Opinion ID: 764845
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Constitutional Challenges to Proceedings in the Macedonia

Text: Mayor's Court 11 Plaintiff contends first that the district court erred in denying his own but granting the defendants' motion for summary judgment on the first two counts of his complaint. In these counts, plaintiff submits that the Ohio statute authorizing mayor's courts on its face violates due process, and that his adjudication and sentencing before Mayor Migliorini in particular was an unconstitutional deprivation of due process because Mayor Migliorini, as a law enforcement officer and chief executive responsible for the financial condition of the municipality, was not neutral and detached. Plaintiff also appeals dismissal of the third count of his complaint, which challenged Mayor Migliorini's issuance of a bench warrant for plaintiff's arrest for failure to appear in Mayor's Court. We address each of these issues in turn. 12
13 Plaintiff asks us to strike down the Ohio statute authorizing mayor's courts as unconstitutional on grounds it deprives plaintiff of a substantive right under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to have a disinterested and impartial judge adjudicate and sentence in any criminal case in which he is a defendant. Amended Complaint, Count II, at 17, J.A. 47-48. 14 Section 1905.01 of the Ohio Revised Code authorizes mayors to preside over prosecutions for violations of a municipal ordinance and for certain parking and moving traffic violations [i]n all municipal corporations not being the site of a municipal court nor a place where a judge of the Auglaize, Crawford, Jackson, Miami, Portage or Wayne county municipal courts sits. See Ohio Rev.Code § 1905.01(A)-(C). In lieu of personally sitting in judgment, mayors are also authorized by statute to appoint a magistrate to preside over any prosecutions that may be tried in mayor's court. Ohio Rev.Code § 1905.05. The magistrate is vested with the same power as the mayor to decide prosecutions, enter judgment and impose sentences; the judgment and sentence need not be reviewed or approved by the appointing mayor and have the same force and effect as if they had been entered or imposed by the mayor. Ohio Rev.Code § 1905.05(A). At the time of plaintiff's prosecution, cases in the Macedonia Mayor's Court were presided over by either Mayor Migliorini or an appointed magistrate. Mayor Migliorini himself presided over plaintiff's trial. 15 The constitutionality of mayor's courts is an issue familiar to our Circuit and our analysis of the questions raised in this case is not without guidance. Through the twentieth century, persistent constitutional challenges to the Ohio mayor's courts have found their way to the Supreme Court of the United States. See e.g., Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510, 47 S.Ct. 437, 71 L.Ed. 749 (1927), Dugan v. Ohio, 277 U.S. 61, 48 S.Ct. 439, 72 L.Ed. 784 (1928), Ward v. Village of Monroeville, 409 U.S. 57, 93 S.Ct. 80, 34 L.Ed.2d 267 (1972). Though presented with the opportunity to do so, the Supreme Court has declined to strike down the mayor's courts altogether. In Tumey v. Ohio, Chief Justice Taft observed that [i]t is ... so common to vest the mayor of villages with inferior judicial functions that the mere union of the executive power and the judicial power in him cannot be said to violate due process of law. Tumey, 273 U.S. at 534. In Dugan v. Ohio, the Supreme Court upheld a criminal conviction in a mayor's court where the mayor exercised primarily judicial functions and the city manager, not the mayor, was the acting chief executive of the municipality. Dugan, 277 U.S. at 63. As the Supreme Court has found no fatal defect in the overarching system that permits a mayor simultaneously to exercise some combination of executive and judicial functions, we affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment for the defendants and its denial of summary judgment for the plaintiff to the extent plaintiff has challenged the facial validity of Section 1905.01 of the Ohio Revised Code. 16
17 Although the State of Ohio is free to authorize mayor's courts in theory, the structure of the courts in practice must be such that the particular combination of executive powers vested in the mayor does not impair his ability to serve also as a neutral arbiter. Plaintiff contends that he was deprived of due process when Mayor Migliorini presided over his contested case because the breadth of his executive powers preclude his ability to act as a neutral arbiter. See Amended Complaint, Count I, at 16-17, J.A. 46-47. The test for whether the union of executive and judicial power violates due process is whether the mayor's situation is one 'which would offer a possible temptation to the average man as a judge to forget the burden of proof required to convict the defendant, or which might lead him not to hold the balance nice, clear, and true between the state and the accused ...'  Ward v. Village of Monroeville, 409 U.S. 57, 60, 93 S.Ct. 80, 34 L.Ed.2d 267 (1972) (quoting Tumey, 273 U.S. at 532). 18 Accordingly, the Supreme Court has held that the Fourteenth Amendment right to due process is certainly compromised where the decision maker has a direct, personal, substantial pecuniary interest in the proceedings. Tumey, 273 U.S. at 523. In Tumey v. Ohio, the Supreme Court held that the mayor's court for the Village of North College Hill, Ohio deprived the defendant of due process in a prosecution under Ohio's prohibition statute where, between May 11, 1923 and December 31, 1923, the mayor received $696.35 from liquor-related cases as fees and costs in addition to his regular salary. Tumey, 273 U.S. at 521-22. The mayor was neither neutral nor detached because he had a direct personal pecuniary interest in convicting the defendant who came before him for trial, in the amount of $12 of costs imposed in his behalf, which he would not have received if the defendant had been acquitted. Id. at 523. In contrast, the following year, the Supreme Court upheld a conviction in the mayor's court for the City of Xenia, Ohio where the mayor's vulnerability to bias was diluted. See Dugan v. Ohio, 277 U.S. 61, 48 S.Ct. 439, 72 L.Ed. 784 (1928). The mayor was not disqualified as a judge because, unlike the mayor in Tumey, he was not the chief executive, but one of five members of the city commission. Instead, the city manager was the active executive. Id. at 63. Also unlike Tumey, the mayor's salary was fixed by the city commission and he received no fees for cases tried in mayor's court. Id. at 62-63. See also State ex. rel. Brockman v. Proctor, 35 Ohio St.2d 79, 298 N.E.2d 532, syllabus p 3 (1973) (in municipality where mayor has judicial functions in addition to legislative powers and duties, but city manager has all executive power and administrative responsibility, mayor's relation to finances and financial policy of municipality is too remote to warrant presumption of bias toward convictions in prosecutions before him as judge). 19 Although the direct personal pecuniary interest of a mayor in the result of his judgment is arguably one of the most flagrant forms of bias, it is not the only reason for holding that due process is denied. Tumey, 273 U.S. at 532. The Supreme Court recognized in Tumey that the mayor's interest in and his responsibility for the financial condition of the village gave him a strong official motive to convict and graduate the fine to help the financial needs of the village. Id. at 535. The Court elaborated upon this formulation of the possible temptation test in Ward v. Village of Monroeville. 409 U.S. 57, 93 S.Ct. 80, 34 L.Ed.2d 267 (1972). In Ward, the mayor of Monroeville enjoyed broad executive powers and was the chief conservator of the peace. Under the Monroeville Charter, the mayor was president of the village council, presided at council meetings, voted on the council in case of a tie, accounted annually to the council regarding village finances, filled vacancies in village offices and had general supervision of village affairs. Ward, 409 U.S. at 58. In addition, a major part of the village income, 35 to 50 percent of the village's general revenues, came from fines, forfeitures, costs, and fees imposed by the mayor in the mayor's court. 3 The Court held that the defendant, who was convicted of two traffic offenses in the mayor's court, was deprived of a neutral and detached magistrate, and therefore due process, because possible temptation may exist not only when the mayor has direct personal pecuniary interest but also when the mayor's executive responsibilities for village finances may make him partisan to maintain the high level of contribution from the mayor's court. Ward, 409 U.S. at 60. The degree of executive authority wielded by the mayor was a significant factor in the inquiry and wholly distinguished the case from Dugan, in which the mayor had judicial functions but only very limited executive authority. Id. In comparison, the Ward mayor's broad executive powers and the significance of the mayor's court revenues to the fiscal health of the village, for which he was responsible, made his position inherently partisan. 20 In a recent decision addressing the constitutionality of convictions in the mayor's court in the Village of Peninsula, Ohio, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio attempted to sort out seemingly conflicting standards employed by the Supreme Court of Ohio. See Rose v. Village of Peninsula, 875 F.Supp. 442 (N.D.Ohio 1995). At issue was whether, after the United States Supreme Court's decision in Ward, the substantiality of mayor's court revenues as a percentage of overall revenues was determinative. 4 The court held that while 21 ... substantiality is clearly an important factor in the analysis, the thrust of the inquiry is whether the mayor occupies two practically and seriously inconsistent positions, one partisan and the other judicial. Ward, 409 U.S. at 60, 93 S.Ct. at 83 (quoting Tumey, 273 U.S. at 534, 47 S.Ct. at 445). The court's assessment of substantiality is merely a step in its determination of whether the degree of separation of the executive and judicial powers vested in mayor-judges adequately safeguards, on average, those judges' impartiality. 22 The amount of mayor's court fee revenues is just one measure of whether the mayor may reasonably be questioned as being impartial. The more substantial the amount (or percentage) of revenue produced from a mayor's court, the more reasonable it is to question the impartiality of a mayor who has any executive authority. In similar fashion, the more executive authority vested in the mayor, the more reasonable it is to question the impartiality of a mayor who collected even a relatively minor amount of general revenue through a mayor's court. Thus, inadequate separation of powers in a mayor-judge may occur despite the mayor's court's collection of a fairly small percentage of general fund revenue. 23 Rose, 875 F.Supp. at 452. Therefore the court held although substantiality of revenues is an important factor to consider, it is not a determinative factor and the absence of evidence of substantiality does not necessitate a finding of impartiality. See id. (discussing hypothetical mayor's court that collects only one $7 fine in one year and concluding [t]he relative insubstantiality of the $7 fine compared to an annual general fund of $700,000 does not conclusively establish the mayor's impartiality.). 24 In Rose, fines from the mayor's court ranged from 11.8 to 13.9 percent of the general fund annually over a period of three years. In addition, the mayor shared the same level of executive power as the mayor in Ward, his powers were governed by the same statutes, 5 and those powers were not diluted as they were in Dugan. Rose, 875 F.Supp. at 450. The court concluded that both the substantiality of the mayor's courts revenues, which comprised over 10 percent of the general fund, and the combination and level of the mayor's executive powers demonstrated the mayor's partiality: 25 In this case, the level of executive authority vested in Mayor Ruoff is broad, so that it becomes reasonable to question [his] impartiality even if he collects a fairly small amount of general fund revenue through the mayor's court. Furthermore, the amount of general fund revenue produced form Mayor Ruoff's court is, though not enormous, substantial. These undisputed facts compel the Court to conclude that Mayor Ruoff occupies two practically and seriously inconsistent positions ... [which] necessarily involves a lack of due process of law in the trial[s] ... before him. Tumey, 273 U.S. at 534, 47 S.Ct. at 445. Defendant Rose [might] with reason say that he feared he could not get a fair trial or a fair sentence. Id. at 533, 47 S.Ct. at 445. 26 Rose, 875 F.Supp. at 453. Though we are not bound by the Rose court's opinion, we find it an articulate and persuasive synthesis of the mayor's court decisions. 27 Thus, in the instant case, while the percentage of Macedonia's general fund generated from Mayor's Court revenues is relevant to our inquiry, we must also assess the potential impact of the breadth of executive authority vested in the Mayor of Macedonia. Focusing on the court's observation in Rose that [c]ertainly, any person suddenly deprived of 10% or more of his income would find the loss 'substantial,'  Rose, 875 F.Supp. at 451, plaintiff urges us to consider that nine percent of Macedonia's general fund was derived from Mayor's Court fines in 1990. Approximately four percent of the general fund was derived from Mayor's Court fines in each year from 1994 to 1996, the time period most contemporary to plaintiff's arrest. The defendants would instead have us rely upon the net revenues generated by the Mayor's Court after deducting costs of operation. These apparently amounted to approximately two percent of the general fund. We see no need to split hairs over what is a substantial figure, however, if the mayor's executive authority and administrative responsibilities preclude him from serving as a neutral and detached decision maker. The question for this court therefore becomes whether the level of executive authority vested in the Mayor of Macedonia is broad so that it becomes reasonable to question [his] impartiality even if he collects a fairly small amount of general fund revenue through the mayor's court. Rose, 875 F.Supp. at 453. 28 Plaintiff contends that the powers vested in the Mayor of Macedonia by charter preclude him from also presiding over the Mayor's Court. Like the mayors in Ward and Rose, the Mayor of Macedonia is vested with broad executive powers. Under the Charter of the Municipality of Macedonia, Ohio (Charter), the Mayor is the chief conservator of the peace and shall cause all laws to be enforced. Charter § 3.03(a). He exercises control over all departments and divisions of the municipality except the City Council. He presides over all Council meetings. He does not participate in deliberations, but votes in the event of a tie. He has the right to recommend and introduce legislation to the Council, and has veto power over ordinances and resolutions adopted by the Council, subject to override by a vote of at least two-thirds of the Council members. Charter § 3.03(b). He must prepare an annual budget and submit it to the Council, and has the power to appoint, promote, discipline, transfer, reduce, or remove any official or employee, except those elected under the Charter and except employees of the Council. Charter § 3.03(a). The Mayor appoints Department Heads subject to confirmation of a majority vote of those members elected to Council, or votes to disaffirm the appointment by two-thirds of the Council members. The appointment is automatically confirmed in the event of the Council's failure to either confirm or disaffirm within 30 days. Id. The Mayor also appoints civil servants through the Municipal Civil Service Commission (Commission). For example, police officers, who are classified employees under the Commission's regulations, must submit to examinations administered by the Commission, character and fitness evaluations, and must fulfill other qualifications before the Commission will recommend them for appointment. The Commission certifies three eligible applicants for each job opening and the Mayor may appoint from this list. The Mayor may bypass the Commission and make direct, temporary appointments in the event of an emergency. See Rules and Regulations of the Civil Service Commission of the City of Macedonia, Rules IV-VI (1991). Finally, the Mayor of Macedonia must supervise the administration of municipal affairs, perform other duties as required by the Charter, the Council, and the laws of the State of Ohio, and has all other executive powers provided for mayors of municipalities in the Ohio Revised Code. Charter § 3.03(a). While the Charter clearly permits the mayor to delegate certain executive responsibilities for more efficient administration, he ultimately holds a degree of executive power comparable to the mayors in Ward and Rose, both of whose mayor's courts were found unconstitutional. 29 Defendants on the other hand urge us to focus, as the district court did, not upon the powers with which the mayor is vested, but upon those that Mayor Migliorini personally exercises and whether he was actually biased in presiding over plaintiff's case. The district court distinguished Rose from this case because Rose was premised upon the notion that the mayor 'appoints the chief of police and police officers,'  while the district court concluded that there was no evidence to suggest Mayor Migliorini personally selected either Macedonia's Chief of Police or Officer Nicholl, even though the Macedonia Charter ostensibly gives the Mayor the power to do so. Mem. Op. and Order of June 19, 1997, at 10-11, J.A. 142-43. The district court also rejected plaintiff's contention that Mayor Migliorini might be biased in favor Officer Nicholl because the Mayor appointed him. As the evidence only showed that the mayor appointed Officer Nicholl as a purely formal act in the discharge of the mayor's executive responsibility to appoint police officers under the municipality's civil service rules, and not that he had any history with or in any way handpicked Officer Nicholl, there was insufficient evidence to conclude as a matter of law that Mayor Migliorini possessed a possible temptation to be partial to the word of Nicholl over [plaintiff] within the meaning of Ward. Mem. Op. and Order of Feb. 17, 1998, at 13, J.A. 262. The district court declined to hold the Mayor's Court unconstitutional based only upon the powers vested in the mayor under the Charter without regard to proof of actual bias: 30 A finding that Mayor Migliorini possesses a possible temptation to be partial to Nicholl on the evidence presented in this case would indicate that no contested traffic case could constitutionally be tried in mayor's court where the mayor had exclusive responsibility for the ticketing police officer. This court is reticent to reach such a per se rule in light of the dramatically different holding in Ward. 31 Mem. Op. and Order of Feb. 17, 1998, at 14, J.A. 263. 32 There are several problems with the district court's conclusions. First, the holding in Ward is not dramatically different. Ward held that possible temptation may exist when the mayor's executive responsibilities for village finances may make him partisan to maintain the high level of contribution from the mayor's court. Ward, 409 U.S. at 60. Similarly, there may exist a possible temptation for a mayor presiding over a contested traffic case to give undue credence to a ticketing police officer for whom the mayor has ultimate appointment responsibility. Second, the district court's attempt to distinguish this case from Rose and Ward as those cases were premised on the notion that the mayor appoints the chief of police and police officers, whereas Mayor Migliorini does not, is unpersuasive. The Mayor of Macedonia exercises discretion in the appointment of police officers, albeit after the job applicants have been recommended by the Civil Service Commission. For each opening, the Commission certifies the three top applicants and the mayor chooses one. The district court's emphasis on the lack of proof of actual bias misconstrues the point of the test we must apply. The Supreme Court's test does not call for proof of actual temptation. The mere possibility of temptation to ignore the burden of proof is all that is required. Where, as here, Mayor Migliorini was the chief conservator of the peace, retained ultimate responsibility for law enforcement and preparation of the city's budget, and appointed the officer who issued plaintiff's parking ticket, there existed the possibility that Mayor Migliorini would be tempted to forget the burden of proof and defer to the officer's version of events, even through Mayor Migliorini possessed no actual temptation or bias. 33 The broad reach of Mayor Migliorini's executive powers and his sweeping administrative responsibilities necessarily puts him in two practically and seriously inconsistent positions, one partisan and the other judicial. Ward, 409 U.S. at 60 (quoting Tumey, 273 U.S. at 534). That under the Charter he may delegate administrative responsibilities for more efficient administration dilutes neither the power with which he is vested nor his accountability for law enforcement and the fiscal health of the municipality as its chief executive. Because the plaintiff was deprived due process when Mayor Migliorini tried his contested traffic and criminal contempt charges, we reverse the district court's grant of summary judgment for the defendants and its denial of summary judgment for the plaintiff on Count I of his complaint. 6 34
35 Plaintiff claims that because Mayor Migliorini was not an impartial decision maker, plaintiff was also deprived of his right under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments against issuance of an arrest warrant by a person who is not neutral and detached from law enforcement. See Amended Complaint, Count III, at 19, J.A. 49. It is well-settled that the signing and issuance of an arrest warrant are to be undertaken only by a neutral and detached judicial officer. Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 449, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971) (state attorney general personally in charge of investigating a widely publicized murder, and who later acted as chief prosecutor at trial, ought not to have issued a search warrant in the case); Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 14, 68 S.Ct. 367, 92 L.Ed. 436 (1948)(inferences [of probable cause must] 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.); United States v. Weaver, 99 F.3d 1372, 1376 (6th Cir.1996)(the court must ... insist that the magistrate perform his 'neutral and detached' function and not serve merely as a rubber stamp for police.' ). See also Shadwick v. City of Tampa, 407 U.S. 345, 350-51, 92 S.Ct. 2119, 32 L.Ed.2d 783 (1972)(municipal court clerks neutral and detached, and therefore able to issue warrants for persons charged with breach of municipal ordinances because removed from prosecutor and police and supervised by municipal court judges); United States v. Bowers, 828 F.2d 1169, 1174-75 (6th Cir.1987) (district court judge's judicial supervision of city water and sewerage department pursuant to federal court order did not render him incapable of acting as a neutral and detached judicial officer in reviewing wiretap application pertaining to criminal investigation of water and sewerage department). 36 Defendants' contention that the Mayor could validly issue a bench warrant for plaintiff's arrest because the Mayor is only a law enforcement officer when acting in that capacity, and that there is no evidence Mayor Migliorini acted in his capacity as chief conservator of the peace when presiding over Mayor's Court, simply cannot be reconciled with our holding in Part A, supra, that a deprivation of due process occurred when Mayor Migliorini presided over plaintiff's trial. In evaluating plaintiff's challenge to issuance of the bench warrant, the district court distinguished the process of making credibility determinations in a trial on a substantive offense from the process of determining whether a party is in contempt: [t]here does not appear to be any reason to suggest that the mayor could not be 'neutral and detached' in determining whether [plaintiff] failed to appear in court. Mem. Op. and Order of June 19, 1997, at 13, J.A. 145 (citing United States v. Evans, 574 F.2d 352, 355 (6th Cir.1978)). We have held today, however, that the deprivation of due process occurred because the powers with which he was vested necessarily put him in two practically and seriously inconsistent positions. By virtue of the breadth of his executive powers and administrative responsibilities, Mayor Migliorini lacked authority to preside over the Mayor's Court. Therefore we are also compelled to find that plaintiff was deprived of due process when the Mayor issued a bench warrant for plaintiff's arrest on account of his failure to appear in Mayor's Court. Accordingly, we reverse the district court's dismissal of Count III of plaintiff's complaint.