Court Opinion

ID: 9477880
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:33:23.710521+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:05.848301
License: Public Domain

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Miller v. Fenton, 474 U.S. 104, 110, 106 S.Ct. 445, 449, 88 L.Ed.2d 405 (1985), holds that “the ultimate issue of ‘voluntariness’ [of a confession] is a legal question requiring independent federal determination.” A district court therefore makes its own assessment, while respecting the state court’s findings about subsidiary facts. Barrera v. Young, 794 F.2d 1264, 1270 (7th Cir.1986). Several appellate courts — including this one, United States v. Hawkins, 823 F.2d 1020, 1022-23 (7th Cir.1987)—have read this passage of Miller with an emphasis on the “legal” rather than on the “federal”, leading them to conclude that even after a district judge has reviewed the circumstances surrounding the confession, there must be de novo appellate review. See, e.g., United States v. Wauneka, 842 F.2d 1083, 1087 & n. 2 (9th Cir.1988); Miller v. Fenton, 796 F.2d 598, 601 (3d Cir.1986). Our court today engages in de novo appellate review, and given Hawkins I join the court’s opinion. This approach, however, reflects neither the considerations motivating Miller nor those underlying the division of responsibilities between trial and appellate courts.
The question in Miller was whether a state court’s finding of voluntariness is a question of fact for purposes of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), which requires federal courts to presume “factual” findings to be correct on collateral review. If voluntariness were a “fact” under § 2254(d), there would be essentially no federal review of contentions that the police coerced suspects to confess. The Supreme Court examined the history of coerced-confession law and the background of § 2254(d) before deciding that when enacting the statute Congress had not terminated a power of inquiry into confessions that federal courts long exercised. Because “voluntariness” is a characterization rather than an historical fact, and because courts seek to detect and root out police practices that states may be willing to tolerate, it was appropriate to deem the question one of law. That designation was essential to federal review of a constitutional question. 474 U.S. at 112-18, 106 S.Ct. at 450-54.
A conclusion that an inquiry sounds in law rather than fact for purposes of § 2254(d) does not imply that it is a question of fact for every other purpose, including appellate review within the federal system.
(T]he decision to label an issue a “question of law,” a “question of fact,” or a “mixed question of law and fact” is sometimes as much a matter of allocation as it is of analysis.... [T]he fact/law distinction at times has turned on a determination that, as a matter of sound administration of justice, one judicial actor is better positioned than another to decide the issue in question.
474 U.S. at 113-14, 106 S.Ct. 451-52. Vol-untariness is not a question of “law” in the same sense that the question whether the *1254Miranda warnings are required by the Constitution is. Miller treated voluntariness as a question of “law” for purposes of § 2254(d) in order to ensure federal review of a constitutional issue. Nothing in the reasoning of Miller implies that there ought to be plenary appellate review of the same issue — that the ultimate decision ought to be given by three circuit judges, with the district court’s appreciation taken for chaff.
When allocating functions among federal judges, we ask first whether appellate courts possess an advantage that requires or justifies their having the last (here, only) word. Disputes about characterization— the effect of language in a contract; the existence of negligence, ratification, or discrimination — are treated as questions of fact for purposes of the clearly-erroneous rule in Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a). E.g., Icicle Seafoods, Inc. v. Worthington, 475 U.S. 709, 106 S.Ct. 1527, 89 L.Ed.2d 739 (1986) (the definition of a statutory “seaman”); Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U.S. 273, 102 S.Ct. 1781, 72 L.Ed.2d 66 (1982) (the identification of racial discrimination). This is not because such things are “facts” in the lay sense. No one can identify racial discrimination or a “seaman” without mar-shalling facts, drawing inferences, and applying some law. The ultimate issue is a conclusion at the end of a chain including historical facts and inferences, culminating in a characterization shaped by a rule of law. Courts nonetheless treat such issues as “facts” because there is little purpose in having them resolved, independently, by two triers of the federal judiciary.
To treat a question as one of “law” for purposes of Rule 52(a) is to say that the appellate court must disregard the district judge’s work and start anew. This is desirable when the court must frame the rules that govern the resolution of future disputes. The “main responsibility [of an appellate tribunal] is to maintain the uniformity and coherence of the law”, Mucha v. King, 792 F.2d 602, 605-06 (7th Cir.1986). But this responsibility is “not engaged if the only question is the legal significance of a particular and nonrecurring set of historical facts” (id. at 606). Fact-bound disputes should be resolved by a specialist in the application of rules to facts — that is, by the district judge. There is little to gain, and much to lose, in holding a rerun before another set of judges. Appellate judges are less well situated to appreciate the significance of facts, even documentary facts; a sensible allocation does not squander the energy put into a case by the district court, while requiring a duplication that diminishes the time appellate judges have for strictly legal questions. The allocation of functions is an aspect of the division of labor, Scandia Down Corp. v. Euroquilt, Inc., 772 F.2d 1423, 1428-29 (7th Cir.1985), which has great benefits within the judicial system just as it is commonly practiced within law firms. “The duplication of the trial judge’s efforts in the court of appeals would very likely contribute only negligibly to the accuracy of fact determination at a huge cost in diversion of judicial resources. In addition, the parties to a case on appeal have already been forced to concentrate their energies and resources on persuading the trial judge that their account of the facts is the correct one; requiring them to persuade three more judges at the appellate level is requiring too much.” Anderson v. Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 574-75, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 1512, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985). And requiring three appellate judges to root about in the record and come up with their independent characterizations and inferences — to measure the pattern against their own sensibilities — asks of them what they do least well, while diverting time from functions at the core of their duties.
We said just the other day that “[t]he question whether a rule of law has been violated — a question that requires applying the rule to the facts — is normally treated as a question of fact, ... not because it is a question of fact (it isn’t) but as a way of expressing a decision to leave the answer to the trial judge or jury to make, subject only to limited appellate review.” Dav*1255enport v. DeRobertis, 844 F.2d 1310, 1311-12 (7th Cir.1988) (emphasis in original). Determining whether a confession was voluntary calls for drawing inferences and affixing a characterization. The “totality-of-the-circumstances test” that applies to such inquiries under Miller is not a legal rule but a euphemism for a prudential and moral conclusion. The judge must decide “whether the techniques for extracting the statements, as applied to this suspect, are compatible with a system that presumes innocence and assures that a conviction will not be secured by inquisitorial means[, as well as] whether the defendant’s will was in fact overborne.” Miller, 474 U.S. at 116, 106 S.Ct. at 453 (emphasis in original). Questions of this sort should be resolved by federal rather than state courts, Miller holds; within the federal system they should be resolved primarily by trial rather than appellate courts, with appellate review only for clear error.
None of the cases finding in Miller a requirement of plenary appellate review cites Pullman-Standard or Anderson; none discusses the difference between federal and appellate review of an issue; none discusses the appropriate allocation of functions between trial and appellate judges. Each leaps from the conclusion that voluntariness is an issue of “law” for the purpose of § 2254(d) to the conclusion that it is an issue of “law” for the purpose of Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a). Hawkins is too new for a panel of this court to revise, but I trust that its conclusion is not beyond reexamination.