Court Opinion

ID: 9430977
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:31:03.09002+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:26.581970
License: Public Domain

Justice Marshall,
with whom Justice Brennan joins, dissenting.
This case brings before the Court for the first time a statute in which Congress declares that a person innocent of any crime may be jailed indefinitely, pending the trial of allegations which are legally presumed to be untrue, if the Government shows to the satisfaction of a judge that the accused is likely to commit crimes, unrelated to the pending charges, at any time in the future. Such statutes, consistent with the usages of tyranny and the excesses of what bitter experience teaches us to call the police state, have long been thought incompatible with the fundamental human rights protected by our Constitution. Today a majority of this Court holds otherwise. Its decision disregards basic principles of justice *756established centuries ago and enshrined beyond the reach of governmental interference in the Bill of Rights.
A few preliminary words are necessary with respect to the majority’s treatment of the facts in this case. The two paragraphs which the majority devotes to the procedural posture are essentially correct, but they omit certain matters which are of substantial legal relevance.
The Solicitor General’s petition for certiorari was filed on July 21, 1986. On October 9, 1986, respondent Salerno filed a response to the petition. No response or appearance of counsel was filed on behalf of respondent Cafaro. The petition for certiorari was granted on November 3, 1986.
On November 19, 1986, respondent Salerno was convicted after a jury trial on charges unrelated to those alleged in the indictment in this case. On January 13, 1987, Salerno was sentenced on those charges to 100 years’ imprisonment. As of that date, the Government no longer required a pretrial detention order for the purpose of keeping Salerno incarcerated; it could simply take him into custody on the judgment and commitment order. The present case thus became moot as to respondent Salerno.1
*757The situation with respect to respondent Cafaro is still more disturbing. In early October 1986, before the Solicitor General’s petition for certiorari was granted, respondent Cafaro became a cooperating witness, assisting the Government’s investigation “by working in a covert capacity.”2 The information that Cafaro was cooperating with the Government was not revealed to his codefendants, including respondent Salerno. On October 9, 1986, respondent Cafaro was released, ostensibly “temporarily for medical care and treatment,” with the Government’s consent. Docket, SS 86 Cr. 245-2, p. 6 (MJL) (SDNY) (Lowe, J.).3 This release was conditioned upon execution of a personal recognizance bond in the sum of $1 million, under the general pretrial *758release provisions of 18 U. S. C. §3141 (1982 ed., Supp. III). In short, respondent Cafaro became an informant and the Government agreed to his release on bail in order that he might better serve the Government’s purposes. As to Cafaro, this case was no longer justiciable even before cer-tiorari was granted, but the information bearing upon the essential issue of the Court’s jurisdiction was not made available to us.
The Government thus invites the Court to address the facial constitutionality of the pretrial detention statute in a case involving two respondents, one of whom has been sentenced to a century of jail time in another case and released pending appeal with the Government’s consent, while the other was released on bail in this case, with the Government’s consent, because he had become an informant. These facts raise, at the very least, a substantial question as to the Court’s jurisdiction, for it is far from clear that there is now an actual controversy between these parties. As we have recently said, “Article III of the Constitution requires that there be a live case or controversy at the time that a federal court decides the case; it is not enough that there may have been a live case or controversy when the case was decided by the court whose judgment we are reviewing.” Burke v. Barnes, 479 U. S. 361, 363 (1987); see Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U. S. 393, 402 (1975); Golden v. Zwickler, 394 U. S. 103, 108 (1969). Only by flatly ignoring these matters is the majority able to maintain the pretense that it has jurisdiction to decide the question which it is in such a hurry to reach.
h-1 1 — 1
The majority approaches respondents’ challenge to the Act by dividing the discussion into two sections, one concerned with the substantive guarantees implicit in the Due Process Clause, and the other concerned with the protection afforded by the Excessive Bail Clause of the Eighth Amendment. This is a sterile formalism, which divides a unitary argument *759into two independent parts and then professes to demonstrate that the parts are individually inadequate.
On the due process side of this false dichotomy appears an argument concerning the distinction between regulatory and punitive legislation. The majority concludes that the Act is a regulatory rather than a punitive measure. The ease with which the conclusion is reached suggests the worthlessness of the achievement. The major premise is that “[ujnless Congress expressly intended to impose punitive restrictions, the punitive/regulatory distinction turns on ‘“whether an alternative purpose to which [the restriction] may rationally be connected is assignable for it, and whether it appears excessive in relation to the alternative purpose assigned [to it].”’” Ante, at 747 (citations omitted). The majority finds that “Congress did not formulate the pretrial detention provisions as punishment for dangerous individuals,” but instead was pursuing the “legitimate regulatory goal” of “preventing danger to the community.” Ibid.4 Concluding that pretrial detention is not an excessive solution to the problem of preventing danger to the community, the majority thus finds that no substantive element of the guarantee of due process invalidates the statute.
*760This argument does not demonstrate the conclusion it purports to justify. Let us apply the majority’s reasoning to a similar, hypothetical case. After investigation, Congress determines (not unrealistically) that a large proportion of violent crime is perpetrated by persons who are unemployed. It also determines, equally reasonably, that much violent crime is committed at night. From amongst the panoply of “potential solutions,” Congress chooses a statute which permits, after judicial proceedings, the imposition of a dusk-to-dawn curfew on anyone who is unemployed. Since this is not a measure enacted for the purpose of punishing the unemployed, and since the majority finds that preventing danger to the community is a legitimate regulatory goal, the curfew statute would, according to the majority’s analysis, be a mere “regulatory” detention statute, entirely compatible with the substantive components of the Due Process Clause.
The absurdity of this conclusion arises, of course, from the majority’s cramped concept of substantive due process. The majority proceeds as though the only substantive right protected by the Due Process Clause is a right to be free from punishment before conviction. The majority’s technique for infringing this right is simple: merely redefine any measure which is claimed to be punishment as “regulation,” and, magically, the Constitution no longer prohibits its imposition. Because, as I discuss in Part III, infra, the Due Process Clause protects other substantive rights which are infringed by this legislation, the majority’s argument is merely an exercise in obfuscation.
The logic of the majority’s Eighth Amendment analysis is equally unsatisfactory. The Eighth Amendment, as the majority notes, states that “[ejxcessive bail shall not be required.” The majority then declares, as if it were undeniable, that: “[t]his Clause, of course, says nothing about whether bail shall be available at all.” Ante, at 752. If excessive bail is imposed the defendant stays in jail. The same result is achieved if bail is denied altogether. Whether the *761magistrate sets bail at $1 billion or refuses to set bail at all, the consequences are indistinguishable. It would be mere sophistry to suggest that the Eighth Amendment protects against the former decision, and not the latter. Indeed, such a result would lead to the conclusion that there was no need for Congress to pass a preventive detention measure of any kind; every federal magistrate and district judge could simply refuse, despite the absence of any evidence of risk of flight or danger to the community, to set bail. This would be entirely constitutional, since, according to the majority, the Eighth Amendment “says nothing about whether bail shall be available at all.”
But perhaps, the majority says, this manifest absurdity can be avoided. Perhaps the Bail Clause is addressed only to the Judiciary. “[W]e need not decide today,” the majority says, “whether the Excessive Bail Clause speaks at all to Congress’ power to define the classes of criminal arrestees who shall be admitted to bail.” Ante, at 754. The majority is correct that this question need not be decided today; it was decided long ago. Federal and state statutes which purport to accomplish what the Eighth Amendment forbids, such as imposing cruel and unusual punishments, may not stand. See, e. g., Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86 (1958); Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238 (1972). The text of the Amendment, which provides simply that “[ejxcessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted,” provides absolutely no support for the majority’s speculation that both courts and Congress are forbidden to inflict cruel and unusual punishments, while only the courts are forbidden to require excessive bail.5
*762The majority’s attempts to deny the relevance of the Bail Clause to this case are unavailing, but the majority is nonetheless correct that the prohibition of excessive bail means that in order “to determine whether the Government’s response is excessive, we must compare that response against the interest the Government seeks to protect by means of that response.” Ante, at 754. The majority concedes, as it must, that “when the Government has admitted that its only interest is in preventing flight, bail must be set by a court at a sum designed to ensure that goal, and no more.” Ibid. But, the majority says, “when Congress has mandated detention on the basis of a compelling interest other than prevention of flight, as it has here, the Eighth Amendment does not require release on bail.” Ante, at 754-755. This conclusion follows only if the “compelling” interest upon which Congress acted is an interest which the Constitution permits Congress to further through the denial of bail. The majority does not ask, as a result of its disingenuous division of the analysis, if there are any substantive limits contained in both the Eighth Amendment and the Due Process Clause which render this system of preventive detention unconstitutional. The majority does not ask because the answer is apparent and, to the majority, inconvenient.
Ill
The essence of this case may be found, ironically enough, in a provision of the Act to which the majority does not refer. Title 18 U. S. C. §3142(j) (1982 ed., Supp. Ill) provides that “[njothing in this section shall be construed as modifying or limiting the presumption of innocence.” But the very pith *763and purpose of this statute is an abhorrent limitation of the presumption of innocence. The majority’s untenable conclusion that the present Act is constitutional arises from a specious denial of the role of the Bail Clause and the Due Process Clause in protecting the invaluable guarantee afforded by the presumption of innocence.
“The principle that there is a presumption of innocence in favor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law.” Coffin v. United States, 156 U. S. 432, 453 (1895). Our society’s belief, reinforced over the centuries, that all are innocent until the state has proved them to be guilty, like the companion principle that guilt must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, is “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,” Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U. S. 319, 325 (1937), and is established beyond legislative contravention in the Due Process Clause. See Estelle v. Williams, 425 U. S. 501, 503 (1976); In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358, 364 (1970). See also Taylor v. Kentucky, 436 U. S. 478, 483 (1978); Kentucky v. Whorton, 441 U. S. 786, 790 (1979) (Stewart, J., dissenting).
The statute now before us declares that persons who have been indicted may be detained if a judicial officer finds clear and convincing evidence that they pose a danger to individuals or to the community. The statute does not authorize the Government to imprison anyone it has evidence is dangerous; indictment is necessary. But let us suppose that a defendant is indicted and the Government shows by clear and convincing evidence that he is dangerous and should be detained pending a trial, at which trial the defendant is acquitted. May the Government continue to hold the defendant in detention based upon its showing that he is dangerous? The answer cannot be yes, for that would allow the Government to imprison someone for uncommitted crimes based upon “proof” not beyond a reasonable doubt. The result must therefore be that once the indictment has failed, detention *764cannot continue. But our fundamental principles of justice declare that the defendant is as innocent on the day before his trial as he is on the morning after his acquittal. Under this statute an untried indictment somehow acts to permit a detention, based on other charges, which after an acquittal would be unconstitutional. The conclusion is inescapable that the indictment has been turned into evidence, if not that the defendant is guilty of the crime charged, then that left to his own devices he will soon be guilty of something else. “ ‘If it suffices to accuse, what will become of the innocent?’” Coffin v. United States, supra, at 455 (quoting Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum Libri Qui Supersunt, L. XVIII, c. 1, A. D. 359).
To be sure, an indictment is not without legal consequences. It establishes that there is probable cause to believe that an offense was committed, and that the defendant committed it. Upon probable cause a warrant for the defendant’s arrest may issue; a period of administrative detention may occur before the evidence of probable cause is presented to a neutral magistrate. See Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U. S. 103 (1975). Once a defendant has been committed for trial he may be detained in custody if the magistrate finds that no conditions of release will prevent him from becoming a fugitive. But in this connection the charging instrument is evidence of nothing more than the fact that there will be a trial, and
“release before trial is conditioned upon the accused’s giving adequate assurance that he will stand trial and submit to sentence if found guilty. Like the ancient practice of securing the oaths of responsible persons to stand as sureties for the accused, the modern practice of requiring a bail bond or the deposit of a sum of money subject to forfeiture serves as additional assurance of the *765presence of an accused.” Stack v. Boyle, 342 U. S. 1, 4-5 (1951) (citation omitted).6
The finding of probable cause conveys power to try, and the power to try imports of necessity the power to assure that the processes of justice will not be evaded or obstructed.7 “Pretrial detention to prevent future crimes against society at large, however, is not justified by any concern for holding a trial on the charges for which a defendant has been arrested.” 794 F. 2d 64, 73 (CA2 1986) (quoting United States v. Melendez-Carrion, 790 F. 2d 984, 1002 (CA2 1986) (opinion of Newman, J.)). The detention purportedly authorized by this statute bears no relation to the Government’s power to try charges supported by a finding of probable cause, and thus the interests it serves are outside the scope of interests which may be considered in weighing the excessiveness of bail under the Eighth Amendment.
*766It is not a novel proposition that the Bail Clause plays a vital role in protecting the presumption of innocence. Reviewing the application for bail pending appeal by members of the American Communist Party convicted under the Smith Act, 18 U. S. C. § 2385, Justice Jackson wrote:
“Grave public danger is said to result from what [the defendants] may be expected to do, in addition to what they have done since their conviction. If I assume that defendants are disposed to commit every opportune disloyal act helpful to Communist countries, it is still difficult to reconcile with traditional American law the jailing of persons by the courts because of anticipated but as yet uncommitted crimes. Imprisonment to protect society from predicted but unconsummated offenses is . . . unprecedented in this country and . . . fraught with danger of excesses and injustice....” Williamson v. United States, 95 L. Ed. 1379, 1382 (1950) (opinion in chambers) (footnote omitted).
As Chief Justice Vinson wrote for the Court in Stack v. Boyle, supra: “Unless th[e] right to bail before trial is preserved, the presumption of innocence, secured only after centuries of struggle, would lose its meaning.” 342 U. S., at 4.
> I — i
There is a connection between the peculiar facts of this case and the evident constitutional defects in the statute which the Court upholds today. Respondent Cafaro was originally incarcerated for an indeterminate period at the request of the Government, which believed (or professed to believe) that his release imminently threatened the safety of the community. That threat apparently vanished, from the Government’s point of view, when Cafaro agreed to act as a covert agent of the Government. There could be no more eloquent demonstration of the coercive power of authority to imprison upon prediction, or of the dangers which the almost *767inevitable abuses pose to the cherished liberties of a free society.
“It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.” United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting). Honoring the presumption of innocence is often difficult; sometimes we must pay substantial social costs as a result of our commitment to the values we espouse. But at the end of the day the presumption of innocence protects the innocent; the shortcuts we take with those whom we believe to be guilty injure only those wrongfully accused and, ultimately, ourselves.
Throughout the world today there are men, women, and children interned indefinitely, awaiting trials which may never come or which may be a mockery of the word, because their governments believe them to be “dangerous.” Our Constitution, whose construction began two centuries ago, can shelter us forever from the evils of such unchecked power. Over 200 years it has slowly, through our efforts, grown more durable, more expansive, and more just. But it cannot protect us if we lack the courage, and the self-restraint, to protect ourselves. Today a majority of the Court applies itself to an ominous exercise in demolition. Theirs is truly a decision which will go forth without authority, and come back without respect.
I dissent.

 Had this judgment and commitment order been executed immediately, as is the ordinary course, the present case would certainly have been moot with respect to Salerno. On January 16, 1987, however, the District Judge who had sentenced Salerno in the unrelated proceedings issued the following order, apparently with the Government’s consent:
“Inasmuch as defendant Anthony Salerno was not ordered detained in this case, but is presently being detained pretrial in the case of United States v. Anthony Salerno et al., SS 86 Cr. 245 (MJL),
“IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the bail status of defendant Anthony Salerno in the above-captioned case shall remain the same as it was prior to the January 13, 1987 sentencing, pending further order of the Court.” Order in SS 85 Cr. 139 (RO) (SDNY) (Owen, J.).
This order is curious. To release on bail pending appeal “a person who has been found guilty of an offense and sentenced to a term of imprisonment,” the District Judge was required to find “by clear and convincing evidence *757that the person is not likely to flee or pose a danger to the safety of any other person or the community if released . . . .” 18 U. S. C. § 3143(b)(1) (1982 ed., Supp. III). In short, the District Court which had sentenced Salerno to 100 years’ imprisonment then found, with the Government’s consent, that he was not dangerous, in a vain attempt to keep alive the controversy as to Salerno’s dangerousness before this Court.

 This characterization of Cafaro’s activities, along with an account of the process by which Cafaro became a Government agent, appears in an affidavit executed by a former Assistant United States Attorney and filed in the District Court during proceedings in the instant case which occurred after the ease was submitted to this Court. Affidavit of Warren Neil Eggleston, dated March 18, 1987, SS 86 Cr. 245, p. 4 (MJL) (SDNY).

 Further particulars of the Government’s agreement with Cafaro, including the precise terms of the agreement to release him on bail, are not included in the record, and the Court has declined to order that the relevant documents be placed before us.
In his reply brief in this Court, the Solicitor General stated: “On October 8,1986, Cafaro was temporarily released for medical treatment. Because he is still subject to the pretrial detention order, Cafaro’s case also continues to present a live controversy.” Reply Brief for United States 1-2, n. 1. The Solicitor General did not inform the Court that this release involved the execution of a personal recognizance bond, nor did he reveal that Cafaro had become a cooperating witness. I do not understand how the Solicitor General’s representation that Cafaro was “still subject to the pretrial detention order” can be reconciled with the fact of his release on a $1 million personal recognizance bond.

 Preventing danger to the community through the enactment and enforcement of criminal laws is indeed a legitimate goal, but in our system the achievement of that goal is left primarily to the States. The Constitution does not contain an explicit delegation to the Federal Government of the power to define and administer the general criminal law. The Bail Reform Act does not limit its definition of dangerousness to the likelihood that the defendant poses a danger to others through the commission of federal crimes. Federal preventive detention may thus be ordered under the Act when the danger asserted by the Government is the danger that the defendant will violate state law. The majority nowhere identifies the constitutional source of congressional power to authorize the federal detention of persons whose predicted future conduct would not violate any federal statute and could not be punished by a federal court. I can only conclude that the Court’s frequently expressed concern with the principles of federalism vanishes when it threatens to interfere with the Court’s attainment of the desired result.

 The majority refers to the statement in Carlson v. Landon, 342 U. S. 524, 545 (1952), that the Bail Clause was adopted by Congress from the English Bill of Rights Act of 1689, 1 Wm. & Mary, Sess. 2, ch. II, § 1(10), and that “[i]n England that clause has never been thought to accord a right to bail in all cases, but merely to provide that bail shall not be excessive in those eases where it is proper to grant bail.” A sufficient answer to this *762meager argument was made at the time by Justice Black: “The Eighth Amendment is in the American Bill of Rights of 1789, not the English Bill of Rights of 1689.” Carlson v. Landon, supra, at 557 (dissenting opinion). Our Bill of Rights is contained in a written Constitution, one of whose purposes is to protect the rights of the people against infringement by the Legislature, and its provisions, whatever their origins, are interpreted in relation to those purposes.

 The majority states that denial of bail in capital cases has traditionally been the rule rather than the exception. And this of course is so, for it has been the considered presumption of generations of judges that a defendant in danger of execution has an extremely strong incentive to flee. If in any particular case the presumed likelihood of flight should be made irrebutta-ble, it would in all probability violate the Due Process Clause. Thus what the majority perceives as an exception is nothing more than an example of the traditional operation of our system of bail.

 It is also true, as the majority observes, that the Government is entitled to assurance, by incarceration if necessary, that a defendant will not obstruct justice through destruction of evidence, procuring the absence or intimidation of witnesses, or subornation of perjury. But in such eases the Government benefits from no presumption that any particular defendant is likely to engage in activities inimical to the administration of justice, and the majority offers no authority for the proposition that bail has traditionally been denied 'prospectively, upon speculation that witnesses would be tampered with. Cf. Carbo v. United States, 82 S. Ct. 662, 7 L. Ed. 2d 769 (1962) (Douglas, J., in chambers) (bail pending appeal denied when more than 200 intimidating phone calls made to witness, who was also severely beaten).