Court Opinion

ID: 9474347
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:55:14.708751+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:02.443990
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in Parts I, II, III-A, III-C, III-D, III-E and IV of Judge Johnson’s opinion.
I respectfully dissent, however, from Part III-B of his opinion holding that the *1483return of an indictment by a grand jury is sufficient to establish probable cause for purposes of § 3142(e).
I.
The Supreme Court has stated that “the meaning of the statute must, in the first instance, be sought in the language in which the act is framed, and if that is plain, ... the sole function of the courts is to enforce it according to its terms.” Caminetti v. United States, 242 U.S. 470, 485, 37 S.Ct. 192, 194, 61 L.Ed. 442 (1917). The statute at issue in this proceeding, 18 U.S.C. § 3142(e), clearly states that:
Subject to rebuttal by the person, it shall be presumed that no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the appearance of the person as required and the safety of the community if the judicial officer finds that there is probable cause to believe that the person committed an offense for which a maximum term of imprisonment of ten years or more is prescribed.... (emphasis added).
The plain meaning of this statement cannot be more simply and directly put than Congress has done in the very text of the statute: the rebuttable presumption favoring pretrial detention is not invoked unless or until “the judicial officer finds that there is probable cause to believe that the person committed an offense.” The statute does not say “if a grand jury has found that there is probable cause” nor does it say that the presumption shall attach “if the judicial officer finds that a grand jury has returned an indictment.” Nonetheless, rather than accepting this clear statement of Congress and adhering to its own admonition that “barring clear contrary indication, we must give words their usual, plain meaning,” Majority opinion at 20, the majority opinion disregards Justice Frankfurter’s admonition that “[a] judge must not rewrite a statute, neither to enlarge nor to contract it”1 and, in effect, rewrites the statute to read that the presumption shall come into play “if the judicial officer finds that there is probable cause to believe that the person committed an offense or if a grand jury has indicted the person.”
In addition to violating the injunction that judicial construction of a statute is not “an opportunity for a judge to use words as ‘empty vessels into which he can pour anything he will’ — his caprices, fixed notions, even statesmanlike beliefs in a particular policy,”2 the majority’s rewriting of the statute also imputes a lack of knowledge and intelligence to Congress that is unwarranted. The legislation which created this statute was not hurriedly drafted, neither did it suffer from a lack of hearings and deliberate consideration by the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, through which it passed. There were numerous capable attorneys serving both as members of those committees and as committee staff, and it is inconceivable that that mass of legal talent would have allowed this piece of legislation to slip through without adding the simple phrase “or grand jury indictment” if that was what was really intended. On the contrary, Congress certainly was aware that the vast majority of defendants subject to pretrial detention hearings under this statute will have been charged by indictment; therefore, if it had intended to create an automatic presumption whenever an indictment is returned, it would equally certainly have said so. See United States v. Allen, 605 F.Supp. 864, 870 (W.D.Penn.1985).
Further support for my view that the judicial officer must conduct an independent assessment of probable cause following an evidentiary hearing is found in the fact that the majority’s holding that no probable cause hearing need be held to review the evidence connecting the defendant with the alleged crime is inconsistent with § 3142(g) requiring that:
*1484(g) Factors to be considered. — The judicial officer shall, in determining whether there are conditions of release that will reasonably assure the appearance of the person as required and the safety of any other person and the community, take into account the available information concerning—
(2) the weight of the evidence against the person;
If the judicial officer conducts no independent probable cause hearing to determine the evidence linking the defendant and the alleged crime, he or she will have no evidence available which can be weighed to determine the strength of the case against the defendant as required by § 3142(g)(2).3
II.
The legislative history of § 3142(e) also supports the notion that the judicial officer must conduct an evidentiary hearing in order to make an independent assessment as to the existence of probable cause. Prior to adopting the probable cause standard for triggering the rebuttable presumption in § 3142(e), Congress considered and rejected a “substantial probability” standard. See S.Rep. No. 225, 98th Cong., 1st Sess. 18, reprinted in 1984 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News 3182, 3201. Obviously, a substantial probability standard, since it is more demanding than probable cause, would have foreclosed any question as to whether an indictment was sufficient to trigger the presumption. However, even that portion of the legislative history chronicling the rejection of the substantial probability standard indicates Congress intended that an independent assessment of probable cause be made by the judicial officer at the detention hearing. It states: “the fact that the judicial officer has to find probable cause will assure the validity of the charges against the defendant, and ... any additional assurance provided by the ‘substantial probability’ test is outweighed by the practical problems in meeting this requirement at the stage at which the pretrial detention hearing is held.” Id.; see United States v. Allen, 605 F.Supp. at 870. If, as the majority holds, the judicial officer is allowed to merely rubber stamp the probable cause finding of a grand jury, then his or her “finding” of probable cause serves in no way to “assure the validity of the charges against the defendant” and is thus directly contrary to the intent of Congress as expressed in this passage from the legislative history. In fact, such a rubber stamp “finding” is no finding at all.
III.
In enacting the provisions for pretrial detention in the Bail Reform Act of 1984, Congress recognized the severe deprivation of the liberty of one not yet proven guilty, and therefore presumed innocent, who is detained prior to trial. As a result of this recognition, it took great care to set up adequate procedural safeguards so as to guarantee fairness to those against whom pretrial detention is sought.4 Perhaps because it recalled that the grand jury originated as a tool of the executive and has been subject to abuse by the executive to *1485achieve its ends down through the ages,5 or because it was aware that even today the grand jury is thoroughly dominated by the prosecutor,6 or perhaps even because it realized that “ ‘[a]ny experienced prosecutor will admit that he can indict anybody at any time for almost anything before any grand jury,’ ”7 Congress clearly indicated in the plain language of the statute and in the legislative history that an independent finding of probable cause by the judicial officer is required in order to “assure the validity of the charges against the defendant” before the rebuttable presumption of § 3142(e) is triggered. The holding of the majority that the mere fact of a grand jury indictment is sufficient to trigger this re-buttable presumption ignores these concerns and this intent of Congress.
For the foregoing reasons, I dissent and would require on remand a hearing at which the magistrate or the district court would take evidence and determine the issue of probable cause as so plainly required by the statute.

. Frankfurter, Some Reflections on the Reading of Statutes, 47 Colum.L.Rev. 527, 533 (1947).

. Id. at 529.

. In my interpretation, the two Drug Enforcement Administration agents subpoenaed by the defendant would have testified at the probable cause hearing. The majority’s substitution of a grand jury indictment for a probable cause hearing, coupled with its affirmance of the magistrate’s quashing of defendant’s subpoenas (See Majority’s opinion at 1479), prevents the judicial officer from effectively considering "the weight of the evidence against the person."

. Repeated statements of this need for and concern with adequate procedural safeguards are found throughout the legislative history. See generally S.Rep. No. 225, 98th Cong., 1st Sess. 8-22, reprinted in 1984 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad. News 3182, 3191-3205.

. See Schwartz, Demythologizing the Historic Role of the Grand Jury, 10 Am.Crim.L.Rev. 701 (1972).

. See White & Ianniello, Cases on Grand Jury Abuse, in Parallel Grand Jury and Administrative Agency Investigations 547-48 (1981); Morse, A Survey of the Grand Jury System (pts. 1-3), 10 Or.L.Rev. 101, 217, 295 (1931). See also Antell, The Modem Grand Jury: Benigned Su-pergovemment, 51 A.B.AJ. 153, 154 (1965).
"Though free to take part in the interrogation the grand jurors must place enormous trust in the prosecutor’s guidance. It is he, after all, who tells them what the charge is, who selects the facts for them to hear, who shapes the tone and feel of the entire case. It is the prosecutor alone who has the technical training to understand the legal principles upon which the prosecution rests, where individual liberty begins and ends, the evidential value of available facts and the extent to which notice may be taken of proposed evidence.
"In short, the only person who has a clear idea of what is happening in the grand jury room is the public official whom these twenty-three novices are supposed to check. So that even if a grand jury were disposed to assert its historic independence in the interest of an individual’s liberty; it must, paradoxically, look to the very person whose misconduct they are supposed to guard against for guidance as to when he is acting oppressively.” Antell, The Modem Grand Jury: Be-nigned Supergovemment, 51 A.B.AJ. 153, 154 (1965).
Fine, Federal Grand Jury Investigation of Political Dissidents, 7 Harv.C.R.-C.L.L.Rev. 432, 440 n. 32 (1972).

. United States v. Dionisio, 410 U.S. 1, 23, 93 S.Ct. 764, 777, 35 L.Ed.2d 67 (1973) (Douglas, J., dissenting) (quoting Campbell, Delays in Criminal Cases, 55 F.R.D. 229, 253 (1972)). Judge Campbell goes on to remark: "A preliminary hearing before a magistrate to determine probable cause with the accused participating through counsel would be a great improvement over the present archaic indictment." 55 F.R.D. at 254. That recommendation tracks to a great extent the procedure Congress intended to set up for pretrial detention determinations through § 3142(e).