Court Opinion

ID: 9428011
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:34.204582+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:10.499837
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
concurring.
While I join the Court’s opinion, my analysis of the due process issue differs somewhat from that set forth therein, and I write separately to articulate it. The Court seems to focus on the diminished importance of pretrial suppression motions and the acceptability in some agency proceedings of decision-making without personal observation of witnesses. For me, these considerations are of less importance than the practical concern for accurate results that is the focus of the Due Process Clause. In testing the challenged procedure against that criterion, I would distinguish between instances where the district court rejects the credibility-based determination of a magistrate and instances, such as this one, where the court adopts a magistrate’s proposed result.1
In the latter context, the judge accurately can be described as a “backup” jurist whose review serves to enhance reliability and benefit the defendant. Respondent was afforded procedures by which a neutral decisionmaker, after seeing and hearing the witnesses, rendered a decision.2 After that deci-sionmaker found against him, respondent received a second *685turn, albeit on a cold record, before another neutral decision-maker. In asking us to invalidate the magistrate program, respondent in effect requests removal of the second level of procedural protections afforded him and others like him.3 In my view, such a result would tend to undermine, rather than augment, accurate decisionmaking. It therefore is not a result I could embrace under the Due Process Clause.
Although Mr. Justice Marshall ably argues that this characterization of the magistrate procedure clashes with Art. Ill, I am not persuaded. As the Court observes, the handling of suppression motions invariably remains completely in the control of the federal district court. The judge may initially decline to refer any matter to a magistrate. When a matter is referred, the judge may freely reject the magistrate’s recommendation. He may rehear the evidence in whole or in part. He may call for additional findings or otherwise “recommit the matter to the magistrate with instructions.” See 28 U. S. C. §636 (b)(1). Moreover, the magistrate himself is subject to the Art. Ill judge’s control. Magistrates are appointed by district judges, § 631 (a), and subject to removal by them, § 631 (h). In addition, district judges retain plenary authority over when, what, and how many pretrial matters are assigned to magistrates, and “[e]ach district court shall establish rules pursuant to which the magistrates shall discharge their duties.” § 636 (b)(4). Thus, the only conceivable danger of a “threat” to the “independence” of the magistrate comes from within, rather than without, the judicial department.
It is also significant that the Magistrates Act imposes significant requirements to ensure competency and impartiality, §§ 631 (b), (c), and (i), 632, 637 (1976 ed. and *686Supp. II), including a rule generally barring reduction of salaries of full-time magistrates, § 634 (b). Even assuming that, despite these protections, a controversial matter might be delegated to a magistrate who is susceptible to outside pressures, the district judge — insulated by life tenure and irreducible salary — is waiting in the wings, fully able to correct errors. Under these circumstances, I simply do not perceive the threat to the judicial power or the independence of judicial decisionmaking that underlies Art. III. We do not face a procedure under which “Congress [has] delegate [d] to a non-Art. Ill judge the authority to make final determinations on issues of fact.” Post, at 703 (dissenting opinion). Rather, we confront a procedure under which Congress has vested in Art. Ill judges the discretionary power to delegate certain functions to competent and impartial assistants, while ensuring that the judges retain complete supervisory control over the assistants’ activities.

 This is not to say that a district court’s rejection of a magistrate’s recommendation in favor of a defendant will inevitably violate the Due Process Clause.

 The magistrate, of course, makes only a recommendation, rather than a formal decision. But, at least in this context, I see no reason to believe that the process of “recommending” is more susceptible to error than “finally deciding.” And even if we were to speculate that some additional risk of error inheres in “recommending,” I would conclude that it is more than offset by the doublecheck provided by the district judge and the congressional determination that this procedure permits independent judicial evaluation of suppression motions while conserving scarce judicial resources.

 Certainly respondent does not have a due process right to have an Art. Ill judge resolve all factual issues surrounding his suppression motion. If he did, virtually every decision on a suppression motion in a state court would violate the Due Process Clause.