Opinion ID: 857197
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Denial of motion to quash arrest

Text: Monroe challenges the denial of his motion to quash his arrest. He contends that because the police lacked 1 Because Monroe had not shown that his trial counsel was ineffective, the court rejected Monroe’s additional argument that his appellate counsel was ineffective for not raising this claim in Monroe’s direct appeal of his conviction. 2010 WL 3307081, at . 12 No. 10-3407 probable cause to believe he had committed a crime as of the time he was arrested at his home, he was seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and consequently the statements he subsequently made while in custody should have been barred from evidence pursuant to the exclusionary rule. We begin by taking note of a threshold argument that the State has raised in response to Monroe’s appeal on this point, which is that although Monroe has con- tended that he did not receive a full and fair hearing on his motion to quash in state court, he has not separately renewed his contention that the police lacked probable cause to arrest him as of the time he was taken into custody at his home. The State reads Monroe’s brief to presume that the denial of a full and fair hearing on his motion by itself would entitle him to habeas relief. Such a presumption would be incorrect, as the State maintains. As we shall discuss in greater detail in a moment, and as the district court recognized, Stone v. Powell, supra, 428 U.S. at 494, 96 S. Ct. at 3052, bars a federal habeas court from reaching the merits of a petitioner’s Fourth Amendment claim so long as the state court granted him a full and fair hearing on the claim. Establishing that the petitioner was not granted a full and fair hearing is thus the means of surmounting the Stone bar and opening the door to federal review of the merits of the petitioner’s Fourth Amendment claim. See Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 395 n.5, 127 S. Ct. 1091, 1099 n.5 (2007) (collecting habeas decisions in which courts proceeded to merits of Fourth Amendment claims after finding that petitioners were denied full No. 10-3407 13 and fair hearings on these claims in state court). Relief on a Fourth Amendment claim thus requires a habeas petitioner to show two things: (1) that the state court denied him a full and fair hearing on his claim, and (2) that the claim was meritorious. Monroe’s brief never reaches step 2. We do not read the omission by itself as reflecting a presumption that it is unnecessary for Monroe to show that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated. His brief instead repeatedly contends that because he was denied a full and fair hearing on his claim in state court, he is entitled to habeas “review” (e.g., Monroe Br. 16, 18, 25, 29, 38), which is probably best understood as a request, in the event we agree he was denied a full and fair hearing, that we order the district court to take up the merits of this claim. More troubling is the statement in Monroe’s brief that “Monroe’s appointed counsel does not argue on this record that his arrest can be said to have lacked probable cause.” Monroe Br. 39. That reads like a concession that the police had probable cause to arrest him, regardless of when the arrest occurred. If Monroe has no argument that he was arrested without probable cause, even if, as he contends, he was arrested at his home, then it is not clear what is at stake in this appeal. Cf. New York v. Harris, 495 U.S. 14, 21, 110 S. Ct. 1640, 1644-45 (1990) (exclusionary rule does not bar admission of post-arrest statement that defendant makes outside of home following police officers’ warrantless and nonconsensual entry into his home to make arrest, in violation of Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 100 S. Ct. 1371 (1980), so long as arrest was supported by probable cause). In 14 No. 10-3407 any event, because we conclude below that the state court did not deprive Monroe of a full and fair hearing on his Fourth Amendment claim, we need not consider whether the failure to contest the existence of probable cause might constitute a forfeiture, if not a waiver, of the Fourth Amendment claim. Ultimately, in order to prevail on his Fourth Amendment claim, Monroe would have to show not only that he was arrested without probable cause, but that the state court, as a result of the improper arrest, should have invoked the exclusionary rule to bar the admission of his post-arrest statements at trial. See Hampton v. Wyant, 296 F.3d 560, 562 (7th Cir. 2002). But as the Supreme Court emphasized in Stone, 428 U.S. at 486, 96 S. Ct. at 3048, the primary aim of the exclusionary rule is to deter the police from violating the Fourth Amendment rather than to remedy an injury to the individual. “Evidence obtained by police officers in violation of the Fourth Amendment is excluded at trial in the hope that the frequency of future violations will decrease.” Id. at 492; 96 S. Ct. at 3051. Application of the rule comes at a price, for excluding probative evidence of a defendant’s wrongdoing “deflects the truthfinding process and often frees the guilty.” Id. at 490, 96 S. Ct. at 3050. The Court was convinced that the benefits of the ex- clusionary rule outweigh the costs when invoked at trial or on direct appeal of a defendant’s conviction. Id. at 492-93, 96 S. Ct. at 3051-52. But the Court perceived whatever additional benefit there might be to invoking the rule on collateral review of a defendant’s conviction to be too slight to justify its cost. No. 10-3407 15 The view that the deterrence of Fourth Amendment violations would be furthered rests on the dubious assumption that law enforcement authorities would fear that federal habeas review might reveal flaws in a search or seizure that went undetected at trial and on appeal. Even if one rationally could assume that some additional incremental deterrent effect would be presented in isolated cases, the resulting advance of the legitimate goal of furthering Fourth Amendment rights would be outweighed by the acknowledged costs to other values vital to a rational system of criminal justice. Id. at 493-94; 96 S. Ct. at 3052 (footnote omitted). This led the Court to conclude that relief on a Fourth Amendment claim should normally be unavailable to a petitioner in habeas corpus: “[W]e conclude that where the State has provided an opportunity for full and fair litigation of a Fourth Amendment claim, a state prisoner may not be granted federal habeas corpus relief on the ground that evidence obtained in an unconstitutional search or seizure was introduced at his trial.” Id. at 494, 96 S. Ct. at 3052 (footnotes omitted). Much ink has been spilled over what exactly constitutes a full and fair hearing for purposes of Stone. See Cabrera v. Hinsley, 324 F.3d 527, 530-31 (7th Cir. 2003). Our decisions in Cabrera and Hampton make clear that it means more than just the opportunity to present one’s Fourth Amendment claim to the state court. Id. at 531-32; Hampton, 296 F.3d at 563-64. A state court process that amounts to a sham would not constitute a full and fair hearing even though the petitioner had his day in 16 No. 10-3407 court on the claim. Cabrera, 324 F.3d at 531-32; Hampton, 296 F.3d at 563-64. Evaluating the adequacy of the hearing thus requires us to give at least “some attention to how the state court dealt with the merits” of the claim. Id. at 564 (emphasis in original). But not too much attention, as we added in Cabrera. 324 F.3d at 531. Our role is not to second-guess the state court on the merits of the petitioner’s claim, but rather to assure ourselves that the state court heard the claim, looked to the right body of case law, and rendered an intellectually honest decision. See Hampton, 296 F.3d at 563-64; see also Miranda v. Leibach, 394 F.3d 984, 997 (7th Cir. 2005). Here, Monroe contends that a threshold error made by the trial judge in resolving his motion to quash his arrest reveals that the hearing he received was neither full nor fair. It takes more than an error in the state court’s analysis to surmount the Stone bar to collateral relief, however. Id. at 998; Cabrera, 324 F.3d at 532; Hampton, 296 F.3d at 564; see also Watson v. Hulick, 481 F.3d 537, 542 (7th Cir. 2007). An “egregious error” in a state court’s Fourth Amendment decision may suffice for this purpose, Turentine [v. Miller], 80 F.3d [222] at 226 [(7th Cir. 1996)], but not for the flaw it exposes in the state court’s analysis but rather for what it reveals about the bona fides of the state court’s handling of the Fourth Amendment claim, Hampton, 296 F.3d at 564. As we explained in Hampton, “a blunder, no matter how obvious, matters only in conjunction with other circumstances that imply refusal by the state No. 10-3407 17 judiciary to take seriously its obligation to adjudicate claims under the Fourth Amendment.” Id. . . . . Miranda, 394 F.3d at 998. As we shall see, the state court’s error in this case does not betray an unwillingness on the part of the Illinois judiciary to treat Monroe’s claim honestly and fairly. The State more or less concedes that the trial court indeed did err on a material point. The thrust of Monroe’s motion to quash was that he was arrested at his home without probable cause. In denying the motion, the trial court found that Monroe had instead voluntarily accompanied officers to the police station and that he was not arrested until sometime after he arrived there; and as of that later point in time, the court reasoned, there was sufficient probable cause to arrest him. R. 31-2 at 185.2 Yet, the court’s finding that Monroe was not arrested until after he reached the police station appears to have been inconsistent with the facts stipulated to by the parties, which acknowledged that Monroe had been taken away from his home in handcuffs. R. 31-2 at 134.3 Although placing an individual in handcuffs does 2 The record is silent as to how much time passed between the point at which Monroe was taken into custody at his home and the point at which the trial court believed Monroe subsequently was arrested at the police station. 3 Although, as we read the record, the parties’ stipulation did not identify precisely when and where Monroe was handcuffed, see R. 31-2 at 134 (prosecutor stipulates that “[Monroe] (continued...) 18 No. 10-3407 not invariably signal that he is under arrest, see United States v. Smith, 3 F.3d 1088, 1094-95 (7th Cir. 1993) (coll. cases), “[t]here can be little question that a suspect placed in handcuffs is not free to leave and, for all practical purposes, is in police custody . . . .” United States v. Wilson, 2 F.3d 226, 231 (7th Cir. 1993). There appears to be no dispute here that once Monroe was placed in handcuffs, he was under arrest. But although the trial court’s resolution of the motion to suppress hinged on its apparently erroneous understanding of the facts, the appellate court’s decision did not. Although the appellate court did not expressly correct the trial court’s error as to the timing of the arrest, in the sense of acknowledging and labeling it as error, the court certainly was aware of the mistake, as (...continued) left the house with [the police] and was subsequently handcuffed”), Monroe’s motion to quash represented that the police had placed him in handcuffs “[a]fter leaving [Monroe’s] apartment and while still on the porch of the building where he then resided,” R. 31-2 at 39, and the parties stipulated that Monroe’s mother, if called to testify, would state that “when Solomon was taken away [from his residence], he was taken away in handcuffs.” R. 31-2 at 134. (The parties also stipulated that the detectives who went to Monroe’s residence would have arrested him and taken him from the house without his consent if he had refused to accompany them. R. 31-2 at 135.) The State itself concedes in the brief it filed with this court that the parties stipulated that “petitioner was led away from his residence in handcuffs.” State Br. 15. No. 10-3407 19 Monroe had expressly pointed it out to the court in the direct-appeal briefing. R. 20 at 8, 11. Moreover, the State, in responding to Monroe’s appellate argument (which was largely a broadside on the reliability of the witnesses who had implicated Monroe in the attack on Stalker to the police, see R. 20 at 6, 25-27), relied exclusively on information that was known to the police at the time they took Monroe from his residence. R. 20 at 5965. The appellate court’s analysis, in turn, relied on the same information recited in the State’s brief, and the court proceeded to reject Monroe’s contention that this information was insufficiently trustworthy as proof of his involvement in the attack. R. 20 at 85-91. Monroe himself makes no argument that the appellate court’s resolution of the probable cause issue reflected an erroneous understanding of when he was arrested, as the trial court’s ruling did. The fact that the appellate court’s analysis did not repeat the error is important, because its decision was the final decision of the Illinois courts to reach the merits of Monroe’s Fourth Amendment claim, and as such it is that decision which matters for purposes of habeas review. See, e.g., Harris v. Thompson, 698 F.3d 609, 623 (7th Cir. 2012), pet’n for cert. filed, 81 U.S.L.W. 3421 (U.S. Jan. 16, 2013) (No. 12-885). Monroe thus received a full and fair hearing on the merits of his Fourth Amendment claim in the Illinois courts. Both the trial court and the Illinois Appellate Court entertained and reached the merits of his claim. The appellate court looked to the appropriate body of case law in resolving the claim, citing state prece20 No. 10-3407 dents which set forth the relevant Fourth Amendment principles (for example, People v. Kidd, 675 N.E.2d 910, 920 (Ill. 1996), which in turn relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91, 85 S. Ct. 223, 225-26 (1964)); and the court correctly set forth the standard for evaluating probable cause. R. 20 at 85-86. Both the trial and appellate courts took the claim seriously, and although the trial court, in resolving the claim, committed a significant error as to the timing of Monroe’s arrest, the appellate court’s analysis did not repeat the error. Its analysis was consistent with the parties’ stipulation that Monroe was handcuffed (and thus arrested) at his home; and the court cited and relied upon evidence which, in its view, established probable cause to believe Monroe had committed a crime and which was known to the police at the time of Monroe’s arrest. Stone therefore precludes us from reaching the merits of Monroe’s Fourth Amendment claim.