Opinion ID: 201791
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The First Prong

Text: 40 The Fourth Amendment provides that [t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons ... against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing ... the persons or things to be seized. While the text of the amendment only mentions probable cause in the context of issuing a warrant, decades of case law have established that a warrantless arrest also requires probable cause. E.g., United States v. Meade, 110 F.3d 190, 193 (1st Cir.1997). 11 41 Most arrests fall into one of several common patterns. In the first scenario, an officer without a warrant suspects that a certain person has just committed, or is about to commit, a crime. In that case, [p]robable cause for an arrest exists when the arresting officer, acting upon apparently trustworthy information, reasonably concludes that a crime has been (or is about to be) committed and that the putative arrestee likely is one of the perpetrators. Acosta v. Ames Dep't Stores, Inc., 386 F.3d 5, 9 (1st Cir.2004). 42 In a second arrest scenario, a law enforcement officer [purporting to have] information amounting to probable cause directs an officer who lacks the knowledge to make the arrest. Meade, 110 F.3d at 193. In such cases, we `impute' to the arresting officer the directing officer's knowledge, and thus the arrest stands or falls on what the directing officer knew, not what the arresting officer knew. Id. 43 In a third scenario, a magistrate has issued a warrant for a suspect's arrest. In that case, we essentially ignore the arresting officer's knowledge; the officer need not know anything more than that a facially valid arrest warrant has issued. Rather, we focus entirely on the magistrate's knowledge to determine if the magistrate had a substantial basis for determining the existence of probable cause. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 239, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983). 44 These paradigms do not adequately capture the situation here. Since there was no warrant for Wilson's arrest, this case cannot fall in the third category. But it does not comfortably fit in the first or second categories either. No officer even purports to have drawn the conclusion that a crime ha[d] been (or [was] about to be) committed and that [Wilson] likely [was] one of the perpetrators, Acosta, 386 F.3d at 9. 45 It is perhaps natural, and appellees understandably seize upon the temptation, to misframe the question. Instead of asking whether there was probable cause to believe that Wilson had committed a crime, appellees pose the issue as whether there was probable cause to believe that a warrant had been issued for her arrest. That is not the correct analysis; it wrongly conflates the Fourth Amendment question of probable cause with the § 1983 question (under the third prong of the qualified immunity test) of objective reasonableness. As the Saucier framework makes clear, courts must first answer the constitutional question as if there were no such thing as qualified immunity, and only then ask whether the additional protections of qualified immunity are available. See 533 U.S. at 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151. We must remember that the reasonableness standards underlying the probable cause and qualified immunity inquiries are not coterminous. Iacobucci, 193 F.3d at 23. In particular, qualified immunity allows for a wider range of mistakes. See Cox, 391 F.3d at 31. Qualified immunity eschews a line that separates the constitutional from the unconstitutional and instead draws a line that separates unconstitutional but objectively reasonable acts from obviously unconstitutional acts. Id. at 31. In determining whether the Fourth Amendment was violated, we must rigorously draw precisely the line that qualified immunity eschews — between the constitutional and the unconstitutional — and not erroneously import the wider latitude afforded by § 1983 into the Constitution itself. 46 Under these basic principles, the Fourth Amendment is not satisfied simply because the police had an objectively reasonable belief that there was a warrant for Wilson's arrest. Indeed, the Fourth Amendment would not necessarily be satisfied even if the police correctly believed that there was a warrant for her arrest. The Fourth Amendment requires that a warrant must be supported by probable cause. See U.S. Const. amend. IV; Gates, 462 U.S. at 239, 103 S.Ct. 2317. And the probable cause that must ground a warrant cannot simply be probable cause to believe that there is a warrant. 47 In short, the ultimate question for determining whether an arrest violates the Fourth Amendment is, in this context as in any other, whether there was probable cause to believe that the arrestee had committed or was committing a crime. 12 Under this analysis, Wilson's arrest violated the Fourth Amendment. No officer ever formed the conclusion that a crime ha[d] been (or [was] about to be) committed and that [Wilson] likely [was] one of the perpetrators, Acosta, 386 F.3d at 9. Nor did any magistrate. Rather, this is a case where each officer thought that some other officer had convinced a magistrate to issue a warrant for Wilson's arrest. And an arrest is not valid simply because the arresting officer thinks that a second officer has adequate justification to arrest a particular person. In such cases, the validity of the arrest turns on whether the second officer actually did have adequate justification to arrest that person: 48 Certainly police officers called upon to aid other officers in executing arrest warrants are entitled to assume that the officers requesting aid offered the magistrate the information requisite to support an independent judicial assessment of probable cause. Where, however, the contrary turns out to be true, an otherwise illegal arrest cannot be insulated from challenge by the decision of the instigating officer to rely on fellow officers to make the arrest. 49 Whiteley v. Warden, 401 U.S. 560, 568, 91 S.Ct. 1031, 28 L.Ed.2d 306 (1971); see also United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 231, 105 S.Ct. 675, 83 L.Ed.2d 604 (1985) (the validity of an arrest based on a police bulletin turns on whether the officers who issued the flyer possessed probable cause to make the arrest. It does not turn on whether those relying on the flyer were themselves aware of the specific facts which led their colleagues to seek their assistance) (emphasis omitted); Meade, 110 F.3d at 194 n. 2 (If ... the directing officer lacked probable cause to order the arrest, then the arrest itself is unlawful regardless of the arresting officer's otherwise proper reliance.). 50 The only basis appellees offer to support a finding of probable cause is that most of the other people in the room did have warrants for their arrest which, we will assume, were supported by probable cause. But mere propinquity to others independently suspected of criminal activity does not, without more, give rise to probable cause for a search or arrest. Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 91, 100 S.Ct. 338, 62 L.Ed.2d 238 (1979). Rather, 51 [w]here the standard is probable cause, a search or seizure of a person must be supported by probable cause particularized with respect to that person. This requirement cannot be undercut or avoided by simply pointing to the fact that coincidentally there exists probable cause to search or seize another or to search the premises where the person may happen to be. The Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments protect the `legitimate expectations of privacy' of persons, not places. 52 Id. Whatever relevance the officers' preparations and confusion regarding Wilson's presence in the room may have for later stages of the qualified immunity analysis, see supra note 12, these factors do not add up to probable cause that Wilson had committed a crime. Consequently, the evidence presented at trial supported the jury's finding that Wilson's seizure was unreasonable, and hence that Captain Dunford, as the arresting officer, violated her Fourth Amendment rights.