Court Opinion

ID: 9481045
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:06:14.462243+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:03.924209
License: Public Domain

POSNER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I have no disagreement with the decision of this case, but I want to flag, for future reference, a disagreement within the court over the standard for reviewing determinations of probable cause. A number of our decisions, as well as decisions in other circuits such as United States v. Muniz-Melchor, 894 F.2d 1430, 1439 n. 9 (5th Cir.1990), and United States v. Suarez, 902 F.2d 1466, 1467 (9th Cir.1990), hold or imply that such determinations, by whomever made, are to be reviewed de novo, that is, as if the reviewing judge or judges were the front-line judicial authority — the magistrate, or the trial judge, or the jury, that made the initial determination. Illustrative are United States v. Malin, 908 F.2d 163, 165-66 (7th Cir.1990); United States v. Sophie, 900 F.2d 1064, 1072 (7th Cir.1990); United States v. Ingrao, 897 F.2d 860, 862 (7th Cir.1990); United States v. Rambis, 686 F.2d 620, 622 (7th Cir.1982). Judge Easterbrook and I have expressed our disagreement with that approach. United States v. Malin, supra, 908 F.2d at 169-70 (concurring opinion). We think that the proper standard is the clearly-erroneous rule used in other areas of law to review *419the application of a legal standard to a particular set of facts.
Some courts already use the clear-error formula in reviewing determinations of probable cause, at least when made by the district judge, no warrant having been issued. United States v. Fox, 902 F.2d 1508, 1513 (10th Cir.1990); United States v. Williams, 897 F.2d 1430, 1435 (8th Cir.1990); United States v. Santana, 895 F.2d 850, 852 (1st Cir.1990). In like vein (and in tension with the cases from this circuit cited above), this court has said that “a district court’s denial of a motion to suppress evidence will be affirmed on appeal unless it is clearly erroneous,” United States v. D’Antoni, 856 F.2d 975, 978 (7th Cir.1988), and then, citing D’Antoni, that “in denying the defendants’ motion to suppress, the district court found that there had been sufficient probable cause to issue a warrant to search the defendants’ residences; we must determine whether that ruling was clearly erroneous.” United States v. McNeese, 901 F.2d 585, 592 (7th Cir.1990). Many cases, including the present one, give considerable deference to the determination of probable cause when it is made by the magistrate in issuing a warrant, but decline to equate that deference to review for clear error. To complete the muddle, we have held — en banc, no less — that when the issue of probable causes arises in a suit tried to a jury, the issue is one for the jury, not for the judge, and the jury’s determination must therefore be upheld if reasonable (which is to say, not clearly erroneous). Llaguno v. Mingey, 763 F.2d 1560, 1565, 1567 (7th Cir. 1985) (en bane). (That was a plurality opinion but the court was unanimous in its characterization of the probable-cause determination. Id. at 1570 (Coffey, J., concurring and dissenting); id. at 1578 (Wood, J., concurring and dissenting); id. at 1580 (Cudahy, J., dissenting).) See also Gramenos v. Jewel Cos., 797 F.2d 432, 438 (7th Cir.1986); Moore v. Marketplace Restaurant, Inc., 754 F.2d 1336, 1347 (7th Cir.1985). I suggest that clearly erroneous is the correct rule whoever makes the initial determination.
Consider a finding of negligence in an ordinary tort suit. It is not a finding of fact in the sense that it could be made by someone uninstructed in the legal standard of negligence. Rather it is the application of the legal standard to the facts of the particular case. But it is not reviewed de novo; it is reviewed for clear error. Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., — U.S.-, 110 S.Ct. 2447, 2459, 110 L.Ed.2d 359 (1990); Mucha v. King, 792 F.2d 602, 605 (7th Cir.1986); Nunez v. Superior Oil Co., 572 F.2d 1119, 1126 (5th Cir.1978). The broader principle, endorsed by a growing number of cases in this circuit, such as Mars Steel Corp. v. Continental Bank N.A., 880 F.2d 928, 933 (7th Cir.1989) (en banc), and Foy v. First National Bank, 868 F.2d 251, 254 (7th Cir.1989), is that (with immaterial exceptions) the application of law to fact is itself a question of fact for purposes of appellate review. The point is not that it is “really” a question of fact; that would be absurd. The point is that appellate review of the application of law to fact should be deferential, as it is in the case of rulings on questions of fact, and this for two reasons. The trier of fact, whether judge or jury, is closer to the facts than the appellate judges and is therefore better able, other things being equal, to assess their legal significance. And the dependence of the determination of negligence on the facts of the particular case, facts that will not recur exactly in any other case, would make quixotic an attempt to bring about uniformity of results by close appellate review.
These considerations argue as forcefully for deferential review of determinations of probable cause as for deferential review of determinations of negligence, if only because a determination of probable cause involves applying to the particular facts of the case a legal standard that is quite like the negligence standard. This was one of the reasons given in Llaguno v. Mingey, supra, 763 F.2d at 1565, for treating probable cause as a jury question. Both negligence and probable cause require a judgment of reasonableness that is made after balancing costs and benefits (the costs of care and the benefits of accident avoidance *420in the negligence case, and the costs of getting evidence of criminal guilt by other means and the benefits in protecting privacy in the probable-cause case) and is based explicitly on probabilities (the probability of an accident in the negligence case and the probability that a search will turn up evidence of crime in the probable-cause case). Compare Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 175, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 1310-11, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949), and United States v. Sweeney, 688 F.2d 1131, 1137 (7th Cir.1982), with McCarty v. Pheasant Run, Inc., 826 F.2d 1554, 1556-57 (7th Cir.1987), and United States v. Carroll Towing Co., 159 F.2d 169, 173 (2d Cir.1947) (L. Hand, J).
The application of the standard of probable cause to the particular facts of a case may be made by a magistrate in issuing a search warrant, as in this case; by the district judge in a case in which the defendant moves to suppress evidence obtained by a search not pursuant to warrant, so that there will never have been a determination of probable cause by a magistrate; or by the judge or jury in a civil rights suit in which the plaintiff claims that he was the victim of an unconstitutional search or seizure (Llaguno was such a case). In the first type of case the district judge will review the magistrate’s determination of probable cause if and when the defendant moves to suppress evidence seized in or as a result of the allegedly improper search or seizure, while in the other types of case the first appellate review will be by the court of appeals. But whatever the type of case, the only question for the reviewing court, whether it is the district court or the court of appeals, should be whether the determination of probable cause made by the first-line judicial officer (magistrate, district judge, or jury, as the case may be) is clearly erroneous.
Because the dramatic increases in federal judicial workloads in recent years have fallen so heavily on the federal courts of appeals, Report of the Federal Courts Study Committee 5, 110 (April 2, 1990), it is no surprise that there has been a steady trend toward limiting the scope of appellate review of determinations of fact-specific issues. The landmarks are noted in the concurring opinion in Malin. This circuit’s position on review of determinations of probable cause bucks the trend for no good reason. Although it is true that determinations of probable cause made in connection with the issuance of a warrant are ex parte, our circuit’s rule of de novo review applies even when the determination is made not by a magistrate or judge ex parte, but in a full adversarial hearing because no warrant had ever been issued. Indeed, bowing to the Supreme Court’s command to give “great deference” to the magistrate’s determination of probable cause in a warrant proceeding, Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 236, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 2331, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983), even circuits such as the Fifth and Ninth, which (in cases like Muniz-Melchor and Suarez, cited earlier) like us review de novo a district judge’s determination of probable cause when made in a case where no warrant was issued, defer to the same determination when made by a magistrate in an ex parte warrant hearing. In re Trinity Industries, 898 F.2d 1049, 1050 (5th Cir.1990); United States v. McQuisten, 795 F.2d 858, 861 (9th Cir.1986). McQuisten actually states — correctly as it seems to me — that “we may not reverse a magistrate’s finding of probable cause unless it is clearly erroneous.” Id.
What sense can it make to defer to the magistrate’s determination of probable cause to the same or similar degree as other findings of fact, but give no deference at all to the same determination when made by a district judge after a full adversarial hearing in a case in which there was no warrant proceeding? The Fifth and Ninth Circuits have avoided confronting this anomaly by the unedifying expedient of maintaining separate lines of precedent. Cases that defer to the magistrate’s finding of probable cause do not cite cases that review the district judge’s finding of probable cause de novo, nor vice versa. And neither line of precedent cites cases in which a jury’s determination of probable cause is given the full respect ordinarily given findings of fact whether made by judge or by jury. By such ostrich methods *421an incoherent approach to the review of probable-cause determinations is perpetuated.
Provoked by the effrontery of a concurring opinion that proposes a change in the formulation of the standard of review (only in law is “innovative” a pejorative), Judge Flaum’s opinion forthrightly acknowledges the existence of the conflicting lines of precedent. For this forthrightness I applaud him. At last the issue is out in the open. Now all can see that the circuit’s position is a Rube Goldberg invention: a needlessly complex machine, which incidentally does not work.
Judge Flaum’s opinion states that a magistrate’s finding of probable cause must be upheld if it has a “substantial basis.” This is a step in the right direction, because it is a step away from de novo review. It is a step taken unconsciously, in a sense, because the opinion appears to labor under the impression that it is only in cases in which there is no warrant that this court reviews determinations of probable cause de novo. I do not agree. Matin and Ram-bis, cited at the outset of this opinion, were warrant cases. Matin repeated the standard set forth in Rambis: “Since this determination [whether the information in the affidavit submitted to the magistrate in the warrant proceeding establishes probable cause] involves the application of law rather than an evaluation of factual evidence, on review the appellate court is not limited to a determination of whether the district court’s finding was clearly erroneous. It must independently review the sufficiency of the affidavit, recognizing that doubtful cases should be resolved in favor of upholding the warrant.” 686 F.2d at 622 (citation omitted), quoted in pertinent part in United States v. Matin, supra, 908 F.2d at 165. If all that is meant by this rather murky prose is that when there is successive review — here, review of the magistrate’s determination by the district judge followed by review of the district judge’s determination by the court of appeals — the second review is de novo, I would have no quarrel. The district judge must decide whether the magistrate committed clear error, and we must decide the same thing. In re Trinity Industries, Inc., supra, 898 F.2d at 1050; United States v. Castillo, 866 F.2d 1071, 1076 (9th Cir.1988); Parker v. Sullivan, 891 F.2d 185, 187 (7th Cir.1989). The appropriateness of such duplicative review may be questioned, but that is a separate matter. A finding that there was clear error is itself a legal determination, and legal determinations, as opposed to the application of law to fact, are reviewed de novo. But if “independently review the sufficiency of the affidavit” is thought to have some independent force, then despite the concession which follows regarding the doubtful case, we may indeed have a standard of, or at least very close to, de novo review. Read the portions of the Matin and especially Rambis opinions in which the court applies the standard, and you will be driven to conclude that the de facto standard is indeed de novo review. “We hold that the facts and circumstances described in the affidavit were sufficient to establish probable cause and that the issuance of the search warrant was proper.” United States v. Rambis, supra, 686 F.2d at 625.
Standing by itself Judge Flaum’s formulation of the standard of review in warrant cases (“substantial basis”) would differ only semantically from that in McQuisten. But he goes on to explain that he considers his standard an “intermediate” standard, intermediate, that is, between de novo review and review for clear error. I understand where the “substantial basis” formula comes from; it comes from Illinois v. Gates. I do not understand where the idea that it is an intermediate standard comes from. Gates does not describe it so, or purport to reject the clearly-erroneous rule or to adopt an intermediate standard; these issues are not discussed. I particularly fail to see how the Court’s directive in Gates that we give “great deference” to the magistrate’s finding can be squared with a rule that gives that finding less deference than we would give an ordinary finding of fact. See also United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 914, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 3416, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984). I find nothing in Gates inconsistent with declaring the standard of re*422view of the magistrate’s determination of probable cause to be that of clear error and I do not see what sense it makes to give more deference to the magistrate’s determination than to a district judge’s made after a full hearing, which under our circuit’s cases would be reviewed de novo.
In suggesting that “substantial basis” be equated to “not clearly erroneous” I am not trying to defy the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court thinks these are different standards I shall consider myself bound by its view. But I find nothing in the Court’s opinions to suggest that it does. Perhaps my brethren do not either; for they are not content to rest upon authority; they offer in two opinions three reasons for wanting an intermediate standard of review for magistrate’s determinations. The first is that there should be more searching appellate review generally when constitutional rights are at stake. If this is right, it still leaves unexplained why there should be different standards depending on who the trier of fact is. But it cannot be right, not as a general rule at any rate. (The Supreme Court has described as “rare” those occasions on which it has authorized de novo review of findings of fact in constitutional cases. Miller v. Fenton, 474 U.S. 104, 114, 106 S.Ct. 445, 451-52, 88 L.Ed.2d 405 (1985).) For this would mean that the clearly-erroneous rule did not apply in any constitutional case, something I would not have thought anyone believed. The second reason given (this one by Judge Will only) is that since the magistrate’s determination is nonadversarial there is less reason to believe it correct. If this is right, it leaves unexplained why under our circuit’s precedents an adversarial determination by a district judge after a full hearing receives more searching review than the magistrate’s ex parte determination. Hence the third reason: to encourage police to seek warrants we give the magistrate’s determination of probable cause to support a warrant more respect than a district judge’s determination of probable cause when there was no warrant. But actually this is an argument only for giving both determinations the same respect. For we have offsetting considerations: the nonadver-sarial character of the magistrate’s determination and his lack of the guarantees of tenure and undiminished compensation that Article III gives federal judges, which pushes my brethren toward wanting to give magistrate’s determinations less respect than judges’ determinations; and the desire to encourage the police to makes searches and arrests on the basis of warrants, which pushes them in the opposite direction.
My brethren in defending the intermediate standard may in any event be spitting into the wind. Since the Supreme Court’s adoption in Leon of the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule, 468 U.S. at 924,104 S.Ct. at 3421, judicial review of the magistrate’s determination of probable cause in issuing a search or arrest warrant has had much less practical importance than it did before. The evidence obtained through the warrant will not be suppressed even if there was no probable cause, provided only that the officers who sought and executed the warrant were acting in good faith, albeit erroneously. In plumping for an intermediate standard my brethren are bailing water from a ship that the captain has decided to scuttle.
There is a more fundamental objection to their warm endorsement of multiple standards of review. It greatly exaggerates the utility of verbal differentiation. It reflects the lawyer’s exaggerated faith in the Word. I think I understand the difference between plenary review and deferential review. In the former setting the appellate judge must say to himself, “The issue has been given to me to decide, and while I shall pay due attention to what the district judge (or other trier of fact) had to say on the question the ultimate decisional responsibility is mine and must be exercised independently.” In the latter setting the appellate judge must say to himself, “The issue is not mine to decide; because the district judge (or magistrate or administrative agency or whatever) has a better feel for it, or for other institutional reasons (such as to discourage appeals), the responsibility for deciding has been given to him and I must go along unless persuaded that he *423acted unreasonably, or in other words unless I am clear in my mind that he erred.” What is the intermediate position? There is none; the proliferation endorsed by my colleagues on this panel has only semantic significance. The reasons that lead the court to support an intermediate standard can, as we shall see in a moment, be accommodated without a multiplication of formulas. Nor, finally, do I see how the words “substantial basis” can be thought, even on the semantic level, to imply a less deferential standard of review than clear error. “Substantial basis” sounds like “substantial evidence,” the formula for judicial review of administrative factfindings — a formula usually thought, if anything, more deferential than the standard of clear error is. My brethren have become hopelessly entangled in words — they have forgotten Justice Holmes’s admonition to think things not words — but even at the level of semantics they strike out.
They fear that the clearly-erroneous standard has become a synonym for perfunctory review. I do not share that fear. It is true that when a finding by the first-line decision-maker resolves an issue of which witnesses to believe, the scope of appellate review is exceedingly narrow because the reviewing court has not seen the witnesses testify. But when the finding to be reviewed is the evaluation of the legal significance of conceded facts, the reviewing court is not similarly handicapped and need not and should not consider its function that of a rubber stamp. This is an example of the broader point, which is both fundamental and ignored, that the nature of the issue to be reviewed in relation to the comparative institutional advantages of trial and reviewing courts, and other pertinent practical considerations, rather than the words in which standards of appellate review are formulated, should — and usually do — determine the scope of review. It is recognized that “abuse of discretion” is a chameleon, or more politely a range, not a point. Roland Machinery Co. v. Dresser Industries, Inc., 749 F.2d 380, 388-89 (7th Cir.1984), and cases cited there; Friendly, Indiscretion About Discretion, 31 Emory L.J. 747 (1982). So is “clear error” (and they may be the same chameleon, the same range). Of course the findings of fact in a capital case will receive more searching appellate review than the findings in a case in which a small fine is imposed; of course appellate courts will be, or at least should be, zealous to protect the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The quality of the factual inquiry — whether adversarial or ex parte — and of the fact-finder should also, and does, affect the willingness of appellate courts to reverse findings governed by the clearly-erroneous rule. Cf. River Road Alliance, Inc. v. Corps of Engineers, 764 F.2d 445, 449 (7th Cir.1985). The impression that “substantial evidence,” the formula used in reviewing the decisions of administrative agencies, is more deferential than “clearly erroneous” derives not from the semantic difference in the formulas, which is opaque to meaning, but from the fact that appellate judges feel more comfortable with the issues on which district judges make findings (many federal appellate judges are former district judges) than they do with the issues that administrative agencies resolve.
What is needed at this juncture in the evolving law of appellate review is not a multiplicity of rigid rules stated in empty jargon, or even three rigid rules that hack crudely at a complex reality, but the sensitive application of the clear-error standard, understood as such, across the board. This is a cleaner as well as a more honest approach than attempting the legerdemain of deriving from the words “great deference” a warrant for a nondeferential rule of appellate review to be squeezed between de novo review and clear-error review.
American law is too vague, too complicated, too expensive; and it is these things in part because judges are too fond of sterile verbalisms and outmoded distinctions. A tripartite standard of appellate review of determinations of probable cause is confusing, unworkable, and unnecessary. We should not fear to reject it for fear of being called innovative.