Source: https://openjurist.org/407/us/345
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 23:05:19+00:00

Document:
City charter provision authorizing municipal court clerks to issue arrest warrants for breach of municipal ordinances held to comport with requirements of the Fourth Amendment that warrants be issued by a neutral and detached magistrate who must be capable of determining whether probable cause exists for issuance of the warrant. The clerks, though laymen, worked within the judicial branch under supervision of municipal court judges and were qualified to make the determination whether there is probable cause to believe that a municipal code violation has occurred.
Daniel A. Rezneck, Washington, D.C., for appellant.
Gerald H. Bee, Tampa, for appellee.
The charter of Tampa, Florida, authorizes the issuance of certain arrest warrants by clerks of the Tampa Municipal Court.1 The sole question in this case is whether these clerks qualify as neutral and detached magistrates for purposes of the Fourth Amendment. We hold that they do.
Appellant was arrested for impaired driving on a warrant issued by a clerk of the municipal court. He moved the court to quash the warrnt on the ground that it was issued by a nonjudicial officer in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. When the motion was denied, he initiated proceedings in the Florida courts by means of that State's writ of common-law certiorari. The state proceedings culminated in the holding of the Florida Supreme Court that '(t)he clerk and deputy clerks of the municipal court of the City of Tampa are neutral and detached 'magistrates' . . . for the purpse of issuing arrest warrants within the requirements of the United States Constitution . . .' 250 So.2d 4, 5 (1971). We noted probable jurisdiction, 404 U.S. 1014, 92 S.Ct. 697, 30 L.Ed.2d 660 (1972).
To attempt to extract further significance from the above terminology would be both unnecessary and futile. The substance of the Constitution's warrant requirements does not turn on the labeling of the issuing party. The warrant traditionally has represented an independent assurance that a search and arrest will not proceed without probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed and that the person or place named in the warrant is involved in the crime. Thus, an issuing magistrate must meet two tests. He must be neutral and detached, and he must be capable of determining whether probable cause exists for the requested arrest or search. This Court long has insisted that inferences of probable cause be drawn by 'a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.' Johnson v. United States, supra, at 14 of 333 U.S., at 369 of 68 S.Ct.; Giordenello v. United States, supra, at 486 of 357 U.S., at 1250 of 78 S.Ct. In Coolidge v. New Hampshire, supra, the Court last Term voided a search warrant issued by the state attorney general 'who was actively in charge of the investigation and later was to be chief prosecutor at trial.' Id., at 450 of 403 U.S., at 2029 of 91 S.Ct. If, on the other hand, detachment and capacity do conjoin, the magistrate has satisfied the Fourth Amendment's purpose.
The requisite detachment is present in the case at hand. Whatever else neutrality and detachment might entail, it is clear that they require severance and disengagement from activities of law enforcement. There has been no showing whatever here of partiality, or affiliation of these clerks with prosecutors or police. The record shows no connection with any law enforcement activity or authority which would distort the independent judgment the Fourth Amendment requires. Appellant himself expressly refused to allege anything to that effect.9 The municipal court clerk is assigned not to the police or prosecutor but to the municipal court judge for whom he does much of his work. In this sense, he may well be termed a 'judicial officer.' While a statutorily specified term of office and appointment by someone other than 'an executive authority' might be desirable, the absence of such features is hardly disqualifying. Judges themselves take office under differing circumstances. Some are appointed, but many are elected by legislative bodies or by the people. Many enjoy but limited terms and are subject to re-appointment or re-election. Most depend for their salary level upon the legislative branch. We will not elevate requirements for the independence of a municipal clerk to a level higher than that prevailing with respect to many judges. The clerk's neutrality has not been impeached: he is removed from prosecutor or police and works within the judicial branch subject to the supervision of the municipal court judge.
Appellant likewise has failed to demonstrate that these clerks lack capacity to determine probable cause. The clerk's authority extends only to the issuance of arrest warrants for breach of municipal ordinances. We presume from the nature of the clerk's position that he would be able to deduce from the facts on an affidavit before him whether there was probable cause to believe a citizen guilty of impaired driving, breach of peace, drunkenness, trespass, or the multiple other common offenses covered by a municipal code. There has been no showing that this is too difficult a task for a clerk to accomplish. Our legal system has long entrusted nonlawyers to evaluate more complex and significant factual data than that in the case at hand. Grand juries daily determine probable cause prior to rendering indictments, and trial juries assess whether guilt is proved beyond a reasonable doubt. The significance and responsibility of these lay judgments betray any belief that the Tampa clerks could not determine probable cause for arrest.
We decide today only that clerks of the municipal court may constitutionally issue the warrants in question. We have not considered whether the actual issuance was based upon an adequate showing of probable cause. Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964). Appellant did not submit this question to the courts below, 237 So.2d 231 (1970), 250 So.2d 4 (1971), and we will not decide it here initially. The single question is whether power has been lawfully vested, not whether it has been constitutionally exercised.
Nor need we determine whether a State may lodge warrant authority in someone entirely outside the sphere of the judicial branch. Many persons may not qualify as the kind of 'public civil officers' we have come to associate with the term 'magistrate.' Had the Tampa clerk been entirely divorced from a judicial position, this case would have presented different considerations. Here, however, the clerk is an employee of the judicial branch of the city of Tampa, disassociated from the role of law enforcement. On the record in this case, the independent status of the clerk cannot be questioned.
What we do reject today is any per se invalidation of a state or local warrant system on the ground that the issuing magistrate is not a lawyer or judge. Communities may have sound reasons for delegating the responsibility of issuing warrants to competent personnel other than judges or lawyers.10 Many municipal courts face stiff and unrelenting caseloads.11 A judge pressured with the docket before him may give warrant applications more brisk and summary treatment than would a clerk. All this is not to imply that a judge or lawyer would not normally provide the most desirable review of warrant requests. But our federal system warns of converting desirable practice into constitutional commandment. It recognizes in plural and diverse state activities12 one key to national innovation and vitality.13 States are entitled to some flexibility and leeway in their designation of magistrates, so long as all are neutral and detached and capable of the probable-cause determination required of them.
Tr. of Oral Arg. 6, 7, 20, 21.
Brief for Appellant 6; Tr. of Oral Arg. 10.
Brief for Appellant 12—13; Reply Brief for Appellant 8.
Reply Brief for Appellant 8; Tr. of Oral Arg. 10—12.
The United States Commissioner system has, of course, been replaced by the Federal Magistrates Act of 1968, 82 Stat. 1107.
In Compton, a notary public was deemed a 'magistrate,' but the Court has nowhere indicated that the term denotes solely a lawyer or judge.
United States Commissioners were not required to be lawyers until passage of the Federal Magistrates Act of 1968. Even under this Act, a limited exception to lawyer's status is afforded part-time magistrates. 28 U.S.C. § 631(b)(1).
Some communities, such as those in rural or sparsely settled areas, may have a shortage of available lawyers and judges and must entrust responsibility for issuing warrants to other qualified persons. The Federal Magistrates Act, for example, explicitly makes provision for nonlawyers to be appointed in those communities where members of the bar are not available. 28 U.S.C. § 631(b)(1).
See generally Mass Production Justice and the Constitutional Ideal (C. Whitebread ed. 1970).
States differ significantly as to whom they entrust the authority to grant a warrant. See Burke v. Superior Court, 3 Ariz.App. 576, 579, 416 P.2d 997, 1000 (1966); Parks v. Superior Court, 236 P.2d 874, 882 (Ct.App.Cal.1951); Kennedy v. Walker, 135 Conn. 262, 272, 63 A.2d 589, 594 (1948); Grano v. State, 257 A.2d 768, 773—774 (Sup.Ct.Del.1969); Shadwick v. City of Tampa, 250 So.2d 4 (Fla.1971); State v. Swafford, 250 Ind. 541, 546, 237 N.E.2d 580, 584 (1968); State ex rel. French v. Hendricks Superior Court, 252 Ind. 213, 247 N.E.2d 519 (1969); Bailey v. Hudspeth, 164 Kan. 600, 606, 191 P.2d 894, 898 (1948); State v. Guidry, 247 La. 631, 635—636, 173 So.2d 192, 194 (1965); Wampler v. Warden of Maryland Penitentiary, 231 Md. 639, 648, 191 A.2d 594, 600 (1963); LaChapelle v. United Shoe Machinery Corp., 318 Mass. 166, 168—170, 61 N.E.2d 8, 10 (1945); State v. Paulick, 277 Minn. 140, 151 N.W.2d 591 (1967); People v. Richter, 206 Misc. 304, 306—307, 133 N.Y.S.2d 685, 688 (1954); State v. Furmage, 250 N.C. 616, 625—626, 109 S.E.2d 563, 570 (1959); Moseley v. Welch, 218 S.C. 242, 250, 62 S.E.2d 313, 317 (1950); State v. Jefferson, 79 Wash.2d 345, 348 349, 485 P.2d 77, 79 (1971); State ex rel. Sahley v. Thompson, 151 W.Va. 336, 342—343, 151 S.E.2d 870, 873 (1966); State ex rel. White v. Simpson, 28 Wis.2d 590, 137 N.W.2d 391 (1965); State v. Van Brocklin, 194 Wis. 441, 217 N.W. 277 (1927).
Harlan, Thoughts at a Dedication: Keeping the Judicial Function in Balance, 49 A.B.A.J. 943, 944 (1963).

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