Court Opinion

ID: 9607142
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:55:47.752031+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:37.236724
License: Public Domain

NOONAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the opinion and judgment of the court with this reservation: The use of secret “evidence” is itself a denial of a hearing. Jay v. Boyd, 351 U.S. 345, 361—62, 76 S.Ct. 919, 100 L.Ed. 1242 (1956) (Warren, C.J., dissenting). If no hearing, then no process. This court and the BIA itself, as the opinion of the court states, have held that the test for the admissibility of evidence is “fundamental fairness.” A summary of secret evidence does not provide opportunity for cross-examination of the witness furnishing it. The evidence is untested. To conclude that a process is fundamentally fair in which cross-examination is precluded is to say a circle is a square. The verbal assertion may be made. The assertion does not transform the circle. See United States ex rel. Mezei, 345 U.S. 206, 217-218, 224, 73 S.Ct. 625, 97 L.Ed. 956 (1953) (Black, J., joined by Douglas, J., dissenting) (comparing the power conceded to the Attorney General to the arbitrary procedures provided by the criminal law of Nazi-Germany or the Soviet Union) (Jackson, J., a former Attorney General and chief prosecutor at Nuremberg of Nazi crimes against humanity, joined by Frankfurter, J., dissenting) (stating simply that procedural due process is “of the indispensable essence of liberty”); see also, Jay, 351 U.S. at 365, 373, 375, 76 S.Ct. 919 (Black, J., dissenting) (“There is no possible way to contest the truthfulness of anonymous accusations.... In a court of law the triers of fact could not even listen to such gossip....”) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) (quoting President Dwight E. Eisenhower as stating, “[i]n this country, if someone dislikes you, or accuses you, he must come up in front. He cannot hide behind the shadow. He cannot assassinate you or your character from behind, without suffering the penalties an outraged citizenry will impose”) (Douglas, J., dissenting) (“Fairness, implicit in our notions of due process, requires that any ‘hearing’ be full and open with an opportunity to know the charge and the accusers, to reply to the charge, and to meet the accusers”).
Neither Jay nor Mezei control in this case. Jay focused on the interpretation of a statute not at issue here. Mezei dealt with an unadmitted alien. Nonetheless, the constitutional insight of the dissenters is worth recalling. Audi alteram par-tem — Hear the other side. The Latin maxim has sometimes been taken by English authors as expressing the core of natural justice. The four dissenters in Jay and the four dissenters in Mezei reflect *964the same conviction that a proceeding where one party cannot test the information used against her is unjust.
As the opinion of the court observes, we do not need to resolve the question here; but I would not like to leave the impression that a summary of secret evidence would have provided due process.