni
repeatedly denied that he had conditioned the statement that Quackenbush did not
need to answer questions. There was no clear error in the magistrate judge’s and
district court’s decisions to credit Bugni’s testimony on this issue.
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and the district court correctly denied Quackenbush’s motion to suppress. See
Stansbury v. California, 511 U.S. 318, 322 (1994) (per curiam).
AFFIRMED.
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