In United States v. Ramos, --- F.4th ---, No. 21-10184 (9th Cir. 2023), a divided panel affirmed the district court’s denial of Demetrius Verardi Ramos’s motion to suppress his post-arrest statements.
Ramos was arrested for transporting undocumented people and charged with violating 8 U.S.C. 1324.
Ramos moved to suppress, among other things, his statements made during the interrogation. He argued that his statements were involuntary because, just prior to the interrogation, Agent Barron had shown him a plastic baggie containing drugs and threatened him with drug charges if he did not cooperate. In its response to the motion, the government denied that such a conversation ever took place.
The magistrate judge held an evidentiary hearing regarding the motion to suppress. After the hearing, the magistrate judge issued a twenty-page report recommending that the district court deny Ramos’s motion to suppress.
Ramos objected to the report but the district court filed a boilerplate order adopting it.
On appeal, Ramos argued that the district court did not conduct a true de novo review. According to Ramos, the district court’s “bare assertion” that it reviewed de novo is insufficient because the order was “mere boilerplate” and failed to address his specific objections.
The majority rejected this assertion. "When the district court said it independently reviewed the record and there is no evidence indicating otherwise, we have no reason to second-guess its assertion of de novo review." Turning to the merits, the majority found no error in denying the motion to suppress.
The dissent saw the case differently: "In my view, the district judge’s failure to discuss any of the issues raised by Ramos’s motion to suppress or by Ramos’s objections to the magistrate judge’s report is unacceptable and warrants remand."
"[T]here are good reasons to suspect that the district judge’s order adopting the magistrate judge’s report here is, for all practical purposes, a 4½-page rubberstamp. Nearly all of the verbiage in the order is non-specific to this case and consists largely of citations addressing the legal framework for reviewing magistrate judges’ reports. Indeed, nearly two full pages consist of a string citation of cases upholding, as sufficient to satisfy de novo review, district judges’ unexplained orders summarily rejecting objections and adopting such reports. The only aspects that relate specifically to this case are the names of the magistrate judge who filed the report and of the party who objected and the docket numbers of the parties’ filings. Moreover, a Westlaw search reveals that, on at least 30 other occasions since March 2021, this same district judge has entered largely verbatim identical boilerplate orders—complete with the exact same pages of string cites—rejecting objections to, and adopting, magistrate judges’ reports."
