William Simon v. United States

William Simon was convicted of income tax frauds. (26 U.S.C. 7201 and 7206(1)). On this appeal he urges that his Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights were violated because he was not given the Miranda warnings by the government’s investigating agent. Specifically he assigns as error the admission of evidence consisting of incriminating statements made by him to Walter J. Sanders, Jr., a Special Agent of the Intelligence Division of the Internal Revenue Service, and of information gained by the Agent from an inspection of Simon’s business records.

We conclude that Miranda is inapplicable to this case and that Simon freely consented to the asserted search.

This court has repeatedly rejected vigorous appeals to extend the Miranda rule “beyond its stated limits.” Spahr v. United States, 409 F.2d 1303, 1305 (9th Cir. 1969). Absent custody in the conventional sense, we have declined to fault a government agent and reverse a conviction for failure to give a Miranda type warning unless the facts clearly demonstrated that the appellant was “deprived of his freedom by the authorities in any significant way.”

The circumstances in this case hardly disclose an “in custody…