Court Opinion

ID: 9473146
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:20:57.250275+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:21.193263
License: Public Domain

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
Although I concur in the well-argued opinion of the court, I add a few words to express my understanding of today’s decision.
First, I have serious reservations about the increasingly widespread use of the harmless error rule to affirm erroneous trial court rulings. In the present case, I join in the court’s conclusion that the errors below were harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, since the court reached that conclusion only after undertaking a careful review of the record. But I want to emphasize that this decision should not be read as an endorsement of a more generalized usage of the harmless error rule. In my view, the combination of strict rules of criminal procedure on the one hand — rules which I strongly support — and the widespread use of the harmless error rule on the other can only lead to ad hoc decision-making, reflecting not impartial justice but the personal beliefs of the court regarding the defendant’s guilt.
*1211In the present case, the court states that the erroneous hearsay exclusion was harmless because the evidence in question related only to the probable cause dimension of the warrantless arrests and detentions. I agree with this conclusion. Contrary to the defendants’ claim, the fourth amendment requires a judicial determination of probable cause as a prerequisite to extended restraint of liberty following arrest. Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 114, 95 S.Ct. 854, 863, 43 L.Ed.2d 54 (1975). This probable cause determination may be made either before or promptly after arrest. Id. at 125, 95 S.Ct. at 869. Thus, if an arrest is made pursuant to a valid warrant issued by a magistrate, then since there was already a probable cause determination prior to arrest, the detainee need not be brought before a magistrate subsequent to arrest. Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 143, 99 S.Ct. 2689, 2694, 61 L.Ed.2d 433 (1979). If an arrest is made without a warrant, however, then regardless of whether the arresting officer believes that probable cause exists, the detainee must be promptly brought before a magistrate for a probable cause determination. Gerstein, 420 U.S. at 117-19, 95 S.Ct. at 864-65. The arresting officer’s belief that probable cause exists is relevant only to the validity of the warrant-less arrest; it does not negate the need for a prompt determination of probable cause by a neutral and detached magistrate. While we have never determined precisely how “promptly” a detainee must be brought before a magistrate, there is no question that he must be brought before a magistrate in fewer than the two to eight days involved here.1 Cf. Llaguno v. Mingey, 739 F.2d 1186, 1196 (7th Cir.1984) (detention for forty-two hours without probable cause determination gives rise to § 1983 claim); Bernard v. City of Palo Alto, 699 F.2d 1023, 1025 (9th Cir.1983) (probable cause hearing must be held no more than twenty-four hours after arrest); Sanders v. City of Houston, 543 F.Supp. 694, 702 (S.D.Tex.1982) (same), aff'd, 741 F.2d 1379 (5th Cir.1984) (no published opinion).2 In short, although the defendants may be correct that neither a warrantless arrest, by itself, nor failure to bring a detainee before a magistrate, by itself, deprives a detainee of his constitutional rights, the commission of both offenses implicates the fourth and fourteenth amendments. The cases to the contrary cited by the defendants either were decided prior to Gerstein v. Pugh or did not involve extended periods of detention, and thus do not govern the present case.
Finally, in regard to the collateral estoppel issue, I read the court’s opinion to be based on the impossibility, in this case, of determining what factual issues were necessarily determined at the initial trial, not on the principle that overt acts in support of a section 241 conspiracy need not be performed with an intent to deprive people of their civil rights. If the earlier acquittals were necessarily based on a finding that the defendants lacked the specific intent to deprive people of their civil rights, *1212then I believe that the government would be precluded from using the incidents as overt acts in support of the conspiracy.
I base this conclusion' on the identity of the specific intent requirement under sections 241 and 242. See United States v. Ehrlichman, 546 F.2d 910, 921 (D.C.Cir.1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1120, 97 S.Ct. 1155, 51 L.Ed.2d 570 (1977); cf. United States v. McClean, 528 F.2d 1250, 1255 (2nd Cir.1976). Although, as the majority notes, overt acts are not a necessary element of a section 241 conspiracy, the government did allege the overt acts as evidence of the existence of the conspiracy. In my view, the overt acts were only probative of the conspiracy offense if they were performed with an intent to deprive people of their constitutional rights. If they were performed in good faith, then they are irrelevant to the existence of a conspiracy to deprive people intentionally of their civil rights.3
Thus, I concur in the court’s opinion not because I believe that specific intent is not a necessary element of overt acts in support of a section 241 conspiracy, but because I believe that the issue of specific intent was not necessarily decided at the earlier trial. As I read the court’s opinion, that is also the conclusion of the court.

. Jesus Rodriguez was held for six days without being brought before a magistrate, Juan Salazar-Pena for seven days, and Roy Burrell for two days once and for three days a different time. These were the four incidents concerning which evidence was erroneously excluded as hearsay, and hence are the only incidents that need be considered here.

. Although in Schall v. Martin, — U.S. —, 104 S.Ct. 2403, 81 L.Ed.2d 207 (1984), the Court suggested, in dicta, that Gerstein should be read to have approved pretrial procedures that supplied a formal probable cause determination within five days of arrest, the procedures referred to called for an initial appearance before a magistrate in less than five days, at which the magistrate would consider whether grounds existed for an arrest warrant. See Gerstein, 420 U.S. at 124 n. 25, 95 S.Ct. at 868 n. 25; cf. Schall, — U.S. at-, 104 S.Ct. at 2416-17 (approved juvenile pretrial detention procedures that required a formal, adversarial probable cause determination only within three to six days of confinement, but that also required detainees to be brought before a judge for an initial appearance within twenty-four hours of confinement). Thus, even if a formal, adversarial probable cause determination is not constitutionally required within two days of arrest, an initial appearance before a magistrate is required.

. It could be argued that where overt acts are evidentiary rather than ultimate facts, collateral estoppel should not apply, since even though a jury may not believe that a defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of a substantive offense, his actions might nevertheless be circumstantial evidence of the existence of a conspiracy. Cf. United States v. Mariani, 725 F.2d 862, 865-66 (2nd Cir.1984) ("Seemingly innocent acts taken individually may indicate complicity when viewed collectively and with reference to the circumstances in general.”); United States v. Monica, 295 F.2d 400, 401-02 (2nd Cir.1961) (single incident might have been innocent; but several incidents together indicate guilt), cert. denied, 368 U.S. 953, 82 S.Ct. 395, 7 L.Ed.2d 386 (1962). This argument, however, is not supported by our cases. In Wingate v. Wainwright, 464 F.2d 209 (5th Cir.1972), for example, we rejected the use of evidence of a crime of which the defendant had been previously acquitted as evidence of a course of conduct in a subsequent trial. In doing so, we stated, "We do not perceive any meaningful difference in the quality of ‘jeopardy’ to which a defendant is again subjected when the state attempts to prove his guilt by relitigating a settled fact issue which depends upon whether the relitigated issue is one of ‘ultimate’ fact or merely an ‘evidentiary’ fact in the second prosecution. In both instances the state is attempting to prove the defendant guilty of an offense other than the one of which he was acquitted. In both instances the relitigated proof is offered to prove some element of the second offense. In both instances the defendant is forced to defend again against charges or factual allegations which he overcame in the earlier trial.” Id. at 213-14; see also United States v. Mock, 604 F.2d 341, 343 (5th Cir.1979). While we have not previously ruled on the precise issue presented by this case, I am persuaded by the conclusion of the Second Circuit in United States v. Mespoulede, 597 F.2d 329 (1979), that collateral estoppel applies in conspiracy cases where the overt acts are merely evidentiary and need not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 334-35.