OPINION OF THE COURT
The government appeals from an Order of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey,
We accept as correct the findings of historical fаct made by the district judge. They may be summarized as follows:
On September 2, 1984, an FBI agent named White traveled to the Rahway State Prison in New Jersey in order to question the defendant, Lawrence Fraction, about a 1983 robbery of a bank in Woodbury, New Jersey. Fraction had just begun serving a 15-year stаte sentence on other, unrelated, charges.
The questioning took place in an interview room at the prison. Only the two men were рresent. According to the agent, whose testimony was credited by the district judge, the interview began with a comment from Fraction to the effect that he had been expecting the FBI to call upon him. Agent White then read Fraction his Miranda warnings, and Fraction signed the waiver form. 1 Fraction then stated that he would not be willing to testify agаinst Samuel Hutchings. And Fraction asked what he would receive in return for cooperation. The agent replied as follows:
“At that time, I advised him that he would not have to testify against Mr. Hutchings.
"No promises or threats have been made to me and no pressure or coercion of аny kind has been used against me.”
*14 “I also told him that I would not be able to promise him anything in terms of help other than to notify the U.S. Attorney and a sentenсing judge that he had cooperated in the matter. And that was the extent of what I could do for him.”
Fraction then proceeded to make a full statement about the bank robbery. The entire interview lasted about one-half hour.
The district court ruled that this statement was not voluntary and must thеrefore be suppressed. This ultimate legal conclusion of involuntariness is subject to plenary review. In
Miller v. Fenton,
— U.S. —,
In granting the suppression motion, the district court purported to follow the holding of
Bram v. U.S.,
“[A] confession, in order to be admissible, must be free and voluntary: that is, must not be extracted by any sort of threats or violence, nor obtained by any direct or implied promises, however slight, nor by the exertion of any improper influence____” (Emphasis added.)
The district court correctly noted that this court has acknowledged the continued validity of the
Bram
decision,
see U.S. v. Sibley,
The district judge acknowledged thаt the circuit courts of appeals have uniformly rejected the contention that a promise to bring cooperation to thе attention of the authorities suffices to render a confession involuntary.
See, e.g., U.S. v. Fera,
We are not prepared to accept uncritically the suggestion that a prisоner in state custody serving a lengthy sentence is more susceptible to being influenced and manipulated by federal law-enforcement officials than a prisoner whom the federal law-enforcement officers have just taken into custody themselves — at the very least, the сircumstances of each case and the individual susceptibilities of each defendant would have to be considered. But we need not pursue that issue, because of what we perceive to be a fundamental flaw in the district court’s approach.
The issue is the voluntariness of the confession. Under Bram and its progeny, whаt renders a confession involuntary is that it was obtained as the result of a promise. On the facts found by the district court, Agent White did not make a promise, merely a correct factual response to the defendant’s question; and the confession was not induced by what Agent White said.
*15 In this context, a “promise” is ah offer to perform or withhold some future action within the control of the promisor, in circumstances where the resulting action or inaction will have an impact upon the promisee. A promise is not the same thing as a prediction about future events beyond the parties’ control or regarded as inevitable. The issue, then, is whether, from the perspective of the defendant, Agent White’s statements included a promise of a bеnefit which, in the defendant’s understanding, the agent could either grant or withhold.
The reality is that if a defendant confesses to a crime, the fact of that confession (the defendant’s “cooperation”) will inevitably come to the attention of the prosecutor and the sentenсing judge. This defendant, whose “rap-sheet” occupies five pages of the appendix and shows innumerable arrests and sentences dating back to 1970, must surely have known this would happen, and was not within the agent’s control. Indeed, it would have been clearly improper for the аgent not to have advised the defendant of that consequence.
In addition to concluding that Agent White did not make a “promise” to the dеfendant, we are of the view that, on this record, no causal connection was shown between the alleged promise and the defendant’s decision to confess. Fraction testified that he signed the Miranda waiver because Agent White had promised him that he would receivе a lenient sentence or a sentence concurrent with his state term (the district court found that no such promise was made). Fraction аlso testified as follows:
“Q. What was the reason that you decided to give a statement?
“A. The reason that I decided to give a statement wаs that it appeared to me that from the things that he told me that — his being sure that I was involved, it was better for me to go ahead and get it cleared up now while I was incarcerated rather than to wait to, you know, be paroled from Rahway and have the U.S. Attorney pick me up.”
In shоrt, upon learning that the FBI knew or strongly suspected he was involved in the Woodbury bank robbery, the defendant, not surprisingly, concluded it would be in his own best intеrests to achieve a prompt resolution of the matter by confessing.
On the facts as found by the district judge, we conclude, as a matter of law, that the defendant’s statement was voluntary. The Order appealed from will therefore be reversed.
Notes
. The final sentence of the waiver form signed by Mr. Fraction stated: