Court Opinion

ID: 9450634
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:53:39.187858+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:23.914125
License: Public Domain

WOODBURY, Senior Circuit Judge
(by designation; concurring).
The rule developed and extended in recent cases excluding evidence illegally obtained affords direct protection to the guilty. But the rule protects the innocent person whose premises are illegally but fruitlessly ransacked, and perhaps left a shambles, only indirectly through its supposed1 tendency to discourage official excesses. I recognize the danger of groundless actions and consequent dampening of official zeal. However, I see no reason why the innocent should not have direct protection as well as the guilty by the only means available to them, that is, by an action against the officer responsible for the wrong. However, I would not destroy a federal officer’s privilege altogether by making him *135broadly answerable in' damages for the “reasonableness” of his conduct. The law relating to searches, seizures and arrests is today do technical and refined that a federal officer can all too readily make an honest error of constitutional law. I would go no further than to cut down an officer’s privilege or immunity from absolute to qualified or conditional by permitting an action against him but only on a clear showing of “malice, corruption, or cruelty,” 2 to which I would add ruthless indifference to a citizen’s rights.
Thus in my view an officer-defendant would win on motion for summary judgment unless the plaintiff could come up with solid evidence first that the officer’s action was not within the outer perimeter of his powers and second that his action was taken in “bad faith,” using that term as shorthand for the elements essential for liability I have enumerated above. See Hart & Wechsler, The Federal Courts and the Federal System, 1220-1221 (1953). In short, I think to be actionable an officer’s conduct should not only be in excess of his powers but also inspired by “bad faith” as I use the term. Summary judgment would therefore afford a defendant protection from ill founded actions, as pointed out by Mr. Justice Brennan in his dissent in Barr v. Matteo, 360 U.S. 564, 589, 79 S.Ct. 1335 (1959), thereby minimizing the deterrent effects upon official action envisaged by the late Judge Learned Hand in Gregoire v. Biddle, 177 F.2d 579, 581 (C.A.2, 1949), cert. denied, 339 U.S. 949, 70 S.Ct. 803.
Application of the principle I advocate would result in reversal of the judgments of the court below, for as the case now stands'there is evidence that the defendant acted with reckless indifference by resorting to defamation to gain his ends. I concur.
. Before ALDRICH, Chief Judge, and WOODBURY and HARTIGAN, Senior Circuit Judges.
On Petition for Rehearing.
ALDRICH, Chief Judge.
The defendants’ petition for rehearing raises nothing new, except one impermissible matter. In the single brief filed before argument on behalf of defendant-appellees jointly in all cases it was stated that the question presented was whether deféndants, “as Postal Inspectors charged with the investigation of mail robberies,” came within the principle of absolute immunity. The brief was exclusively devoted to a discussion of this doctrine and the contention that the defendants were acting within the “Outer Perimeter” of their authority. Neither in the brief nor in oral argument was it suggested that, for purposes of their motions for summary judgment, defendants relied upon alleged consent by Mrs. Kelley to their conduct. Dissatisfied with their failure to achieve success on a broad scale, government counsel now proffer the deposition of one defendant, which they concede was not presented before, to the effect that Mrs. Kelley had consented to an entry and search. Passing the difficulties how this consent could, even if accepted, constitute a defense to all the claims, counsel should know not to ask a rehearing, on a new record, of a question not previously argued.
Petition denied.

. See Dash, Cracks in the Foundation of Justice, 46 Ill.L.Rev. 385, 391 (1951). See also Burgher, Who Will Watch The Watchman? 14 Am.U.L.Rev. 1 (1964).

. See Wilkes v. Dinsman, 48 U.S. (7 How.) 89, 129, 12 L.Ed. 618 (1849), where the Court wrote:
“ * * * a public officer, invested with certain discretionary powers, never has been, and never should be, made answerable for any injury, when acting within the scope of his authority, and not influenced by malice, corruption, or cruelty.”