USA v. Fernandez, No. 21-50283 (5th Cir. 2022)
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A grand jury indicted Defendant for being an unlawful user of a controlled substance in possession of a firearm. Defendant moved to suppress the statements he made to the police. The district court granted Defendant’s motion to suppress in part and denied it in part. At a bench trial, the district court found Defendant guilty and later sentenced him to a within-guidelines term of 10 months of imprisonment and three years of supervised release.
The Fifth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that here, the record does not show that the officers confronted Defendant with his prewarning statements to deliberately circumvent Miranda. Instead, they “merely responded to evidence” that they acquired while investigating Defendant’s claim that he was being chased. Further, Defendant does not challenge the voluntariness of his pre-arrest statements, nor does he argue that his post-warning statements were involuntary. At oral argument, however, he argued for the first time that he could not have knowingly and voluntarily waived his Miranda rights because he was “delusional.” But Defendant conceded at oral argument that voluntariness was not the “thrust” of his brief before the district court. Generally, arguments not raised before the district court are waived and will not be considered on appeal. That applies where, as here, a party “fail[s] to raise [an argument] in its opening brief. Thus, any argument concerning voluntariness is waived.
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