United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit

FILED July 18, 2022 No. 20-10999 Lyle W. Cayce Clerk

United States of America,

Plaintiff—Appellant,

versus

Braylon Ray Coulter,

Defendant—Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas USDC No. 3:19-CR-68-1

Before Richman, Chief Judge, and Jones and Wilson, Circuit Judges. Edith H. Jones, Circuit Judge: A lone police officer performed a traffic stop on Appellee Braylon Ray Coulter in the middle of the night. Having been given reason to suspect that Coulter, who revealed an aggravated robbery conviction, had a gun, the officer handcuffed him and asked where it was. Coulter answered, and the officer’s partner arrived later to find a .40 caliber pistol and .37 ounces of marijuana in Coulter’s backpack between the front seats of the van he drove. Before Coulter divulged that information, the officer did not provide Miranda warnings. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S. Ct. 1602 (1966). The admissibility of Coulter’s unwarned statements therefore depends on Case: 20-10999 Document: 00516398138 Page: 2 Date Filed: 07/18/2022

No. 20-10999

whether he was “in custody” as contemplated by Miranda at the time he offered them. We hold that a reasonable person in Coulter’s position would not have thought that he was in custody for Miranda purposes. Moreover, the officer questioned Coulter in an environment that was not tantamount to a station house interrogation as contemplated by Miranda. All of Coulter’s unwarned statements are therefore admissible. The district court’s judgment suppressing those statements is REVERSED. I. BACKGROUND Coulter was driving an old van with “squeaky brakes” through a neighborhood at 2:41 a.m. on July 15, 2018. Officer Nino de Guzman of the Lancaster, Texas Police Department began following Coulter and discovered that the van “was registered to an address in a different city, that its registration was expired, and that it had no insurance.” Officer Guzman thought Coulter might have been a burglar and decided to pull him over. 1 After Coulter voluntarily stepped out of the van, Officer Guzman twice asked him whether he had any guns. Coulter said “[m]m-mm” before answering no. 2 Officer Guzman then frisked Coulter before asking him who owned the van and where he came from. Coulter replied that it belonged to his boss and that he just left work. When Officer Guzman also asked Coulter for identification, he admitted to not having any. Officer Guzman then conducted a background check and learned that Coulter’s driver’s license

1 Officer Guzman testified that the expired registration alone gave him probable cause to pull Coulter over. 2 Coulter did, however, admit to having some kind of knife on his person.

2 Case: 20-10999 Document: 00516398138 Page: 3 Date Filed: 07/18/2022