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A federal appeals judge has partially dissented in a case where a defendant was denied the opportunity to argue that his confession was coerced. US Circuit Judge Daniel P. Collins of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco argued that the defendant should have been given a new chance to make the argument after the trial judge failed to discuss specifics in a “boilerplate order” that adopted a magistrate judge’s report. According to Collins, the federal judge had used identical boilerplate orders since March 2021, which was a concerning practice.
Collins stated that he was unaware of any circuit precedent that had ever upheld the use of unexplained orders that summarily adopt magistrate judges’ reports wholesale. The trial judge, US District Judge James A. Soto of the District of Arizona, was criticized for using boilerplate orders in ruling on objections to magistrate reports. Collins said that he had admonished Soto in February 2021 but to no avail. Less than two weeks later, Soto began using a new boilerplate order like the one in the case.
In the case, Demetrius Verardi Ramos was convicted of transporting, for profit, noncitizens who were in the United States illegally. Ramos argued that he had confessed because a Border Patrol agent had shown him a plastic bag with drugs and threatened to bring drug charges if he did not cooperate. His motion to suppress his confession was denied. The panel majority said that Soto had indicated that he reviewed the magistrate judge’s report de novo and that he was not obligated to analyze Ramos’ objections to the report.
Collins argued that there were good reasons to suspect that the district judge’s order adopting the magistrate judge’s report was a 4½-page rubberstamp. Nearly all of the verbiage in the order was nonspecific to this case and consisted largely of citations addressing the legal framework for reviewing magistrate judges’ reports. Collins said that the only aspects related to this case were the names of the magistrate judge who filed the report and of the party who objected and the docket numbers of the parties’ filings.
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The defendant argued that his confession was coerced, but he was denied the opportunity to argue this point due to the boilerplate order used by the trial judge. Collins argued that the defendant should have been allowed to argue that his confession was coerced. He said there were good reasons to suspect that the district judge’s order adopting the magistrate judge’s report was a rubberstamp and that Soto had used nearly identical orders since March 2021.
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The majority opinion, written by Judge John B. Owens, rejected Collins’ argument. Owens argued that the district court had no obligation to provide more analysis or case-specific reasoning when summarily adopting a magistrate judge’s report and recommendation, absent newly raised objections. Owens noted that the dissent had cited no caselaw from any court requiring the district court to provide more analysis.
In conclusion, the case highlights the controversy surrounding the use of boilerplate orders in the US judicial system. While the majority opinion defended the practice, the dissent argued that it was inappropriate for the trial judge to use identical orders that did not consider each case’s specifics. This case may have implications for using boilerplate orders in future cases, as it raises questions about whether they are appropriate in all circumstances.
