Appellate Law

CA1: making non-lawyers step outside hotel rooms okay

By S. COTUS

US v. Parker, No. 07-2776.  This is some kind of fight between drug dealers, so the First is going to have little sympathy for them. So, being asked to step outside one?s hotel room is not considered a ?seizure.?  Strangely, every law clerk I know would feel mighty offended by some cop that couldn?t be bothered to go to law school ordering him out of his hotel room.

The First figures that making these people (who didn?t even take the LSAT) step outside their hotel room protects the officers.  But, the problem the First has, is that once they are outside their hotel room, they could be arrested without a warrant.   However, the cops got a warrant, so the First doesn?t feel too angry about it.

Next, there was a Miranda issue.  Somehow, because these defendants hate America so much that they 1) didn?t go to law school; and 2) talked to the cops without a lawyer, the First figures that even though they were ordered out of the hotel room and into the hall, their interrogation wasn?t custodial.  Strangely, when I told a couple of spoiled law students that this happened to my fictitious doctor sister, they said it was unreasonable and said she should sue.

And, of course, because of the statements they made, in which the defendant might not have been Mirandized, there was physical evidence, which isn?t going to be suppressed.

The warrant was pretty broad: for illicit guns and drugs.  No problem there. 

In a challenge to his sentence, the First says that 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A), still gives him a consecutive five year sentence even though he has a longer sentence for other crimes, because of a gun.

Full post as published by Appellate Law and Practice on November 26, 2008 (boomark / email).