United States v. Ramirez, No. 18-10429 (9th Cir. 2020)
Annotate this CaseThe Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress in an action where defendant entered a conditional guilty plea to receipt and distribution of material involving the sexual exploitation of minors. The panel held that, under the warrant and the law established by Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 692 (1981), the agents had no authority to seize defendant or search his car when they arrived to execute the warrant, because neither was at the residence. In this case, the agents manufactured the authority to seize them by falsely claiming to be police officers responding to a burglary to lure defendant home. Furthermore, by luring defendant home, the agents' successful deceit enabled them to obtain incriminating statements from defendant and evidence from his car and person. The panel held that, under the particular facts of this case, the agents' use of deceit to seize and search Ramirez violated the Fourth Amendment. The panel remanded for further proceedings.
Court Description: Criminal Law. The panel reversed the district court’s denial of a suppression motion, and remanded for further proceedings, in a case in which the defendant entered a conditional guilty plea to receipt and distribution of material involving the sexual exploitation of minors. FBI agents investigating child pornography offenses obtained a warrant to search the defendant’s residence and any vehicle registered to him located at or near the residence. Under the warrant and the law established by Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 692 (1981), the agents had no authority to seize the defendant or search his car when they arrived to execute the warrant, because neither was at the residence. The agents manufactured the authority to seize them by falsely claiming to be police officers responding to a burglary to lure the defendant home. By luring the defendant home, the agents’ successful deceit enabled them to obtain incriminating statements from the defendant and evidence from his car and person. The panel held that, under the particular facts of this case, the agents’ use of deceit to seize and search the defendant violated the Fourth Amendment. Balancing the Government’s justification for its actions against the intrusion into the defendant’s Fourth Amendment interests, the panel concluded that the Government’s conduct was UNITED STATES V. RAMIREZ 3 clearly unreasonable. The panel rejected the Government’s argument that the agents never seized the defendant, and wrote that the seizures of the defendant and the electronic devices in his car were the direct result of the FBI agents’ unreasonable ruse. The panel held that the Government failed to carry its burden to show that the defendant’s incriminating statements, made after an agent revealed the true purpose of the investigation and asked to speak with him, were not obtained through exploitation of illegality rather than by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint. Dissenting, Judge Collins wrote that the core Fourth Amendment requirements of probable cause and a particularized warrant were satisfied with respect to a search of the defendant’s car for child pornography; that the agent’s subsequent use of the ruse only affected the manner in which the search fulfilled the condition that the car be searched while it was at the defendant’s house, which is not one that was required by the Fourth Amendment; that even assuming that a brief initial pat-down of the defendant was an unconstitutional seizure, the defendant’s subsequent confession was in no sense a fruit of that momentary frisk; and that the defendant was not seized during his subsequent interview with two FBI agents that was conducted in his own home, so his confession cannot be suppressed on the theory that it was a fruit of any such alleged seizure. 4 UNITED STATES V. RAMIREZ
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