Court Opinion

ID: 9427515
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:02.478518+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:07.690686
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marshall,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan joins,
dissenting.
The Court today holds that evidence obtained in patent violation of agency procedures is admissible in a criminal prosecution. In so ruling, the majority determines both that the Internal Revenue Service’s failure to comply with its own mandatory regulations implicates no due process interest, and that the exclusionary rule is an inappropriate sanction for such noncompliance. Because I can subscribe to neither proposition, and because the Court’s decision must inevitably erode respect for law among those charged with its administration, I respectfully dissent.
I
In a long line of cases beginning with Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U. S. 135, 152-153 (1945), this Court has held that “one under investigation... is legally entitled to insist upon the observance of rules” promulgated by an executive or legislative body for his protection. See United States v. Nixon, 418 U. S. 683, 695-696 (1974); Morton v. Ruiz, 415 U. S. 199, 235 (1974); Yellin v. United States, 374 U. S. 109 (1963); Vitarelli v. Seaton, 359 U. S. 535 (1959); Service v. Dulles, 354 U. S. 363 (1957); United States ex rel. Accardi v. *758Shaughnessy, 347 U. S. 260 (1954). Underlying these decisions is a judgment, central to our concept of due process, that government officials no less than private citizens are bound by rules of law.1 Where individual interests are implicated, the Due Process Clause requires that an executive agency adhere to the standards by which it professes its action to be judged. See Vitarelli v. Seaton, supra, at 547 (Frankfurter, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
Despite these well-established precedents and the IRS’s conceded failure to abide by mandatory investigative regulations, the Court finds no due process violation on the facts of this case. In reaching its conclusion, the majority relies on the absence of constitutional or statutory underpinnings for *759the regulations and on respondent’s inability to establish prejudice from their circumvention. This approach draws support neither from our prior holdings nor from the principles on which the Due Process Clause is founded.
This Court has consistently demanded governmental compliance with regulations designed to safeguard individual interests even when the rules were not mandated by the Constitution or federal statute. In United States ex rel. Accardi v. Shaughnessy, supra, the Court granted a writ of habeas corpus where the Attorney General had disregarded applicable procedures for the Board of Immigration Appeals’ suspension of deportation orders. Although the Attorney General had final power to deport the petitioner and had no statutory or constitutional obligation to provide for intermediate action by the Board, this Court held that while suspension procedures were in effect, “the Attorney General denies himself the right to sidestep the Board or dictate its decision.” 347 U. S., at 267. On similar reasoning, the Court in Service v. Dulles vacated a Foreign Service officer’s national security discharge. While acknowledging that the Secretary of State was not obligated to adopt “rigorous substantive and procedural safeguards,” the Court nonetheless held that “having done so he could not, so long as the Regulations remained unchanged, proceed without regard to them.” 354 U. S., at 388. Similarly, in Vitarelli v. Seaton we demanded adherence to Department of the Interior employee-discharge procedures that were “generous beyond the requirements that bind [the] agency.” 359 U. S., at 547 (Frankfurter, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). And most recently, in Morton v. Ruiz, we declined to permit the Bureau of Indian Affairs to depart from internal rules for establishing assistance-eligibility requirements although the procedures were “more rigorous than otherwise would be required.” 415 U. S., at 235. See also United States v. Nixon, supra; Yellin v. United States, supra; Bridges v. *760Wixon, 326 U. S. 135 (1945).2 Thus, where internal regulations do not merely facilitate internal agency housekeeping, cf. American Farm Lines v. Black Ball Freight Service, 397 U. S. 532, 538 (1970),3 but rather afford significant procedural protections, we have insisted on compliance.
That the IRS regulations at issue here extend such protections is beyond dispute. As this Court recognized in Berger v. New York, 388 U. S. 41, 63 (1967), “[f]ew threats to liberty exist which are greater than that posed by the use of eavesdropping devices.” An agency’s self-imposed constraints on the use of these devices, no less than limitations mandated by statute or by the Fourth Amendment, operate to preserve a “measure of privacy and a sense of personal security” for individuals potentially subject to surveillance. See United States v. White, 401 U. S. 745, 790 (1971) (Harlan, J., dissenting).
Moreover, the history of the IRS authorization requirements clearly establishes that they were intended to protect privacy interests. The regulations were an outgrowth of investigations in 1965 and 1966 by a Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning surveillance techniques of federal agencies. Testimony at Subcommittee hearings revealed that IRS agents had made extensive unauthorized use of a wide variety of eavesdropping techniques. *761Hearings on S. Res. 39 before the Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 89th Cong., 1st and 2d Sess., 1206-1208, 1762-1763, 1774-1777, 1828-1830, 1923-1935, 1999-2003 (1965-1966) (hereinafter S. Res. 39 Hearings).4 Among the agency practices that the Subcommittee found offensive was the monitoring of certain conversations between taxpayers and IRS agents wired for sound. See, e. g., id., at 2017, 2078. Of more general concern was the agency’s total failure to detect or disapprove violations of its own internal rules. Evidence before the Subcommittee indicated that supervisory personnel had condoned the use of illegal wiretaps, see id., 1517, 1546-1548, while upper level officials had remained ignorant of widespread departures from prescribed policies. See id., 1118, 1124-1128, 2005.
In response to that congressional investigation, the IRS convened a special Board of Inquiry to review agency surveillance practices and to recommend new procedures. Both the scope of the new regulations and the IRS Commissioner’s representations to the Senate Subcommittee demonstrate that the agency was concerned not only with preventing “violation [s] of a person’s constitutional or statutory rights,” but also with “carefully control [ling]” certain investigatory techniques which, “although legal, nevertheless tend to be offensive to the public conscience.” Id., at 1122 (testimony of Commissioner Cohen). The Commissioner further assured the Subcommittee that detailed regulations adopted by the agency in 1967 would guarantee such control. Id., at 1122-1126; CCH [1967] Stand. Fed. Tax Rep. ¶ 6711, p. 71,756. Those regulations, recodified without substantial modification, are *762the basis of the instant proceedings. Compare Internal Revenue Service Manual ¶ 652.22 (Sept. 1975) with Internal Revenue Service Manual Supplement, Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping, No. 93G-70 (July 10, 1967).
Against this historical backdrop, it is inarguable that these IRS regulations affect substantial individual interests. Indeed the Court does not suggest otherwise. Rather, it places weight on respondent’s failure to establish prejudice from agency illegality. Because Caceres cannot demonstrate that he “reasonably relied” on the regulations, ante, at 752, or that the failure to obtain proper authorization had any “discernible effect” on the IRS’s decision to monitor his conversations with Agent Yee, ibid., the Court concludes that the agency’s action implicates no due process interest. Such an approach is fundamentally misconceived. By assessing respondent’s claim in terms of prejudice, the Court disregards not only its prior holdings, but also the principles of governmental regularity on which they rest.
To make subjective reliance controlling in due process analysis deflects inquiry from the relevant constitutional issue, the legitimacy of government conduct. If an individual is entitled only to the process that he subjectively believes is due, an agency could disregard its investigative rules with impunity provided it did so with consistency. For no person could “reasonably rely,” ibid., on rules that were generally ignored. And to the extent that the majority views reliance as critical in an investigative context, it effectively reduces mandatory regulations to hortatory policies. Presumably the only persons with occasion to discover breaches of investigative rules will be those facing criminal prosecution. Such individuals will rarely, if ever, be able to establish that they planned their conduct with internal agency regulations in view.5
*763Moreover, the Court's focus on subjective reliance is inconsistent with our prior decisions enforcing due process guarantees. In Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U. S. 135 (1945), we vacated a deportation order because the Immigration and Naturalization Service had failed to observe regulations requiring that witness statements be made under oath, even though the petitioner’s statements were not involved and he had not invoked the regulations at his deportation hearing. So too, in Yellin v. United States, 374 U. S. 109 (1963), this Court overturned the defendant’s contempt conviction for refusal to testify before Congress where the House Committee on Un-American Activities had ignored rules requiring it to consider formally the injuries to a witness’ reputation that might attend public hearings. Yet as the dissent in Yellin pointed out, the defendant had predicated his refusal to testify on First Amendment grounds, not on the public nature of the proceedings, and had in “no way indicated that an executive session would have made any difference in his willingness to answer questions.” Id., at 141 (White, J., dissenting).
Nor has this Court required, as it does today, that procedural irregularity affect the outcome of the governmental action at issue. For example, there was no suggestion in Yellin that, had the Committee formally considered the injury to the defendant’s reputation, it would have convened an executive session. Indeed, the Committee Chairman had testified that this was precisely the kind of case where a public hearing was appropriate. Id., at 117-118, n. 6. Nonetheless, the Court, even as it expressed doubt that procedural corn-*764pliance would have made a difference, insisted that the defendant was entitled to no less. Id., at 121.6
Similarly, the petitioner in Vitarelli v. Seaton, 359 U. S. 535 (1959), was in no meaningful sense prejudiced by the Department of the Interior’s departure from regulations governing employee discharges for national security reasons. After the petitioner filed suit, he received a revised notice of dismissal which complied with all applicable regulations. Despite the petitioner’s inability to demonstrate that adherence to agency regulations would have affected the decision to discharge him, this Court ordered reinstatement.
Implicit in these decisions,7 and in the Due Process Clause itself, is the premise that regulations bind with equal force whether or not they are outcome determinative. As its very terms make manifest, the Due Process Clause is first and foremost a guarantor of process. It embodies a commitment to procedural regularity independent of result. To focus on the conduct of individual defendants rather than on that of the government necessarily qualifies this commitment. If prejudice becomes critical in measuring due process obligations, individual officials may simply dispense with whatever procedures are unlikely to prove dispositive in a given case. Thus, the majority’s analysis invites the very kind of capricious and unfettered decisionmaking that the Due Process Clause in general and these regulations in particular were designed to prevent.
*765Any fair application of our prior holdings mandates a different result. When the Government engages to protect individual interests, it may not constitutionally abrogate that commitment at its own convenience. I would hold the IRS to its surveillance-authorization procedures regardless of whether a litigant can establish prejudice from their circumvention.
II
Having found a due process violation, I would require that the fruits of that illegality be suppressed in respondent’s criminal prosecution. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961). Accordingly, under my analysis, it would be unnecessary to consider the scope of our supervisory powers, discussed in Part IY of the Court’s opinion. Because, however, the Court addresses that issue, I must register my profound disagreement with both its reasoning and ultimate conclusion.
In determining that the exclusionary rule is an unwarranted sanction for the agency misconduct here, the Court attaches great significance to the agents’ ostensible “good faith” in construing their own regulations to permit “emergency” surveillance of respondent in January and February 1975. Ante, at 757, 756. The record does not admit of such a charitable characterization. IRS Agent Yee alleged that respondent first attempted to bribe him in March 1974. The IRS recorded a conversation between Caceres and Yee that same month. No further contact with Caceres concerning the bribe occurred until January 1975, and no reasons have been offered for Agent Yee’s failure to initiate surveillance during that 10-month hiatus. Nor does the record reflect any justification for the agency’s failure to obtain approval for monitoring between the January 27 and January 31 meetings, to schedule meetings so as to permit timely authorization requests, or to process the January 31 authorization request expeditiously. In positing that the agents had a colorable basis for believing that the January 31 and February 6 meetings *766constituted “emergency situation [s],” see ante, at 756-757, the Court simply ignores the findings below that Agent Yee had absolute control over the scheduling of those conversations, and that any exigency was solely of the Government’s own making.8 This is plainly not an instance in which law enforcement officers have failed to grasp the nuances of constitutional doctrine in an area where the Court itself is sharply divided. Cf. Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388, 417 (1971) (Burger, C. J., dissenting); Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 538-540 (1976) (White, J., dissenting). Rather, the record demonstrates a breach of unambiguous and unquestionably applicable procedures.
Moreover, even assuming the good faith which the agency has failed to demonstrate, that consideration should not figure in our present analysis. Restricting application of the exclusionary rule to instances of bad faith would invite law enforcement officials to gamble that courts would grant absolution for all but the most egregious conduct. Since judges do not lightly cast aspersions on the motives of government officials, the suppression doctrine would be relegated to those rare circumstances where a litigant can prove insolent or calculated indifference to agency regulations. As we have noted in the context of Fourth Amendment violations, “[i]f subjective good faith alone were the test, . . . the people would be ‘secure . . .’ only in the discretion of the police.” Beck v. Ohio, 379 U. S. 89, 97 (1964). Just as intent has not been determinative in Fourth Amendment cases, see, e. g., Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385 (1978); United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S. 873 (1975); Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U. S. 266 (1973), it should not be material here.
The Court next suggests that suppression is unnecessary in this case because “the Executive itself has provided for *767internal sanctions in cases of knowing violations of the electronic-surveillance regulations.” Ante, at 756 (footnote omitted). Significantly, however, the Court does not assert that the sanctions which exist in theory are effectively employed in practice. While “[s]elf-scrutiny is a lofty ideal,” Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U. S. 25, 42 (1949) (Murphy, J., dissenting), nothing in the record before us indicates why IRS disciplinary procedures should enjoy the Court’s special confidence. Quite the contrary, the circumstances surrounding the conception and continued operation of IRS authorization requirements illustrate a persistent indifference toward enforcement.9 And abdication by the courts is unlikely to increase the agency’s vigilance in disciplining or even discov*768ering violations. To remove a defendant's incentive for exposing evasions or disingenuous constructions of applicable rules will inevitably diminish the agency's interest in self-monitoring.10
Finally, the Court declines to order suppression because “a rigid application of an exclusionary rule to every regulatory violation could have a serious deterrent impact on the formulation of additional standards to govern prosecutorial and police procedures.” Ante, at 755-756. No support is offered for that speculation. In fact, all available evidence is to the contrary. Since 1967, the INS has retained regulations requiring agents to give Miranda warnings in noncustodial settings despite Court of Appeals decisions suppressing statements taken in violation of those rules. United States v. Sourapas, 515 F. 2d 295, 298 (CA9 1975); United States v. Leahey, 434 F. 2d 7 (CA1 1970); United States v. Heffner, 420 F. 2d 809 (CA4 1969). Significantly, the Court points to no instance in which an agency has withdrawn the procedural protections made meaningful by decisions such as Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U. S. 135 (1945), United States ex rel. Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 347 U. S. 260 (1954), Service v. Dulles, 354 U. S. 363 (1957), and Vitarelli v. Seaton, 359 U. S. 535 (1959).
Even if the majority’s concern about inhibiting agency self-regulation were more solidly grounded, it could not justify the result in this case. Under today’s decision, regulations *769largely unenforced by the IRS will be unenforceable by the courts.11 I cannot share the Court’s apparent conviction that much would be lost if the agency were to withdraw such rules in protest against judicial enforcement. Presumably Congress, which has been repeatedly dissuaded by the IRS from legislating in the area,12 would then step into the breach.. In the event of congressional action, this Court could not so cavalierly tolerate unauthorized electronic surveillance. See Miller v. United States, 357 U. S. 301 (1958).13 Particularly where, as here, agency regulations were designed to stand in the place of legislative action, we should not hesitate to give them similar force and effect.
In my judgment, the Court has utterly failed to demonstrate why the exclusionary rule is inappropriate under the circumstances presented here. Equally disturbing is the majority’s refusal even to acknowledge countervailing considerations. Quite apart from specific deterrence, there are significant values served by a rule that excludes evidence secured by lawless enforcement of the law. Denying an agency the fruits of noncompliance gives credibility to the due *770process and privacy interests implicated by its conduct.14 Also, and perhaps more significantly, exclusion reaffirms the Judiciary’s commitment to those values. Preservation of judicial integrity demands that unlawful intrusions on privacy should “find no sanction in the • judgments of the courts.” Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, 392 (1914). See Elkins v. United States, 364 U. S. 206, 222-223 (1960). Today’s holding necessarily confers upon the Judiciary a “taint of partnership in official lawlessness.” United States v. Calandra, 414 U. S. 338, 357 (1974) (Brennan, J., dissenting). I decline to participate in that venture.
I would affirm the judgment of the court below.

 Although not always expressly predicated on the Due Process Clause, these decisions are explicable in no other terms. The complaints in only two of the cases, Vitarelli v. Seaton, 359 U. S. 535 (1959), and Service v. Dulles, 354 U. S. 363 (1957), invoked the Administrative Procedure Act, see ante, at 754 n. 19. In neither of these cases was the Act even mentioned in the Court’s opinions. Rather, Vitarelli followed Service, see 359 U. S., at 539-540, which in turn had relied on United States ex rel. Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 347 U. S. 260 (1954). See 354 U. S., at 373, 386-387. Both Accardi and its predecessor, Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U. S. 135 (1945), were habeas corpus cases. And Yellin v. United States, 374 U. S. 109 (1963), which involved criminal contempt sanctions, followed Accardi. Thus, it is clear that this line, of precedent cannot be dismissed as federal administrative law. Cf. Board of Curators, Univ. of Mo. v. Horowitz, 435 U. S. 78, 92 n. 8 (1978) (dictum). To the contrary, these decisions have been uniformly, and I believe properly, interpreted as resting on due process foundations. See United States v. Sourapas, 515 F. 2d 295, 298 (CA9 1975); Konn v. Laird, 460 F. 2d 1318 (CA7 1972); Antonuk v. United States, 445 F. 2d 592, 595 (CA6 1971); Hollingsworth v. Balcom, 441 F. 2d 419, 421 (CA6 1971); United States v. Leahey, 434 F. 2d 7, 9 (CA1 1970); United States v. Lloyd, 431 F. 2d 160, 171 (CA9 1970); Government of Canal Zone v. Brooks, 427 F. 2d 346, 347 (CA5 1970); United States v. Heffner, 420 F. 2d 809, 811-812 (CA4 1969); cf. Schatten v. United States, 419 F. 2d 187, 191 (CA6 1969). See generally Berger, Do Regulations Really Bind Regulators, 62 Nw. U. L. Rev. 137 (1967).

 At issue in Bridges were regulations requiring that witness statements be made under oath and signed in order to be admissible in deportation hearings. As the Court correctly points out, ante, at 749, those rules were designed as “safeguards against essentially unfair procedures.” 326 U. S., at 153. However, there is no basis in precedent or in the language of Bridges itself for the majority’s further intimation that the Due Process Clause “mandated” such protective regulations. Ante, at 749.

 American Farm Lines v. Black Ball Freight Service involved rules promulgated to assist an agency in compiling information for internal de-cisionmaking. As the American Farm Court noted in distinguishing Vitarelli v. Seaton, supra, these rules were not “intended primarily to confer important procedural benefits upon individuals in the face of otherwise unfettered discretion . . . .” 397 U. S., at 538-539.

 As summarized by Senator Morse: “The record reveals that illegal wiretapping by the Internal Revenue Service is not an occasional action of an overzealous agent, but is the logical and reasonable consequence of a well-defined program . . . .” Hearings on S. Res. 928 before the Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 29 (1967).

 Just as we do not expect defendants in Fourth Amendment cases to demonstrate that but for the warrant requirement they would have acted *763otherwise, we should not demand that those in respondent’s position establish that they predicated their action on the existence of internal regulations. In both contexts, the rationale for mandating government compliance with procedural safeguards is the same: to prevent law enforcement officials from exercising unchecked discretion where substantial privacy interests are involved. And in neither case is a requirement of subjective reliance consistent with that objective.

 The Yellin Court, 374 U. S., at 121, was equally dubious that agency adherence to its regulations would have affected the Attorney General’s ultimate decision to deport in United States ex rel. Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 347 U. S., at 267.

 In part, these decisions also reflect a prudent reluctance to speculate how another branch of government would have acted under different circumstances. Because the Court has so little apparent difficulty in hypothesizing that compliance would not have mattered in this case, see ante, at 752-753, 757, it has adopted an approach that may well prove problematic in the next. Not all circumstances affecting agency decisions will so readily lend themselves to eounterfactual analysis.

 See 645 E. 2d 1182, 1187 (CA9 1976). For example, when Agent Yee proposed a meeting for the following day, Caceres responded: “Ill arrange my schedule to your convenience.” App. 15.

 With respect to IRS officials’ enthusiasm for self-discipline before and during the Senate investigation, Senator Long stated that “generally speaking, they have found wrongdoing only when the subcommittee has pointed directly and explicitly to it.” S. Res. 39 Hearings 1118.
Since that investigation, the agency’s performance has remained less than exemplary. In 1974, an internal audit of electronic surveillance within the IRS Intelligence Division revealed that 18 agents had engaged in 35 to 40 “instances” of improper monitoring within the previous year, with an “instance” defined to include as many as 15 different phone calls. Oversight Hearings into the Operations of the IRS before a Subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., 426-431, 450 (1975) (hereinafter Oversight Hearings). None of these employees were dismissed or demoted. In only one case did violations even actuate suspension. There, an employee who monitored his home telephone for “personal reasons completely unrelated to his official duties” was suspended for five days. Id., at 451; Reply Brief for United States 17, and n. 9. Four other employees received written reprimands. Eight received oral admonitions, three of which were confirmed in writing and none of which became part of the agents’ personnel folders. Oversight Hearings 451, 453. The Service took no action in five cases. Id., at 451.
Such nominal sanctions hardly justify the Court’s faith in agency self-restraint, particularly given the Government’s failure to identify a single instance of internal disciplinary action by the IRS since 1974. See Reply Brief for United States 16-17.

 Professor Amsterdam, whom the majority cites for the proposition that regulations governing investigatory conduct “may well provide more valuable protection to the public at large than the deterrence flowing from the occasional exclusion of items of evidence,” ante, at 755, and n. 23, submits in the same article that federal review of compliance with such regulations through the exclusionary rule “remains essential.” Amsterdam, Perspectives on the Fourth Amendment, 58 Minn. L. Rev. 349, 429 (1974). As he maintains, the suppression doctrine provides the “necessary occasions” for review of administrative problems and circumventions, and affords the “only available incentive” for law enforcement officials to make internal rules clear and incorporate them in personnel training. Ibid.

 See n. 9, supra. Significantly, the Court does not suggest APA litigation as a plausible alternative means of enforcing investigative regulations. Unless a criminal prosecution is initiated, an individual is unlikely to discover that he was subject to unauthorized surveillance. And it strains credulity to suppose that an individual under criminal indictment would assume the expense, not to mention the risks of antagonizing government officials, that would attend APA proceedings. Cf. Amsterdam, The Supreme Court and the Rights of Suspects in Criminal Cases, 45 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 785, 787 (1970).

 See S. Res. 39 Hearings 1122-1124, 1144 (testimony of Commissioner Cohen); Oversight Hearings 401 (testimony of Commissioner Alexander); id., at 448 (testimony of Assistant Commissioner for Compliance Wolfe).

 In Miller, the Court suppressed evidence obtained after District of Columbia police forcibly entered an apartment without announcing their authority and purpose as required by a federal statute made applicable in the District by a ruling.

 See Oaks, Studying the Exclusionary Rule in Search and Seizure, 37 U. Chi. L. Rev. 665, 756 (1970) (by demonstrating that society attaches serious consequences to unlawful infringement of privacy interests, “the exclusionary rule invokes and magnifies the moral and educative force of the law. Over the long term this may integrate Some fourth amendment ideals into the value system or norms of behavior of law enforcement agencies”).