United States v. Cruz-Mercedes

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 19-1082
UNITED STATES,
Appellee,
v.
HECTOR ANTONIO CRUZ-MERCEDES,
a/k/a Pedro Colon, a/k/a Hector Cruz,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Douglas P. Woodlock, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Lynch, Stahl, and Lipez,
Circuit Judges.
John F. Palmer for appellant.
Yael T. Epstein, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, with
whom Andrew E. Lelling, United States Attorney, Richard E.
Zuckerman, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, S. Robert
Lyons, Chief, Criminal Appeals & Tax Enforcement Policy Section,
Stanley J. Okula, Jr., Attorney, and Alexander P. Robbins,
Attorney, were on brief for appellee.
December 18, 2019
STAHL, Circuit Judge. During a law enforcement sting
targeting a Stolen Identity Refund Fraud ("SIRF") scheme, Hector
Antonio Cruz-Mercedes was administratively arrested for unlawful
presence in the United States. Following the arrest, he was
fingerprinted during a routine booking. Subsequently, the
government charged him with multiple counts related to his
involvement in the fraud scheme. Prior to trial, Cruz-Mercedes
moved to suppress his booking fingerprints as the "fruit" of what
he contended was an unlawful arrest.
The district court determined that Cruz-Mercedes was
arrested without probable cause prior to his admission of unlawful
presence in the United States. Nonetheless, the court admitted
the fingerprint evidence under the doctrine of inevitable
discovery. Following the district court's ruling, Cruz-Mercedes
conditionally pleaded guilty, reserving the right to appeal the
denial of his suppression motion as to the fingerprint evidence's
admission.
We affirm the district court's denial of the motion to
suppress, albeit on different grounds. Specifically, we find on
these facts that the fingerprints were obtained for routine booking
purposes. Thus, there is no basis in the record of this case for
suppression of the fingerprint evidence, and accordingly we need
not reach the district court's probable cause or inevitable
discovery determinations.
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I. Factual Background
The relevant facts are drawn primarily from the district
court's findings, see United States v. Cruz-Mercedes, 379 F. Supp.
3d 24, 29-34 (D. Mass. 2019) ("Cruz-Mercedes I"),1 "consistent with
record support, with the addition of undisputed facts drawn from
the suppression hearing," United States v. Hernandez-Mieses, 931
F.3d 134, 137 (1st Cir. 2019).
A. The Arrest
In March 2012, the Department of Homeland Security's
Homeland Security Investigations ("HSI") office in Boston received
information from a confidential informant ("CI") about a
fraudulent tax return scheme. According to the CI, the implicated
individuals allegedly used Social Security numbers stolen from
Puerto Rican residents to file false tax returns and fraudulently
obtain refund checks.2 On three separate occasions between April
and May 2012, the CI met with one individual involved in the
scheme, Odalis Castillo-Lopez, with the goal of purchasing
fraudulent refund checks. Subsequently, the CI arranged to meet
1 The district court's opinion is a written explanation of
its September 11, 2018 oral rulings granting in part and denying
in part Cruz-Mercedes's motion to suppress. See Cruz-Mercedes I,
379 F. Supp. 3d at 29-30 & n.1.
2 This type of scheme is known as Stolen Identity Refund
Fraud.
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with Castillo-Lopez on June 7, 2012 under the guise of purchasing
approximately $160,000 in fraudulently obtained checks. Agents
from HSI and the Secret Service established surveillance of the
June 7 meeting with the intention of arresting Castillo-Lopez.
The agents convened in a parking lot adjacent to a McDonald's in
South Attleboro, Massachusetts.
Castillo-Lopez arrived at the McDonald's in a white
Volkswagen Passat accompanied by an unknown passenger, later
identified as Cruz-Mercedes. Alma Martinez, the sister of
Cruz-Mercedes's girlfriend Betty Sanchez, was later identified as
the owner of the Passat. The two men exited the vehicle and
entered the McDonald's, followed closely by Special Agents John
Soares and Michael Riley of HSI and Special Agent Fred Mitchell of
the Secret Service. Soares and Mitchell approached Castillo-Lopez
inside the McDonald's, asked him some questions, escorted him
outside, arrested him, and took him to the Boston HSI office for
processing. The officers seized two cell phones from
Castillo-Lopez during his arrest.
At the same time, Agent Riley briefly conversed with
Cruz-Mercedes inside the McDonald's, but there is no record
evidence of the substance of that conversation. At some point,
Riley escorted Cruz-Mercedes out of the McDonald's, and Special
Agent Cronin of HSI subsequently questioned Cruz-Mercedes in the
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parking lot.3
Outside the McDonald's, Cruz-Mercedes identified himself
to Cronin as "Pedro Colon" and displayed identification documents
bearing that name, including a Massachusetts driver's license and
a Social Security card. Cronin asked Cruz-Mercedes if the
documents were, in fact, his. Cruz-Mercedes responded that his
name was actually Hector Cruz-Mercedes, that he was a native of
the Dominican Republic, and that he had unlawfully entered the
United States. Cronin then formally arrested Cruz-Mercedes for
unlawful presence in the United States. A search of Cruz-Mercedes
incident to that arrest uncovered two cell phones, which were then
seized. At no point during the interaction did law enforcement
advise Cruz-Mercedes of his rights under Miranda v. Arizona, 384
U.S. 436 (1966).
Cruz-Mercedes was then transported to the Boston HSI
3During the suppression hearing, law enforcement witnesses
differed as to whether Cruz-Mercedes was handcuffed by the time he
was taken outside by Riley, or if instead he was handcuffed
following his conversation with Cronin. Soares testified that
Cruz-Mercedes was handcuffed following his formal arrest by
Cronin, while Mitchell testified that Cruz-Mercedes was handcuffed
by Riley inside the McDonald's. Cruz-Mercedes I, 379 F. Supp. 3d
at 31. Riley was not available to testify at the hearing. The
district court said that "Agent Cronin testified that
[Cruz-Mercedes] had been placed in custody before being brought
out to the parking lot to talk to him." Id. However, the record
also reflects that Cronin recalled Cruz-Mercedes leaving the
McDonald's unaccompanied by law enforcement agents. The district
court ultimately declined to resolve this factual dispute, and we
need not do so.
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office for processing. There, Agent Cronin created an alien file
for Cruz-Mercedes, who had not previously encountered immigration
authorities and thus had no file. Cronin fingerprinted
Cruz-Mercedes and placed the fingerprint exemplars into his alien
file.
B. Investigation of the SIRF Scheme
Agents impounded the Passat and transported it to the
garage in Boston's O'Neill Federal Building. There, Mitchell and
Soares searched the vehicle and discovered an envelope tucked into
the headliner above the driver's seat containing ten United States
Treasury checks. The envelope also contained a list of individuals
and their personally identifiable information, including names,
dates of birth, and Social Security numbers corresponding to the
payees of the checks.
The search also uncovered a personal check and a bank
deposit slip listing the associated checking account as belonging
to "Anna Cruz," later identified as Cruz-Mercedes's aunt. Through
text messages, Castillo-Lopez had instructed the CI to deposit
proceeds from cashing the fraudulent Treasury checks into that
bank account, as well as a bank account belonging to Maria
Martinez, the mother of Cruz-Mercedes's girlfriend, Betty Sanchez.
HSI sent the evidence obtained from the Passat to the Massachusetts
State Police for fingerprint testing. Those tests recovered one
latent fingerprint clear enough for identification, which matched
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a fingerprint taken from Cruz-Mercedes during his booking.
As part of his investigation, Agent Soares obtained a
photograph of the real Pedro Colon from the Puerto Rico Registry
of Motor Vehicles and compared it to Cruz-Mercedes, deducing that
the two visibly were not the same person. On August 16, 2012,
Cruz-Mercedes was arrested in Bronx County, New York for the
deceptive use of a Social Security number in violation of
42 U.S.C. § 408(a)(7)(B) (2012),4 based on his falsely identifying
himself to Cronin as Pedro Colon and his producing a Social
Security card bearing that name. Following arraignment,
Cruz-Mercedes was released on a $10,000 bond and ordered to appear
in the District of Massachusetts on or before August 24, 2012.
Instead, he fled the United States and returned to his native
Dominican Republic.
Separately, Soares obtained and executed a warrant to
search one of Castillo-Lopez's seized cell phones on August 9,
2012. In one set of text communications, an unidentified phone
number instructed Castillo-Lopez to make deposits into a bank
account belonging to Maria Martinez. Castillo-Lopez had relayed
those deposit instructions to the CI. Responding to a grand jury
subpoena, the cellular service provider for the unidentified phone
number gave to Soares the unique identifier of the number's
4
All citations to the United States Code are to the official
2012 edition.
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affiliated device, which matched that of one of the cell phones
seized from Cruz-Mercedes on June 7.
Following Cruz-Mercedes's failure to appear in court on
August 24, 2012, Soares attempted to locate him at his last known
address. While there, Soares interviewed Cruz-Mercedes's
girlfriend, Betty Sanchez, who provided two cell phone numbers
belonging to Cruz-Mercedes. One of the provided numbers was the
same phone number that directed Castillo-Lopez to make bank
deposits. Relying on that information and the unique identifier
provided by the cellular provider, on November 9, 2012, Soares
obtained a search warrant for one of Cruz-Mercedes's seized cell
phones. The resulting search confirmed that the number associated
with the device matched the phone number that had provided
Castillo-Lopez with deposit instructions.
II. Procedural Background
On February 26, 2014, a grand jury in the District of
Massachusetts indicted Cruz-Mercedes on twenty counts related to
the SIRF scheme, one count for fraudulent use of a Social Security
number, and one count for failure to appear on August 24, 2012.5
5Altogether, the indictment contained: ten counts of
conversion of government property under 18 U.S.C. § 641; one count
of money laundering under 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(3)(B); one count of
conspiracy to commit money laundering under 18 U.S.C. § 1956(h);
eight counts of aggravated identity theft under 18 U.S.C. § 1028A;
one count of fraudulent use of a Social Security number under 42
U.S.C. § 408(a)(7)(B); and one count of failure to appear on August
24, 2012 under 18 U.S.C. § 3146.
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Cruz-Mercedes was arrested in the Dominican Republic on January
25, 2017 and subsequently extradited to the United States. He
made his initial appearance on December 1, 2017. Cruz-Mercedes I,
379 F. Supp. 3d at 33.
In anticipation of trial, Cruz-Mercedes moved to
suppress all evidence obtained as a result of his June 7, 2012
arrest. Id. He argued that his arrest was unlawful because it
was unsupported by probable cause and that the relevant evidence
constituted the fruits of an unlawful seizure requiring
suppression under Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963).
Cruz-Mercedes I, 379 F. Supp. 3d at 33. The district court held
a suppression hearing on August 29, 2018. Id.
On September 11, 2018, the district court determined
that Cruz-Mercedes was under de facto arrest when he was removed
from the McDonald's and questioned by Cronin in the parking lot
without a Miranda warning. Id. at 40 & n.15. The district court
also found that law enforcement agents lacked probable cause to
arrest Cruz-Mercedes until he answered Cronin's interrogation with
his true identity and unlawful presence in the country. Id. at
39. The district court suppressed those responses as both fruits
of an unlawful arrest under the Fourth Amendment and violative of
Miranda under the Fifth Amendment but admitted Cruz-Mercedes's
initial false identification as Pedro Colon under the booking
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exception to Miranda.6 Id. at 40-41 & n.16. Though also
determining that Cruz-Mercedes's booking fingerprints were
suppressible as fruit of an unlawful arrest, the district court
reasoned that law enforcement inevitably would have arrested and
fingerprinted Cruz-Mercedes even without the unlawful arrest and
interrogation on June 7.7 Id. at 41-42. The district court
therefore admitted the fingerprint evidence pursuant to the
doctrine of inevitable discovery. Id.
On September 13, 2018, Cruz-Mercedes entered a
conditional guilty plea, reserving the right to appellate review
of the fingerprint evidence's admissibility. Id. at 29 n.1,
33-34. On January 9, 2019, the district court sentenced Cruz-
Mercedes to imprisonment of 36 months and one day and ordered that
he pay restitution of $34,800 and a mandatory assessment of $2,200
and that he be deported following his release. Id. at 34. This
timely appeal followed.
6 The booking exception permits "questions to secure the
biographical data necessary to complete booking or pretrial
services" that are "requested for record-keeping purposes only."
Pennsylvania v. Muniz, 496 U.S. 582, 601 (1990) (internal quotation
marks omitted).
7 Specifically, the district court determined that admissible
evidence would have led agents to investigate Anna Cruz, Maria
Martinez, and Betty Sanchez, who in turn would have identified
Cruz-Mercedes. Cruz-Mercedes I, 379 F. Supp. 3d at 42. Thus, the
district court said that standard database searches then would
have revealed Cruz-Mercedes not to be Pedro Colon, giving law
enforcement probable cause to arrest Cruz-Mercedes for fraudulent
use of a Social Security number and allowing them to obtain his
fingerprints lawfully. Id.
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III. Discussion
A. The Exclusionary Rule's Applicability to Booking
Fingerprints
"In reviewing the denial of a motion to suppress, [this]
court accepts the district court's 'factual findings to the extent
that they are not clearly erroneous,' and 'review[s] its legal
conclusions de novo.'" United States v. Davis, 909 F.3d 9, 16
(1st Cir. 2018) (second alteration in original) (quoting
United States v. Sanchez, 612 F.3d 1, 4 (1st Cir. 2010)). We
assume arguendo that the district court correctly determined that
Cruz-Mercedes was placed under de facto arrest without probable
cause when he was removed from the McDonald's. We proceed to
review de novo the district court's legal conclusion that the
defendant's fingerprints are subject to suppression under the
exclusionary rule.
The Fourth Amendment protects "[t]he right of the people
to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures," but "contains no provision
expressly precluding the use of evidence obtained in violation of
its commands." Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1, 10 (1995) (citing
United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 906 (1984)); see U.S. Const.
amend. IV. The Supreme Court long ago recognized the exclusionary
rule in response to the perniciousness of unlawfully obtained
evidence. See Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914)
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(adopting the exclusionary rule); Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961)
(applying the exclusionary rule to the states).
The exclusionary rule has traditionally barred
from trial physical, tangible materials
obtained either during or as a direct result
of an unlawful invasion.
Wong Sun, 371 U.S. at 485. While that prohibition reaches evidence
obtained through a direct Fourth Amendment violation and the
derivative "fruit of the poisonous tree," the Court has
consistently rejected the presence of a causal relationship
between police misconduct and the obtaining of the relevant
evidence as a litmus test for the rule's applicability. See
Utah v. Strieff, 136 S. Ct. 2056, 2061 (2016); Herring v.
United States, 555 U.S. 135, 140 (2009) (citing Illinois v. Gates,
462 U.S. 213, 223 (1983)); Wong Sun, 371 U.S. at 487-88. Rather,
the operative inquiry is whether "the interest protected by the
constitutional guarantee that has been violated would . . . be
served by suppression of the evidence obtained." Strieff,
136 S. Ct. at 2061 (quoting Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 593
(2006)).
Under the particular factual circumstances of two
cases - Hayes v. Florida, 470 U.S. 811 (1985), and Davis v.
Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721 (1969) - the Supreme Court has held that
the exclusionary rule required suppression of fingerprint
evidence. The suppression of fingerprint evidence in both cases
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hinged upon the undisputed facts of police officers' obtaining the
challenged fingerprints through an "investigative detention,"
without probable cause, for "investigative purposes" related to a
specific crime. Hayes, 470 U.S. at 814-16; see Davis, 394 U.S. at
726-28. The Court's focus on the criminal context and
investigatory motivation behind law enforcement's obtaining of the
fingerprint evidence in both cases suggests that the exclusionary
rule does not block routine booking fingerprints taken for
administrative purposes. See Hayes, 470 U.S. at 814-16; Davis,
394 U.S. at 726; United States v. Oscar-Torres, 507 F.3d 224, 231
(4th Cir. 2007).
"Certain routine administrative procedures, such as
fingerprinting, photographing, and getting a proper name and
address from the defendant, are incidental events accompanying an
arrest that are necessary for orderly law enforcement and
protection of individual rights." United States v.
Olivares-Rangel, 458 F.3d 1104, 1113 (10th Cir. 2006). Routine
administrative fingerprinting during booking presumptively is not
implicated by the rule that "[t]he indirect fruits of an illegal
search or arrest should be suppressed when they bear a sufficiently
close relationship to the underlying illegality." United States
v. Delgado-Perez, 867 F.3d 244, 256 (1st Cir. 2017) (quoting
New York v. Harris, 495 U.S. 14, 19 (1990)); see United States v.
Dowdell, 595 F.3d 50, 72 (1st Cir. 2010) ("[B]ooking information
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[i]s taken in a routine, nonadversarial setting." (second
alteration in original) (quoting United States v. Haughton, 235 F.
App'x 254, 255 (5th Cir. 2007))).
The "sole purpose" of the exclusionary rule, the Court
has repeatedly held, "is to deter future Fourth Amendment
violations." Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229, 236-37 (2011)
(citing Herring, 555 U.S. at 141 & n.2; Leon, 468 U.S. at 909,
921 n.22; Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 217 (1960)).
Exclusion is "not a personal constitutional right," nor one meant
to "redress the injury" caused by a Fourth Amendment violation.
Id. at 236 (quoting Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 486 (1976)).
The exclusionary rule therefore "applies only where it 'result[s]
in appreciable deterrence.'" Herring, 555 U.S. at 141 (alteration
in original) (quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 909). The inquiry must
also consider the "substantial social costs" generated by the
exclusionary rule. Davis, 564 U.S. at 237 (quoting Leon, 468 U.S.
at 907). The gravity of those costs requires that the rule be
"applicable only . . . where its deterrence benefits outweigh its
substantial social costs." Strieff, 136 S. Ct. at 2061 (alteration
in original) (quoting Hudson, 547 U.S. at 591).
Broad suppression of fingerprints taken for
administrative purposes following unlawful arrests would be
disproportionately costly. That is because the effect of
fingerprinting during routine booking is to enforce the
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uncontroversial proposition that "[i]n every criminal case," even
those following unlawful arrests, "it is known and must be known
who has been arrested and who is being tried." Hiibel v.
Sixth Jud. Dist. Ct. of Nev., 542 U.S. 177, 191 (2004).
B. There is No Basis for Suppression in this Case
Applying these principles here, on this record, we
conclude that the fingerprint evidence is not subject to
suppression. In reviewing a district court's denial of a motion
to suppress, "[w]e assess questions of fact . . . for clear error."
United States v. Oquendo-Rivas, 750 F.3d 12, 16 (1st Cir. 2014).
Under clear error review, we "view the facts in the light most
favorable to the district court's ruling on the motion."
United States v. Candelario-Santana, 834 F.3d 8, 18 (1st Cir.
2016). Accordingly, "[s]o long as 'any reasonable view of the
evidence supports it,' [this court] will uphold the denial of the
motion to suppress." Id. (second alteration in original) (quoting
United States v. Molina-Gómez, 781 F.3d 13, 18 (1st Cir. 2015)).
Further, this court may "affirm on any ground appearing in the
record—including one that the judge did not rely on."
United States v. Rivera, 825 F.3d 59, 64 (1st Cir. 2016).
The record of this case shows that the defendant's
fingerprints were obtained pursuant to routine booking procedures.
The district court reasonably found that Cronin "formally arrested
Mr. Cruz-Mercedes for being in the United States unlawfully" based
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on statements Cruz-Mercedes made while under de facto arrest.
Cruz-Mercedes I, 379 F. Supp. 3d at 32. Cruz-Mercedes's statements
about his identity are not suppressible. See United States v.
Sanchez, 817 F.3d 38, 44-45 (1st Cir. 2016) (holding the Miranda
booking exception covers routine booking questions seeking
background information such as the suspect's name); Navarro-Chalan
v. Ashcroft, 359 F.3d 19, 22 (1st Cir. 2004). Cruz-Mercedes's
statement of his unlawful presence in the United States, which the
record indicates was freely made and not a result of the questions
or actions of law enforcement, is also not subject to suppression
here. See Sanchez, 817 F.3d at 44 (stating that freely made
statements are admissible under Miranda); Herring, 555 U.S. at 141
(holding that the exclusionary rule applies only where it
"result[s] in appreciable deterrence" (alteration in original)
(quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 909)); Oscar-Torres, 507 F.3d at 231.
Cruz-Mercedes's admitted unlawful presence rendered him
deportable. See 8 U.S.C. §§ 1182(a)(6)(A)(i), 1227(a)(1).8 Cronin
was authorized to administratively arrest Cruz-Mercedes on that
basis. See id. § 1357(a)(2)9; 8 C.F.R. § 287.5(c) (2012). It is
8 Section 1182(a)(6)(A)(i) provides that "[a]n alien present
in the United States without being admitted . . . is inadmissible."
Section 1227(a)(1) renders deportable aliens who were inadmissible
at entry or are present in the United States in violation of law.
9 Section 1357(a)(2) empowers an immigration officer "to
arrest any alien who in his presence or view is entering or
attempting to enter the United States in violation of any law or
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undisputed, and the district court reasonably found, that Cronin
fingerprinted Cruz-Mercedes at the Boston HSI office pursuant to
routine immigration processing. Cruz-Mercedes I, 379 F. Supp. 3d
at 32.
Cruz-Mercedes does not and cannot successfully argue on
this record that his fingerprints were obtained for any purpose
other than routine booking. Accordingly, the fingerprint evidence
cannot be suppressed under the exclusionary rule. Consequently,
this case does not implicate the holdings of some of our sister
circuits recognizing factual circumstances that render booking
fingerprints suppressible. See, e.g., Oscar-Torres, 507 F.3d 224
(holding booking fingerprints are suppressible only where law
enforcement purposefully exploits an illegal arrest to obtain them
in furtherance of a criminal investigation); Olivares–Rangel, 458
F.3d 1104 (same); United States v. Guevara-Martinez, 262 F.3d 751,
755-56 (8th Cir. 2001) (requiring suppression of fingerprints
"obtained . . . by exploiting [defendant's] unlawful detention"
where there was "no evidence that the fingerprints were obtained
as a matter of course through routine booking procedures").10 We
regulation made in pursuance of law regulating the admission . . .
of aliens," and "to arrest any alien in the United States, if he
has reason to believe that the alien so arrested is in the United
States in violation of any such law or regulation and is likely to
escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest."
10The Ninth Circuit has taken up this question and ruled
along similar lines. See United States v. Garcia-Beltran, 389
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need not and do not resolve these questions in the instant case.
IV. Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district
court's denial of Cruz-Mercedes's motion to suppress the
fingerprint evidence.
F.3d 864, 868 (9th Cir. 2004) (requiring suppression of
fingerprints obtained following the illegal arrest in pursuit of
a criminal investigation unless they were obtained "by 'means
sufficient to have purged the taint of the initial illegality'"
(quoting Guevara-Martinez, 262 F.3d at 755)); but see United States
v. Ortiz-Hernandez, 427 F.3d 567 (9th Cir. 2005) (suppressing
fingerprints obtained following an illegal arrest under
Garcia-Beltran but compelling defendant to submit to rebooking and
fingerprinting upon new federal criminal charge).
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