United States v. David Brown

443 F. App'x 956
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedNovember 1, 2011
Docket10-6458
StatusUnpublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 443 F. App'x 956 (United States v. David Brown) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. David Brown, 443 F. App'x 956 (6th Cir. 2011).

Opinion

SUTTON, Circuit Judge.

David Brown appeals his conviction and sentence for being a felon in possession of a firearm. We affirm.

I.

When a Glock .40 caliber pistol and a silver necklace disappeared from his home, Jason Helms suspected David Brown was the culprit. Detective Robert Harbison located Brown and brought him to the station for questioning. Harbison read Brown his Miranda rights and, after securing a written waiver, asked him about *958 the robbery. Brown confessed he had taken the gun and traded it for methamphetamine. He promised to try to get the gun back, but he would not disclose who had it.

Two months later, a federal grand jury indicted Brown for being a felon in possession of a firearm. After taking Brown back into custody, Detective Carl Maskew again read Brown his Miranda rights, and Brown again waived his rights in writing. After denying that he knew anything about the robbery, Brown told Maskew a different story: Brown claimed that two other individuals took the gun from Helms’ house and gave it to him. He then traded the gun to his cousin for methamphetamine. Brown again promised to help retrieve the gun.

Before trial, Brown moved to suppress both statements. Finding no evidence that the police “engaged in any sort of threatening or coercive behavior” or that Brown did not understand his rights, the district court denied the motion. The jury convicted Brown, but the district court granted his post-verdict motion for acquittal, holding that the only pieces of evidence linking him to the crime were his uncorroborated confessions, which could not sustain the conviction by themselves. The United States appealed and we reversed, holding that “sufficient independent evidence established] the trustworthiness of Brown’s statements.” United States v. Brown, 617 F.3d 857, 859 (6th Cir.2010).

On remand, the district court concluded that Brown’s three prior state convictions for aggravated burglary made him an armed career criminal, subjecting him to a mandatory minimum sentence of 180 months. 18 U.S.C. § 924(e). Even though Brown’s advisory guidelines range was 210 to 262 months, the district court imposed the mandatory minimum — 180 months.

II.

Corroboration. With respect to his conviction, Brown seeks to relitigate whether sufficient evidence corroborated his confessions, but that ship has sailed. In the first appeal, we held that other evidence adequately corroborated Brown’s confessions, 617 F.3d at 863-64, and if Brown thought our decision “overlooked or misapprehended” any questions “of law or fact,” he could have filed a petition for rehearing. Fed. R.App. P. 40(a). He did not. Nor has Brown identified any change in controlling authority. That decision binds us here.

Suppression of Statements. Brown made two statements to police in which he confessed that, one way or another, he had possessed the gun that was stolen from Helms’ house. Brown made these statements two months apart, and the officers each time read the Miranda warnings to him and secured a written waiver, which “generally produce[s] a virtual ticket of admissibility.” Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600, 609, 124 S.Ct. 2601, 159 L.Ed.2d 643 (2004). Brown nevertheless argues that the district court should have suppressed these statements because his cognitive infirmities and the possibility that he was under the influence of drugs mean that he did not knowingly and intelligently waive his Miranda rights.

The district court found “nothing in the record whatsoever” suggesting that Brown “did not understand his legal rights” or “the gravity of his waiver of those rights,” R. 46 at 12, and Brown has not identified any evidence demonstrating clear error. The only evidence of cognitive impairments that Brown mentions is a psychological evaluation that the Bureau of Prisons performed to assess his competency to stand trial. Although the evaluation states that Brown has some “relatively mild intellectual limitations,” it found no “significant *959 impairment in his ability to comprehend basic information provided to him or to make reasoned decisions based on this information.” Competency Evaluation at 8. The evaluation concluded that Brown was competent to stand trial. The district court found, quite correctly, that the competency evaluation supported rather than undermined the conclusion that Brown knowingly and intelligently waived his Miranda rights. “[T]here is nothing cognitively complex about” the Miranda warnings; this is not Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle after all but the straightforward “advice that one has a right to remain silent and not to talk to the police.” Jackson v. McKee, 525 F.3d 430, 436 (6th Cir.2008). Brown’s mild cognitive limitations do not defeat the waivers.

As to drug use, Brown speculates that his status as an addict and his fidgeting during one of the interviews suggest that he might have been under the influence of methamphetamine when he made the statements. But Detectives Harbison and Maskew testified that Brown did not appear to be under the influence of drugs when they interviewed him. Brown’s speculation — and that is all it is in the absence of any evidence on this score— does not show clear error in the district court’s determination that he knowingly and intelligently waived his Miranda rights.

Brown also argues that his cognitive impairments and possible drug use rendered his waiver, and the confessions themselves, involuntary. But some kind of “coercive police activity” is required to establish that a waiver of Miranda rights, or a confession for that matter, was involuntary. Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157, 167, 169-70, 107 S.Ct. 515, 98 L.Ed.2d 473 (1986). The district court did not find, and Brown has not identified, any coercive or threatening behavior by the officers who took his statements. Brown contends only that he suffered “from a condition or deficiency that impaired his cognitive or volitional capacity,” but that “is never, by itself, sufficient to warrant the conclusion that his confession was involuntary for purposes of due process.” United States v. Newman, 889 F.2d 88, 94 (6th Cir.1989). “[S]ome element of police coercion” remains “necessary.” Id. In the absence of police coercion, we have affirmed the admission of confessions made by defendants who were actually (as opposed to possibly) under the influence of drugs, see, e.g., United States v. Dunn, 269 Fed.Appx. 567, 572-73 (6th Cir.2008); United States v. Chapman, 112 Fed.Appx.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Noble v. Burt
E.D. Michigan, 2022
United States v. David Brown
957 F.3d 679 (Sixth Circuit, 2020)
United States v. Jay Nagy
760 F.3d 485 (Sixth Circuit, 2014)
United States v. Antonio Jordan
509 F. App'x 532 (Sixth Circuit, 2013)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
443 F. App'x 956, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-david-brown-ca6-2011.