UNITED STATES v. PROANO (2018)

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Luis Humberto PROANO, aka Racer, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 16-50320

Decided: March 15, 2018

Before: GRABER and OWENS, Circuit Judges, and MAHAN,* District Judge.

Bram Alden, L. Ashley Aull, Ashwin Janakiram, Assistant U.S. Attorneys, DOJ—Office of the U.S. Attorney, Los Angeles, CA, for Plaintiff-Appellee Jonathan P. Schneller, Attorney, FPDCA—Federal Public Defender's Office (Los Angeles), Los Angeles, CA, for Defendant-Appellant

MEMORANDUM **

Officers arrested and interrogated Defendant Luis Humberto Proano after he attempted to cash a check using someone else’s personal information. In the district court, Defendant moved to suppress, among other things, several incriminating statements that he made during the interrogation. The district court denied the motion with respect to those statements. We reverse and remand with instructions.

Defendant unambiguously and unequivocally invoked his right to remain silent when he told the interrogating officers “I have nothing to say.” See Arnold v. Runnels, 421 F.3d 859, 865 (9th Cir. 2005) (explaining that “neither the Supreme Court nor this court has required that a suspect seeking to invoke his right to silence provide any statement more explicit or more technically-worded than ‘I have nothing to say’ ”). Accordingly, the officers should have ceased questioning immediately. Anderson v. Terhune, 516 F.3d 781, 788 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc). We thus instruct the district court to suppress all of Defendant’s post-invocation statements.

REVERSED and REMANDED with instructions.

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