United States v. Scott Lane

NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

No. 21-1730 ________________ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. SCOTT LANE a/k/a NYC Perv, a/k/a John Doe-2, Appellant

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania (D.C. No. 1-16-cr-00082-003) District Judge: Honorable Yvette Kane

Submitted under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) on October 21, 2022 Before: GREENAWAY, JR., MATEY and ROTH, Circuit Judges (Opinion filed: April 11, 2023) ________________ OPINION *

ROTH, Circuit Judge Scott Lane contends in this appeal that the District Court erred in denying his motion to suppress evidence obtained during an interrogation. He asserts that the evidence should have been suppressed because law enforcement violated his Miranda rights by continuing to question him after he invoked his rights. However, the Miranda challenge that he raised in the District Court was a different one: that he never received a Miranda warning before questioning began. Because Lane failed to raise the argument of continuing questioning after invocation of his Miranda rights in the District Court, he waived that ground for appeal. Thus, we will affirm the judgment of the District Court.

I.

During a videoconference, Lane and several other individuals watched one member of the videoconference call sexually abuse a six-year-old boy. After tracking his IP address, law enforcement found Lane. They went to his studio apartment, were granted entry by Lane’s roommate, and woke Lane. 1 Special Agent Krause then read Lane his Miranda rights. Krause handed him a waiver form and gave him a moment to read it to himself. Krause asked Lane if he would be willing to waive his rights and talk to him and the other agents. Lane agreed. Krause then began questioning Lane. 2 Lane did not feel comfortable answering certain questions “without someone present,” as he was concerned about legal implications. 3 Still, the questioning continued until Lane said that he “didn’t want to speak any further about what he saw because he didn’t know the law.” He then asked for an attorney. 4 At that point, questioning ceased.

Lane later moved to suppress the statement he gave to law enforcement. In his motion to suppress, Lane asserted that his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights were violated.

Lane first stated that he was subject to a custodial interrogation absent Miranda warnings.

Lane then stated that his Sixth Amendment rights were violated because he was questioned post-indictment with no lawyer present.

The District Court held a suppression hearing on Lane’s motion. At the suppression hearing, Krause testified that he read Lane his Miranda rights from a Miranda waiver, gave the Miranda waiver to Lane, and then provided Lane with an opportunity to read it to himself. Lane’s own testimony confirms that he did sign the form. Krause also testified that no agent informed Lane that he was under investigation.

The District Court denied Lane’s motion. The court found that Lane’s initials and signature on the Miranda waiver contradicted his argument that he had never received his warnings in the first instance. 5 Moreover, because the Miranda warnings were proper, the court found Lane’s statements to law enforcement to be voluntary. 6 The court also found that Lane’s Sixth Amendment rights were not violated at that time because, despite his indictment, “the validly-executed waiver of his Miranda rights constituted a knowing and intelligent waiver of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel.” 7 II.

The District Court had jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3231 because Lane violated a federal statute. We have appellate jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

III.

“It is axiomatic that a party who fails to object to errors or to raise issues at trial waives the right to complain on appeal.” 8 At the same time, “for parties to preserve an argument for appeal, they must have raised the same argument in the District Court—merely raising an issue that encompasses the appellate argument is not enough. Consequently, the degree of particularity required to preserve an argument is exacting.” 9 “[A]bsent exceptional circumstances, issues not raised before the district court are waived on appeal.” 10 Thus, “a suppression argument raised for the first time on appeal is waived (i.e., completely barred) absent good cause.” 11

Our ruling in United States v. Joseph 12 is instructive. In that case, we found that, “[a] legal challenge that presents multiple avenues for granting relief is a broad issue. But if the legal challenge presents a single point of contention, which may not be recast or reframed to address a conceptually distinct contention, then what has been advanced is an argument.” 13 This distinction between an issue and an argument is crucial because “raising an issue in the District Court is insufficient to preserve for appeal all arguments bearing on that issue. Instead, to preserve a suppression argument, a party must make the same argument in the District Court that he makes on appeal.” 14 The issue here is the same in both the District Court and before us – violation of Miranda rights. However, the arguments that Lane preserved are substantively different from the argument that he raises to this Court. In the District Court, Lane claimed that his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights were violated because he was not properly Mirandized.

The argument for the violation of his Fifth Amendment rights was that he never received his Miranda warnings despite being subject to a custodial interrogation. The argument he presented for the violation of his Sixth Amendment rights was that he should not have been subject to a purportedly custodial interrogation after being indicted.

According to his opening brief, the issue that Lane raises on appeal is “whether the district court erred in denying the motion to suppress evidence where law enforcement continued to interrogated [sic] appellant while in custodial detention, after he evoked [sic] his right to counsel, in violation of his fifth amendment rights.” 15 This is a substantively different argument. The arguments in the District Court presumed that Lane did not receive his Miranda warnings in the first instance. Yet the argument that Lane presents here is that he did receive his Miranda warnings, but law enforcement violated them when agents continued to question him after he asked for counsel.

Lane contends that his “ability to seek review” was preserved when the District Court accepted his plea agreement. More particularly, the plea agreement itself states that Lane’s plea was conditional and did in fact “[reserve] the right on appeal to review the adverse determinations made by the District Court regarding the pretrial motions [that he] filed.” 16 Indeed, Lane did preserve the arguments that he made to the District Court.

However, those are not the argument before us. 17 Accordingly, because Lane’s contention that questioning continued after he invoked his Miranda rights was not presented to the District Court, it is waived.

IV.

For the above stated reasons, we will affirm the judgment of the District Court.