Opinion ID: 2470108
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Timely Judicial Determination of Probable Cause

Text: In 1975, the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment requires a fair determination of probable cause to be made promptly after arrest. Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 125, 95 S.Ct. 854, 43 L.Ed.2d 54 (1975). Sixteen years later, the Court endeavored to articulate more clearly what the Fourth Amendment required. Cnty. of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44, 56, 111 S.Ct. 1661, 114 L.Ed.2d 49 (1991). This caselaw created two distinct presumptions. Judicial determinations of probable cause within 48 hours of arrest will, as a general matter, comply with the promptness requirement of Gerstein. Id.; see also Powell v. Nevada, 511 U.S. 79, 83, 114 S.Ct. 1280, 128 L.Ed.2d 1 (1994). Delays less than 48 hours also can violate an arrestee's rights when unreasonable, that is, for the purpose of gathering additional evidence to justify the arrest, a delay motivated by ill will against the arrested individual, or delay for delay's sake. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. at 56, 111 S.Ct. 1661. Any probable cause determination before the 48-hour mark is presumptively reasonable and the burden of showing otherwise falls to the person arrested. Id. In evaluating such contentions, courts must allow a substantial degree of flexibility. Id. Beyond 48 hours, the calculus changes. Id. at 57, 111 S.Ct. 1661. In that situation, the burden shifts to the government to demonstrate the existence of a bona fide emergency or other extraordinary circumstance. Id. The Court acknowledged that nothing in the Constitution compels a specific time limit. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. at 56, 111 S.Ct. 1661; see 3 LaFave, Search and Seizure § 5.1(g) at 58 (4th ed. 2004). Also the Court rejected the view that under Gerstein a probable cause determination [was] to be made as soon as the administrative steps incident to arrest were completed. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. at 54, 111 S.Ct. 1661 (emphasis in original) (quotation marks and citation omitted). We give pro se briefs a liberal construction. Mayfield v. Tex. Dep't of Criminal Justice, 529 F.3d 599, 604 (5th Cir.2008). Liberally construed, Brown's brief presents three Fourth Amendment questions relevant to the Rule 50 motion. One is that there were no extraordinary circumstances that warranted an exception to the 48-hour rule. A second argument is that the delay here was for impermissible reasons. The third claim we examine, in Part II of the opinion, is that Brown's warrantless arrest was unconstitutional.
A foundational fact is how long the delay was from arrest until the probable cause determination. Officer Sudduth testified that Brown was not arrested at the traffic stop, was given his Miranda warnings at the police station around 2:00 p.m., and the arrest occurred at about that time. Rational jurors would be entitled to find the officer's statements accurate as to the time of arrest. See Dickie Brennan & Co., 376 F.3d at 362. Brown claimed he was arrested during the traffic stop, apparently only 15 to 30 minutes earlier. The judicial determination of probable cause was made at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, 66.5 hours after Brown's arrest. The jury was instructed on the need to have a determination within 48 hours, and if not, for an emergency or other extraordinary circumstance to have prevented an earlier determination. We summarize the relevant evidence. Pontotoc police rarely had to investigate a murder. Sudduth testified there had been only two murders since 1985. Beginning when the body was recovered in Memphis, two police departmentsone from Tennessee and one from Mississippiwere working in tandem to assess whether Moore had been murdered in Memphis, in the City of Pontotoc, or in the county of Pontotoc outside of the city. The municipal judge needed a basis to believe the murder occurred in his city. A state statute provides that persons arrested for a violation of law within the municipality may be brought before [a municipal judge] for initial appearance. Miss.Code Ann. § 21-23-7 (1972). A Mississippi court rule provides that the initial appearance is the occasion for the determination of probable cause. Miss. Unif. Cir. and Cnty. Ct. R. 6.03. On Tuesday, a Pontotoc municipal judge issued warrants for Brown's arrest. Evidence to justify presenting Brown's case to a judge in Pontotoc was needed. The authority of law enforcement officers to make the initial arrest without a warrant comes from a different statute. Miss.Code Ann. § 99-3-7 (1972). The statute contains no explicit geographical limitation on where the crime had to occur in order for the arrest to be made by Mississippi law enforcement officers. [2] Even were state courts to imply a limitation on arrest that was not followed here, violations of state law do notwithout moredeprive federal rights redressable under Section 1983. Miller v. Carson, 563 F.2d 757, 760 n. 7 (5th Cir.1977) (citing Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 108-09, 65 S.Ct. 1031, 89 L.Ed. 1495 (1945)). Related is Brown's argument that the district court erred by excluding evidence on the substantive demands of Mississippi Uniform Circuit and County Rule 6.03 on initial appearances. If this state rule creates procedures that are different from the obligations arising from Gerstein and McLaughlin, then they too, without more, are not the basis for a Section 1983 claim. Officer Sudduth testified that he determined on Monday, during the interview of Brown's wife, Tenille Johnson, that the murder occurred in Pontotoc. Her interrogation started at 1:00 p.m. on Monday. She admitted seeing Moore's body slumped over in the seat of Brown's vehicle near the West Town Cafe in Pontotoc. From the car she drove, following Brown while they both drove to Memphis, she never saw [Moore] move. It was pretty close to the evening before Johnson's interview was finished. Q. So Eric Brown was driving around with a dead body? A. [Sudduth] Yes, sir. That's what it appeared to [Tenille Johnson] at that time. Q. Okay. So this was on the 25th. Did you do anything on the 25th to try and get this information in front of a judge? A. This new information ... this was firsthand information, the closest to the facts that we thought at that time was the truth .... I remember before we finally ended, at that time, I felt like it was time to go ahead and at least talk to the judge, get an arrest warrant issued. And he went out of the room, used the telephone, and got ahold of our municipal judge, Judge Henry. Q. Now, who went out of the room and called the judge? A. Captain Farris did. No one asked Sudduth to state the time when the municipal judge was telephoned. The municipal judge responded that he had prior commitments that he had to take care of and advised that he would run by the office the first thing the next morning when the office opened. When the police office opened at 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday, Sudduth presented an affidavit to the court clerk. The judge arrived 30 minutes later, examined the affidavit, and conferred with Sudduth about the crime. Probable cause may be determined by a magistrate in a nonadversary proceeding on hearsay and written testimony. Gerstein, 420 U.S. at 120, 95 S.Ct. 854. The municipal judge determined there was probable cause and authorized arrest warrants for murder and manslaughter. There was little on which jurors could rely to find that an effort to contact the municipal judge was made prior to the passage of 48 hours after the arrest. Thus, there are two delays of potential significance. The first is the failure even to try to contact a magistrate until more than 48 hours from the arrest. The other is the additional delay that occurred after a judge was contacted due to his unavailability until the next morning. We note preliminarily that there was no evidence of a history or policy in the Pontotoc Police Department of not seeking a magistrate's review if the need arose at inconvenient times. In both Gerstein and McLaughlin, objectionable policies at the state and county levels were the moving force behind those opinions. See 3 La-Fave, Search and Seizure § 5.1(g) at 53-54. For example under the Florida system reversed in Gerstein, a person could be arrested without a warrant and subsequently put on trial ... all without a preliminary hearing or other judicial determination of probable cause. Id. § 5.1(g) at 54. In McLaughlin, the County of Riverside had a policy of no magistrate-access on weekends and holidays. See McLaughlin, 500 U.S. at 47, 111 S.Ct. 1661. We now examine whether the events causing the delay could be considered extraordinary. Police were concerned about their authority to get a probable cause determination on a crime that may not have occurred within the city. The Supreme Court has said that delay motivated by ill will is unreasonable. Id. at 56, 111 S.Ct. 1661. There was no evidence that ill will or pretext underlay the effort to determine whether the crime occurred in Pontotoc. In addition, Brown was not arrested without probable cause and then held for the purpose of gathering additional evidence to justify the arrest. Id. Holding someone for that reason is an improper restraint when authorities do not have reasonable grounds to believe that person is guilty of an offense justifying an arrest. See Maryland v. Pringle, 540 U.S. 366, 370, 124 S.Ct. 795, 157 L.Ed.2d 769 (2003). It is not the function of the police to arrest ... and to use an interrogating process at police headquarters in order to determine whom they should charge before committing magistrate on `probable cause.' Mallory v. United States, 354 U.S. 449, 456, 77 S.Ct. 1356, 1 L.Ed.2d 1479 (1957), limited on other grounds, Corley v. United States, 556 U.S. 303, 321-22, 129 S.Ct. 1558, 173 L.Ed.2d 443 (2009). Once police did have fairly clear evidence that Brown committed the crime in their jurisdiction, we assume at least 50 hours had passed since the arrest. There is evidence that almost immediately, a magistrate was contacted. The magistrate was unavailable then, necessitating an overnight delay. In viewing the legitimacy of that delay, we must not ignore practical realities beyond the control of the police. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. at 57, 111 S.Ct. 1661. We also weigh that jurors made a decision on reasonableness. Some of our sister circuits have held that, absent evidence of an impermissible purpose, whether a particular length of detention is reasonable is a question best left open for juries to answer based on the facts presented in each case. Chortek v. City of Milwaukee, 356 F.3d 740, 747 (7th Cir.2004) (quotation marks and citation omitted); Berry v. Baca, 379 F.3d 764, 769 (9th Cir.2004). There was evidence on which jurors could rely that only a brief time passed beyond 48 hours when police resolved the uncertainties about jurisdiction, and police acted promptly thereafter by seeking a magistrate. The subsequent overnight delay was the result of the magistrate's unavailability. These reasons could be seen as extraordinary. Brown argues instead that these reasons for delay are impermissible. We now turn to that argument.
Brown alleges that he was arrested for a traffic offense, then held so an investigation into the murder could occur. He relies on another court's conclusion that police cannot delay the probable-cause inquiry in order to investigate the suspect's participation in crimes other than those forming the basis for arrest. See United States v. Davis, 174 F.3d 941, 945 (8th Cir.1999). There is scant evidence, though, that Brown was arrested for driving without proper license plates and then held while being investigated for murder. The arrest report itself, dated Saturday at 2:00 p.m., stated Brown was arrested for the murder. There was a substantial basis by that point to arrest him: (i) Brown's recent history of violence toward Moore; (ii) the Mc-Donald's manager's report that Brown and Moore had argued repeatedly that Friday and had plans to travel together that evening; (iii) information from Moore's mother that the pregnant victim failed to return home Friday, as well as representations from a neighbor that Brown was neither home when the neighbor retired to bed at 2:00 a.m., nor on Saturday morning; and (iv) the victim's friend's corroboration that Moore had weekend plans with Brown. These facts, all known to Officer Sudduth before Brown's arrest, satisfied the threshold for probable cause of guilt of the crimes, namely, a fair probability that Brown was responsible for Moore's murder and the death of her unborn child. United States v. Garcia, 179 F.3d 265, 269 (5th Cir.1999); see Miss. Code Ann. § 97-3-19(a) (1999) (outlawing the killing of a human being ... [w]hen done with deliberate design); id. § 97-3-37 (criminalizing the willful killing of an unborn quick child as manslaughter). Probable cause exists when the facts available at the time of the arrest would support a reasonable person's belief that an offense has been . . . committed and that the individual arrested is the guilty party. United States v. Hearn, 563 F.3d 95, 103 (5th Cir.2009) (quotation marks and citation omitted). The delay was not for any reason previously recognized as impermissible. Instead, delay was for the purpose of discovering whether Brown committed his crimes within the officers' jurisdiction. We are not concluding that the indefinite holding of a prisoner while jurisdictional doubt is resolved can be justified, only that the few hours beyond 48 that passed here before seeking a magistrate's ruling could be found by jurors not to violate the Fourth Amendment. We are also not concluding that any jurisdictional dilemma will excuse a delay. As summarized for the jury during closing argument: [Police] knew a murder had taken place all right. They had a young woman dead. There was no question about the crime. It was just a question about where . . . . And that caused a jurisdictional issue. Which police department? Which law enforcement agency handles it? . . . In all [Sudduth's] years working for the Pontotoc Police Department, there's [sic] been two murders, and this was one of them. And he had never had anything like this. Police were diligent once jurisdiction was determined, and then confronted the practical reality of having to wait overnight for a magistrate. On these facts, jurors were not prohibited from finding delay was justified as an emergency or extraordinary circumstance due to law enforcement's late discovery of facts to support that the crime occurred within the relevant jurisdiction. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. at 57, 111 S.Ct. 1661.