In United States v. Thompson, --- F.4th ---, No. 22-30179 (9th Cir. 2025), on the government's appeal, a divided panel vacated Paige Thompson’s sentence on substantive reasonableness grounds.
The case arose from a large data breach prosecution. The district court correctly calculated Thompson’s sentencing range at 168 to 210 months of imprisonment. It then granted a roughly 98% downward variance to time served (approximately 100 days) and five years of probation.
The majority held the district court overemphasized Thompson’s personal story and committed a clear error of judgment in weighing several of the factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a).
The dissent persuasively argued that the sentence was substantively reasonable under the abuse of discretion standard.
In United States v. Rodriguez-Arvizu, --- F.4th ---, No. 23-393 (9th Cir. 2025), the Court affirmed the district court’s denial of Rodriguez-Arvizu’s motion to suppress his post-arrest statements in a case related to his participation in a marijuana “rip crew”—a group of armed individuals who steal drugs from smugglers.
The opinion covers a lot of ground and is worth reading. Here are some key points.
This appeal presents four questions: whether the district court erred in denying Rodriguez-Arvizu’s motion to suppress based on (1) an alleged violation of Fed. R. Crim. P. 4(c)(3)(A); (2) an alleged violation of his Fifth Amendment rights; (3) an alleged violation of his Sixth Amendment rights; and (4) an alleged violation of 18 U.S.C. § 3501 and McNabb-Mallory.Pursuant to Fed. R. Crim. P. 4(c)(3)(A), an arresting officer who does not possess a copy of the arrest warrant “must inform the defendant of the warrant’s existence and of the offense charged.” The Government does not contest the district court’s finding that the FBI agents did not tell Rodriguez-Arvizu the specific charges against him, but instead argues that “any failure” that occurred does not warrant application of the exclusionary rule.Since the initial adoption of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure over eighty years ago, there has been little litigation regarding Rule 4(c)(3)(A). Notably, no court has yet held that suppression is warranted for a violation of this rule. Nonetheless, Rodriguez-Arvizu argues that suppression is justified in this case because Agent Ramirez “intentional[ly]” violated the rule for the purpose of circumventing his “important rights.”We agree with the district court that suppression is not warranted for the FBI agents’ violation of Rule 4(c)(3)(A).Agent Terwilliger’s and Agent Ramirez’s failure to inform Rodriguez-Arvizu of the precise charges against him does not meet the high bar required for suppression.Moreover, as the district court also pointed out, if we assume—as the D.C. Circuit has speculated—that Rule 4(c)(3)(A) was meant to protect a defendant’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, that right was not implicated here.Here, there was no evidence that the FBI agents engaged in the kind of “deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent conduct” that the exclusionary rule is meant to deter. Herring, 555 U.S. at 144. Moreover, the district court found that there was no evidence that the failure to abide by Rule 4 is a systemic problem either in the FBI or in federal law enforcement more broadly. Therefore, the FBI agents’ violation of Fed. R. Crim. P. 4(c)(3)(A) does not warrant suppression of Rodriguez-Arvizu’s statements.Rodriguez-Arvizu next contends the district court erred in failing to suppress his statements based on a violation of his Fifth Amendment right to counsel. Once an accused person has “expressed his desire to deal with the police only through counsel,” that person “is not subject to further interrogation by the authorities until counsel has been made available to him, unless the accused himself initiates further communication, exchanges, or conversations with the police.”The district court did not err in determining that Rodriguez-Arvizu did not unambiguously invoke his Fifth Amendment right to counsel. We have previously held that silence is insufficient to invoke this right.We . . . conclude that Rodriguez-Arvizu’s failure to sign the I-214 Form was not sufficient on its own to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to counsel.Regardless, the district court’s finding that there was no Miranda violation may also be affirmed because Rodriguez-Arvizu made spontaneous statements during the ride to the FBI office that reinitiated questioning, and the totality of the circumstances demonstrates that he knowingly and intelligently waived his Fifth Amendment right to counsel following this reinitiation.Under the Sixth Amendment, “the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.” U.S. Const. amend. VI. This right attaches “when formal judicial proceedings are initiated against an individual by way of indictment, information, arraignment, or preliminary hearing.” United States v. Gouveia, 467 U.S. 180, 185 (1984). The burden is on the Government to prove that the defendant voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently waived this right.Rodriguez-Arvizu claims that he did not voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently waive his Sixth Amendment right to counsel because the FBI agents’ violation of Rule 4(c)(3)(A) meant that he never understood why he was indicted or the purpose of the warrant.[W]e agree with the district court that—given the totality of the circumstances—Rodriguez-Arvizu did not need to be told that he had been indicted to validly waive his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. While the Supreme Court has left open the question of “whether or not an accused must be told that he has been indicted before a post-indictment Sixth Amendment waiver will be valid,” like other circuits, we have thus far answered that question in the negative.We reject Rodriguez-Arvizu’s suggestion that there is a categorical rule that a defendant must be notified of the charges in an indictment before he can validly waive his Sixth Amendment rights. Instead, we hold that the Sixth Amendment inquiry is contextual, and a waiver of the right to counsel is valid if the circumstances indicate the defendant was apprised of his rights, the criminal liability he potentially faced, and the gravity of his situation. Applying this rule here, the district court did not err in concluding that Rodriguez-Arvizu validly waived his Sixth Amendment right to counsel.It remains true that the simplest way for the Government to prove that a defendant voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently waived his Sixth Amendment right to counsel is to demonstrate that the defendant knew his specific charges. But that is not the only way to prove a valid waiver of this right. Under the context-specific analysis articulated here, the district court did not err in determining that the Government met its burden of proving that Rodriguez-Arvizu voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently waived his Sixth Amendment right to counsel.Finally, the district court did not err when it determined that Rodriguez-Arvizu’s confession did not fall outside the safe harbor period of 18 U.S.C. § 3501(c). Rule 5(a)(1)(A) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure provides in relevant part that “[a] person making an arrest within the United States must take the defendant without unnecessary delay before a magistrate judge.” The McNabb-Mallory rule clarifies that if this rule is violated, an arrested person’s confession is presumptively inadmissible. McNabb-Mallory was modified by 18 U.S.C. § 3501(c), which created a safe harbor by stating that a confession is admissible so long as the confession was given “within six hours immediately following [the defendant’s] arrest or other detention.” 18 U.S.C. § 3501(c). The rule today is that “[w]hen a criminal defendant brings a suppression motion based on McNabbMallory, the district court looks to see whether the confession was obtained within six hours of arrest. If so, McNabb-Mallory does not bar its admission.”We agree with the district court that there can be independent triggers for the statutory safe harbor clock when unrelated federal charges are at issue and that, given the circumstances of this case, the relevant six-hour clock only began to run when Rodriguez-Arvizu was arrested by the FBI.Rodriguez-Arvizu’s confession at the FBI office, which took place within six hours of his second arrest, did not violate § 3501(c).[B]ecause the statutory scheme supports the conclusion that there can be independent triggers for the six hour safe harbor period for unrelated federal charges, and because the circumstances of Rodriguez-Arvizu’s two arrests demonstrate that the relevant six-hour clock only began upon his formal arrest by the FBI agents rather than any earlier point, Rodrigez-Arvizu’s confession took place within the safe harbor period.
