CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit (2022)
Sarah Couillard
In United States v. Wells, 55 F.4th 784 (9th Cir. 2022), the Ninth Circuit held that a Coast Guard
employee was not implicitly coerced by threat of loss of employment to make self–incriminatory
statements in a manner that would have violated the Fifth Amendment. (Id. at 788, 799). In
relation to two murders at a Coast Guard communication station on Kodiak Island, Alaska, a
Coast Guard employee was interviewed by federal law enforcement agents. (Id. at 789). While
on trial for the murders, the employee moved to suppress statements made during the interviews
on grounds that he was implicitly coerced to incriminate himself under threat of loss of his
government employment. (Id. at 790, 794). The district court denied the motion to suppress. (Id.
at 790). A jury found that the employee had committed the murders, and he appealed his
convictions. (Id. at 791). The Ninth Circuit affirmed the convictions, reasoning that for threats of
loss of government employment to constitute implicit coercion in violation of the Fifth
Amendment, the employee must be not only objectively threatened with loss of employment for
refusing to self–incriminate but also subjectively aware of that threat. (Id. at 797). The court
further reasoned that the employee did not subjectively believe that he was required to make the
statements under threat of job loss, relying on observations that the employee never expressed
such a belief, manifested an affirmative intent to cooperate, declined to answer certain questions
about his employment during one of the interviews, terminated the final interview by invoking
his Miranda rights, and offered no evidence that he was familiar with one of two Coast Guard
materials presented in support of his theory of implicit coercion. (Id. at 794, 798–99). Affirming
the employee’s convictions, the Ninth Circuit held that a Coast Guard employee was not
implicitly coerced to make self–incriminatory statements in a manner that would have violated
the Fifth Amendment. (Id. at 799).
