Court Opinion

ID: 9730627
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:18:16.963489+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:08.076942
License: Public Domain

Boyle, J.
I respectfully dissent.
In Coolidge v New Hampshire, 403 US 443; 91 S Ct 2022; 29 L Ed 2d 564 (1971), the United States Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment required that a State Attorney General be disqualified per se from issuing a search warrant. The Court found that the determination of probable cause made by the chief government enforcement agent of the state "who was actively in charge of the investigation and later was to be chief prosecutor at the trial,” id. at 450, violated the constitutional requirement that probable cause be determined by a neutral and detached magistrate.
The following year, Shadwick v City of Tampa, 407 US 345; 92 S Ct 2119; 32 L Ed 2d 783 (1972), upheld the authority of a municipal court clerk to issue arrest warrants on charges of violations of municipal ordinances. The Court rejected the claim that because clerks were appointed by the *485city clerk, "an executive official,” id. at 348, they were not sufficiently independent to be judicial officers.
While the Court stated that, “[w]hatever else neutrality and detachment might entail, it is clear that they require severance and disengagement from activities of law enforcement,” id. at 350, the Court expressly rejected an invalidation per se of a state or local warrant system "on the ground that the issuing magistrate is not a lawyer or judge.” Id. at 352. Instead, the Court noted that there was no showing on the record of affiliation with prosecutors or police, of partiality, or of any connection with law enforcement activity "which would distort the independent judgment the Fourth Amendment requires.” Id. at 350-351. The Court observed that judges were likewise subjected to appointment or election and that most were dependent for their salary level upon the legislative branch. The Court concluded:
The clerk’s neutrality has not been impeached; he is removed from prosecutor or police and works within the judicial branch subject to the supervision of the municipal court judge. [Id. at 351.] [1]
I am unable to agree that the Fourth Amendment requires the disqualification of William Mitchell per se and the invalidation of the warrant.
The record establishes only that Mitchell was deputized as a deputy or reserve sheriff and occasionally attended meetings of the reserves. The magistrate found that he had not had any active *486involvement in criminal investigation or road patrol since becoming a magistrate in 1969.
On this record, in other than his courtroom duties, Mr. Williams is a deputy in name only. As the Court cautioned in Shadwick, supra at 350, "The substance of the Constitution’s warrant requirements does not turn on the labeling of the issuing party.” Like the clerk in Shadwick, Mr. Mitchell is removed from the prosecution and the police. He works within the judicial branch, subject to the authority of the district judge. In short, on this record, there is no basis to find that the magistrate’s neutrality was impeached. I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

 The Court appears to have also rejected disqualification per se in Lo-Ji Sales, Inc v New York, 442 US 319, 327; 99 S Ct 2319; 60 L Ed 2d 920 (1979), where it concluded from the "objective facts of record,” that a local justice’s involvement in a search party eroded whatever neutral and detached posture existed at the outset.