Court Opinion

ID: 9427666
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:32.683385+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:08.926477
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stevens,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice Marshall join, dissenting.
When a State deprives a person of his liberty after his arrest, the Constitution requires that it be prepared to justify not only the initial arrest, but the continued detention as well.1 Respondent’s arrest on December 26, 1972, was authorized by a valid warrant, and no claim is raised that it violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The question is whether the deprivation of his liberty during the next eight days — despite his protests of mistaken identity — was “without due process of *150law” within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. The record in this case makes clear that the procedures employed by the sheriff of Potter County, Tex., at the time were not reasonably calculated to establish that a person being detained for the alleged commission of a crime was in fact the person believed to be guilty of the offense. In my judgment, such procedures are required by the Due Process Clause, and the deprivation of respondent’s liberty occasioned by their absence is a violation of his Fourteenth Amendment rights.
I
Respondent’s brother Leonard was arrested by a member of the City of Amarillo Police Force on September 11, 1972; city police officers photographed and fingerprinted him. On October 6, 1972, he was transferred to the custody of the sheriff of Potter County. At that time, contrary to normal practice, the Potter County sheriff’s office took possession of the driver’s license the brother was carrying. They did so because it was apparent that the license had been altered. The sheriff testified that an alteration of that kind established a likelihood that the arrestee was using an alias.2
A professional surety posted bond and respondent’s brother was released. On November 3, 1972,, for reasons that do not appear in the record, the bondsman sought and received an order allowing him to surrender respondent’s brother. A warrant for his re-arrest was therefore issued. Since the brother had been masquerading as respondent, the warrant was issued in respondent’s name.3 Although respondent has not questioned the validity of the warrant — presumably because it issued before petitioner became sheriff — he has emphasized the fact that the altered driver’s license in the file gave the sheriff’s deputies reason to believe that the wanted person was using an alias.
*151On December 26, 1972, respondent was stopped for a traffic violation in Dallas. The Dallas patrolman made a routine radio check and learned that the Potter County warrant was outstanding. Over respondent’s repeated protests that he was not the right man, the officer placed him under arrest and took him to a Dallas police station. The desk sergeant telephoned the Potter County sheriff’s office and apparently learned that respondent’s name, sex, race, and date of birth corresponded with the information provided by the sheriff. No mention appears to have been made of the fact that the sheriff’s files contained an altered driver’s license issued in respondent’s name, even though respondent was obviously carrying a license when he was ticketed for the traffic offense.4 In short, the fact that the sheriff’s office had reason to believe that the name in the warrant was’ an alias did not motivate any special effort to verify the arrestee’s identification.
The sheriff’s deputies allowed respondent to remain in the Dallas lockup for four days before they picked him up. At the time they did so, they failed to follow an identification procedure used by comparable sheriff’s offices. They did not take the pictures and fingerprints in the file with them to Dallas to be sure that they had the man they wanted. Nor, when they returned to the Potter County jail, did they refer to the pictures or the prints notwithstanding respondent’s continued protests of misidentification and the ready availability of the information.5
The ensuing four days included a holiday weekend when the sheriff was apparently away from his office. It was nevertheless a busy period for his staff since about 150 prisoners were being detained in a jail designed to house only 88.'6 In *152all, there was no procedure in effect that led any of the sheriff’s deputies to pull out the file and compare the pictures and fingerprints with respondent. Of course, as soon as the sheriff did so on January 2, he recognized the mistake that had been made and immediately released respondent.
It is evident that respondent’s 8-day imprisonment would have been at least cut in half if any one of several different procedures had been followed by the sheriff’s office. If his brother’s file had been marked to indicate that he was probably using an alias, a more thorough and prompt identification check would surely have been made; if he had been transferred from Dallas to Potter County promptly, he apparently would have arrived before the sheriff left for the holiday weekend. If a prompt pickup was not feasible, a prompt mailing of the fingerprints and photographs would have revealed the error; if the deputies who picked him up had taken the fingerprints and photographs with them, he would have been released in Dallas; if the file had been checked when he arrived at the Potter County jail, or if the sheriff had delegated authority to review complaints of mis-identification during his absence, respondent would not have spent four days in the Potter County jail. In short, almost any regular procedures for verifying an arrestee’s identification would have resulted in the prompt release of respondent.
II
The Due Process Clause clearly protects an individual from conviction based on identification procedures which are improperly suggestive. In a criminal trial, that Clause requires the exclusion of evidence obtained through procedures presenting “a very substantial likelihood of . . . misidentification.” Simmons v. United States, 390 U. S. 377, 384. Fair procedures must be used, to prevent an “irreparable misidenti-fication” and the resulting deprivation of liberty attaching to *153conviction. Ibid.7 In my judgment, the Due Process Clause equally requires that fair procedures be employed to ensure that the wrong individual is not subject to the deprivations of liberty attaching to pretrial detention.
Pretrial detention unquestionably involves a serious deprivation of individual liberty. “The consequences of prolonged detention may be more serious than the interference occasioned by arrest. Pretrial confinement may imperil the suspect’s job, interrupt his source of income, and impair his family relationships.” Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U. S. 103, 114. The burdens of pretrial detention are substantial ones to impose on a presumptively innocent man, even when there is probable cause to believe he has committed a crime.8 To impose such burdens on the wrong man — on a man who has been mistakenly identified as a suspect because of inadequate identification procedures — seems to me clearly unconstitutional. It is wholly at odds with the constitutional restraints imposed on police officers in the performance of investigative stops,9 the establishment of probable cause to detain as well as to arrest,10 and the questioning of suspects taken into custody.11 In each of these activities, police officers must conform to procedures mandated by the Constitution which serve to minimize *154the risk of wrongful and unjustified deprivations of personal liberty. It surely makes little sense to enforce limits on the police officer seeking out and detaining those whom he believes to have committed crimes without at the same time requiring adherence to procedures designed to ensure that the subject of the police action and detention is in fact the individual the officer believes he is.
In rejecting respondent’s claim that his mistaken detention violated his constitutional rights, the Court today relies on two alternative rationales. First, it seems to hold that the constitutional right to a speedy trial provides adequate assurance against unconstitutional detentions, so long as the initial arrest is valid. I cannot agree. A speedy trial within the meaning of the Constitution may take place weeks or months — if not years — after the initial arrest.12 And many arrested persons — as many as 49% of those arrested in the District of Columbia — are never tried at all, with charges being dropped at some point prior to trial.13
Alternatively, the majority relies on the fact that the last three days of respondent’s detention occurred over a holiday weekend to establish that the deprivation of his liberty was so minimal as not to require procedural protections. Whatever relevance the holiday might have to the sheriff’s good-faith defense 14 — an issue not presented here — it is clear to me *155that the coincidence of a holiday weekend hardly reduces the deprivation of liberty from respondent’s point of view; indeed, one might regard the deprivation of liberty as particularly serious over a holiday weekend, and require a higher standard of care at such a time. No claim is made that respondent’s deprivation was due to the failure to follow otherwise applicable procedures during a holiday weekend; and no such claim could be made, since the respondent was detained for five days before the holiday weekend, and since he was brought to Potter County before the weekend without confirming his identity according to procedures which are customary in comparable police departments.15
Certainly, occasional mistakes may be made by conscientious police officers operating under the strictest procedures. But this is hardly such a case. Here, there were no identification procedures. And the problems of mistaken identification are not, in my judgment, so insubstantial that the absence of such procedures, and the deprivation of individual liberty which results from their absence, should be lightly dismissed as of no constitutional significance. The practice of making a radio check with a centralized data bank is now a routine policy, followed not only in every traffic stop in Potter County,16 but also in literally hundreds of thousands of cases per day nationwide.17 The risk of misidentification based on coincidental similarity of names, birthdays, and descriptions *156is unquestionably substantial;18 it is reflected not only in cases processed by this Court,19 but also in the emphasis placed on securing fingerprint identification by those responsible for the national computer system.20 The societal interests in apprehending the guilty as well as the interests in avoiding the incarceration of the innocent equally demand that the identification of arrested persons conform to standards designed to minimize the risk of error. I am not prepared or qualified to define the standards that should govern this aspect of the law enforcement profession’s work, but I have no hesitation in concluding that an 8-day imprisonment resulting from a total absence of any regular identification procedures in Potter County was a deprivation of liberty without the due process of law that the Constitution commands.
I respectfully dissent.

See Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U. S. 103, 113-114. See also Schilb v. Kuebel, 404 U. S. 357, 365 (“[T]he Eighth Amendment’s proscription of excessive bail has been assumed to have application to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment”); Stack v. Boyle, 342 U. S. 1, 4 (“Unless this right to bail before trial is preserved, the presumption of innocence,, secured only after centuries of struggle, would lose its meaning”).

 App. 36-40.

 Id., at 40-42, 118.

 See id,, at 42-43.

 “The sheriff himself testified that it was a standard practice in most sheriff’s departments the size of his to send such identifying material.” McCollan v. Tate, 575 F. 2d 509, 513. See App. 44-45, 52-53.

 Id., at 83.

 See Foster v. California, 394 U. S. 440; Neil v. Biggers, 409 U. S. 188, 198 (“It is the likelihood of misidentification which violates a defendant’s right to due process, and it is this which was the basis of the exclusion of evidence in Foster"). See also United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218, 228 (“The vagaries of eyewitness identification are well-known; the annals of criminal law are rife with instances of mistaken identification”).

 See Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U. S. 520, 569, and n. 7 (Marshall, J., dissenting); id., at 593 (Stevens, J., dissenting).

 See Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1; Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U. S. 648.

 See, e. g., Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200; Spinelli v. United States, 393 U. S. 410.

 See, e. g., Brewer v. Williams, 430 U. S. 387; Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436; Turner v. Pennsylvania, 338 U. S. 62 (coerced confession excluded on due process grounds even if “trustworthiness” test met). See also Rochin v. California, 342 U. S. 165.

 See, e. g., Barker v. Wingo, 407 U. S. 514 (delay of over four years held constitutional).

 See K. Brosi, A Cross-City Comparison of Felony Case Processing 7 (1979). Nationally, as many as 40% of all adult arrestees are released without the filing of charges. Y. Kamisar, W. LaFave, & J. Israel, Modern Criminal Procedure 7 (1974).

 While it might be argued that the holiday weekend would provide support for the sheriff’s claim that he should be immune from damages on the grounds of a good-faith defense, it would surely seem irrelevant to any claim that respondent might have raised in a habeas corpus proceeding' that he was being held in violation of his constitutional rights. Yet under the majority’s holding, respondent would not be entitled to such relief, since his detention is not a violation of his constitutional rights.

 See 575 F. 2d, at 512 (“[T]he deputies’ actions were authorized by Sheriff Baker and the same actions were in keeping with the policies of the Potter County Sheriff’s Department at that time”).

 See App. 26 (testimony of Sheriff Baker).

 As of May 1979, there were 7,285,951 records included in the data base of the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), the national computerized data bank operated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and designed to assist federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. In April 1979, an average of 279,966 requests for information from the system were made daily by law enforcement officials.

 According to a study conducted by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, over 5,000 civil actions were filed against police officers asserting claims of false arrest or imprisonment between 1967 and 1971. This figure represented over 40% of the total number of suits filed during those years alleging any form of police misconduct. See Survey of Police Misconduct Litigation 1967-1971, p. 6 (Americans for Effective Law Enforcement 1974).

 See, e. g., Ulster County Court v. Allen, 442 U. S. 140, in which the police held one of the respondents on the basis of mistaken information received in response to a radio check with headquarters. See also United States v. Mackey, 387 F. Supp. 1121 (Nev. 1975) (individual arrested based on inaccurate computer information). See generally Note, Garbage In, Gospel Out: Establishing Probable Cause Through Computerized Criminal Information Transmittals, 28 Hastings L. J. 509 (1976); DeWeese, Reforming our “Record Prisons”: A Proposal for the Federal Regulation of Crime Data Banks, 6 Rutgers-Camden L. J. 26, 33 (1974) (citing report of 35% inaccuracy in criminal histories maintained by FBI).

 In the NCIC system, “[e]ach computerized offender criminal history cycle must have a criminal fingerprint card as its basic source document. This is necessary in order to preserve the personal identification integrity of the system.” NCIC, Computerized Criminal History Program; Background, Concept and Policy 4 (FBI 1978). “[T]he long-standing law enforcement fingerprint identification process is an essential element in the criminal justice system.” Id., at 13.