United States v. Richard Mohr

772 F.3d 1143, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 22789, 2014 WL 6807257
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedDecember 4, 2014
Docket14-1675
StatusPublished
Cited by19 cases

This text of 772 F.3d 1143 (United States v. Richard Mohr) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth 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. Richard Mohr, 772 F.3d 1143, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 22789, 2014 WL 6807257 (8th Cir. 2014).

Opinion

BEAM, Circuit Judge.

The district court 1 denied Richard Mohr’s motion to suppress statements Mohr made to police after he claims he invoked his right to counsel. Mohr was subsequently found guilty by a jury on two counts. The district court 2 that sentenced *1145 Mohr ordered his counts to be served concurrently, and also ordered that Mohr’s federal term of imprisonment was to “run consecutively to any undischarged term of imprisonment.” Mohr appeals, arguing the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress, and in making his federal sentence consecutive to his undischarged civil commitment in Illinois. We affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

On June 24, 2011, officers interviewed Mohr, who resided in Illinois, about his contact with T.S., a minor living in Iowa. Based on statements he made to the police and other evidence, Mohr was subsequently indicted in Iowa for sexual exploitation of a child, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2251(a) and 2260A, and for attempt to entice a minor to engage in illicit sexual activities, in violation of' 18 U.S.C. §§ 2422(b) and 2260A. Thereafter, Mohr filed a motion to suppress the statements he made in the June 24 interview on the grounds that officers continued to question him after he had invoked his right to counsel.

Mohr argues there are two instances in which he invoked his right to counsel. Mohr asserts that as he was walking into .the interview room he asked his probation officer, “Should I get a lawyer at this time? ... I think I should get one.” Mohr claims that one of the other officers then responded, ‘You don’t need a lawyer, we’re just going to talk. You want to find out what’s going on, don’t you?” Second, Mohr says the officers asked his permission to record the interview. Mohr did not agree to the recording, and asserts that he said, “I want my lawyer.... [I]f you want this recorded, I want a lawyer present.” The district court made a legal and factual determination that Mohr’s first request for counsel was equivocal, and Mohr’s second request for counsel was conditional. Accordingly, the district court denied Mohr’s motion to suppress. The statements he made during the June 24 interview were later used in Mohr’s jury trial, which resulted in a guilty verdict.

The district court sentenced Mohr to 540 months’ imprisonment on count one, and 240 months on count two, which the district court ordered to be served concurrently. The judgment also provided that Mohr’s federal term of imprisonment “shall run consecutively to any undischarged term of imprisonment.” Prior to Mohr’s contact with T.S. that resulted in the instant sentence, Mohr had several prior convictions and was a registered sex offender in Illinois. On August 22, 2013, before his jury trial and sentencing on these federal claims, Mohr was civilly committed as a sexually violent person in Illinois for an indeterminate period. Aside from the civil commitment, Mohr was not subject to any other undischarged term of imprisonment at the time of his sentencing for the instant offense.

II. DISCUSSION

When reviewing the denial of a motion to suppress, we review the district court’s legal conclusions de novo and the factual findings for clear error. United States v. Zamora-Lopez, 685 F.3d 787, 789 (8th Cir.2012). We review the interpretation and application of the sentencing guidelines de novo. United States v. Mathijssen, 406 F.3d 496, 498 (8th Cir.2005).

A. Motion to Suppress

As to the denial of the motion to suppress, we agree with the district court that the evidence shows that Mohr did not unequivocally and unconditionally invoke his right to counsel under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). Officers are only required to cease questioning if a suspect’s *1146 request for an attorney is clear and unambiguous, Davis v. United States, 512 U.S. 452, 461-62, 114 S.Ct. 2350, 129 L.Ed.2d 362 (1994), and the Supreme Court has declined to adopt a rule requiring officers to clarify ambiguous requests for counsel. Id. at 461, 114 S.Ct. 2350.

In regard to his first request for counsel, Mohr argues that the officer’s statement that he did not need a lawyer because they were “just going to talk” was deceptive, and therefore obviated any waiver or consent Mohr gave with regard to his Miranda rights. At the suppression hearing, one of the officers present at the June 24 interview testified Mohr never requested a lawyer, and the district court determined that Mohr’s claim that an officer said, “you don’t need a lawyer” was not credible, especially given the fact that Mohr was presented with — and signed — a Miranda warning just a few minutes later. A district court’s findings regarding witness credibility are entitled to “particularly great deference” and a district court’s decision to credit a witness’s testimony “can almost never be a clear error unless there is extrinsic evidence that contradicts the witness’s story.” United States v. Wright, 739 F.3d 1160, 1166-67 (8th Cir.2014). There is nothing in the record that indicates the district court committed clear error in making this factual determination, and accordingly we find no basis for concluding that Mohr’s waiver of his Miranda rights was procured through deception. Furthermore, Mohr’s statement “I think I should get [a lawyer]” was not an unequivocal invocation of his right to counsel. See Davis, 512 U.S. at 462, 114 S.Ct. 2350 (holding that the phrase “maybe I should talk to a lawyer” was not a request for counsel).

With regard to Mohr’s second request for counsel, the district court held that this request was conditioned on whether the interview was recorded, and that since the interview was not recorded, Mohr’s condition for requiring counsel was not met. The question then is whether Mohr’s statement was sufficiently clear that in light of the circumstances a reasonable officer would have understood that Mohr was unconditionally asking for a lawyer and not just that he “might be invoking the right to counsel.” Id. at 459, 114 S.Ct. 2350. Since the officers had just asked Mohr if they could record the interview, under the circumstances a reasonable officer could have understood Mohr’s statement to mean he was only requesting a lawyer if

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Bluebook (online)
772 F.3d 1143, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 22789, 2014 WL 6807257, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-richard-mohr-ca8-2014.