438 F. App'x 84

UNITED STATES of America, v. Carlos MIRANDA-FREYTES, a/k/a Manuel Inoa, a/k/a Mario Cabrera, Appellant.

No. 08-4904.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a) Dec. 1, 2009.

Opinion Filed May 13, 2010.

*85Ishmael A. Meyers, Jr., Esq., Office of United States Attorney, St. Thomas, USVI, for Appellee.

Jesse A. Gessin, Esq., Office of Federal Public Defender, St. Thomas, USVI, for Appellant.

Before: McKEE, Chief Judge, FUENTES and NYGAARD, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

McKEE, Chief Judge.

Carlos Miranda-Freytes1 appeals his conviction for illegally reentering the United States in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326. He argues that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress his fingerprints and certain contents of his immigration file. For the reasons that follow, we will affirm.2

I.

Inasmuch as we are writing for the parties who are familiar with this case, we need not set forth the factual or procedural background of this appeal in detail.

Miranda-Freytes argues that Peak’s handcuffing of him in the engine room constituted a de facto arrest unsupported by probable cause. Accordingly, he argues that the fruit of this unlawful arrest, his fingerprints and certain information in his immigration file, must be suppressed. We disagree.

In United States v. Bowley, 435 F.3d 426 (3d Cir.2006), we considered the question of whether identity information, including a defendant’s fingerprints and immigration file, should be suppressed as a result of an unlawful arrest. In concluding that suppression was not appropriate, we noted that the Supreme Court had stated that “[t]he ‘body’ or identity of a defendant or respondent in a criminal or civil proceeding is never itself suppressible as a fruit of an unlawful arrest, even if it is conceded that an unlawful arrest, search, or interrogation occurred.” Id. at 430 (citing INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. 1032, 1039, 104 S.Ct. 3479, 82 L.Ed.2d 778 (1984)). Although Bowley was a criminal prosecution and Lopez-Mendoza was a civil proceeding, we noted our “doubt that the Court lightly used such a sweeping word as ‘never’ in deciding when identity may be suppressed as the fruit of an illegal search of arrest.” Id. Thus, even if we assume that the use of handcuffs transformed what would otherwise have been a lawful Terry stop into a de facto arrest unsupported by probable cause, we would still not be confronted with the kind of egregious circumstances that could subject the evidence Miranda-Freytes seeks to suppress to *86Fourth Amendment scrutiny.3 Nothing on this record supports a finding that the arresting authorities did anything to “transgress notions of fundamental fairness and undermine the probative value of the evidence obtained.” Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. at 1050-51, 104 S.Ct. 3479.

II.

For the foregoing reasons, we will affirm Miranda-Freytes’s conviction and judgment of sentence.

United States v. Miranda-Freytes
438 F. App'x 84

Case Details

Name
United States v. Miranda-Freytes
Decision Date
May 13, 2010
Citations

438 F. App'x 84

Jurisdiction
United States

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