Court Opinion

ID: 9425989
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:23.697714+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:58.426281
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stewart, with whom Mr. Justice Douglas,
Mr. Justice Brennan, and Mr. Justice Marshall join,
concurring.
I concur in Parts I and II of the Court’s opinion, since the Constitution clearly requires at least a timely judicial determination of probable cause as a prerequisite to pretrial detention. Because Florida does not provide all defendants in custody pending trial with a fair and reliable determination of probable cause for their detention, the respondents and the members of the class they represent are entitled to declaratory and injunctive relief.
Having determined that Florida’s current pretrial detention procedures are constitutionally inadequate, I think it is unnecessary to go further by way of dicta. In particular, I would not, in the abstract, attempt to specify those procedural protections that constitutionally need not be accorded incarcerated suspects awaiting trial.
*127Specifically, I see no need in this case for the Court to say that the Constitution extends less procedural protection to an imprisoned human being than is required to test the propriety of garnishing a commercial bank account, North Georgia Finishing, Inc. v. Di-Chem, Inc., 419 U. S. 601; the custody of a refrigerator, Mitchell v. W. T. Grant Co., 416 U. S. 600; the temporary suspension of a public school student, Goss v. Lopez, 419 U. S. 565; or the suspension of a driver’s license, Bell v. Burson, 402 U. S. 535. Although it may be true that the Fourth Amendment’s “balance between individual and public interests always has been thought to define the ‘process that is due’ for seizures of person or property in criminal cases,” ante, at 125 n. 27, this case does not involve an initial arrest, but rather the continuing incarceration of a presumptively innocent person. Accordingly, I cannot join the Court’s effort to foreclose any claim that the traditional requirements of constitutional due process are applicable in the context of pretrial detention.
It is the prerogative of each State in the first instance to develop pretrial procedures that provide defendants in pretrial custody with the fair and reliable determination of probable cause for detention required by the Constitution. Cf. Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471, 488. The constitutionality of any particular method for determining probable cause can be properly decided only by evaluating a State’s pretrial procedures as a whole, not by isolating a particular part of its total system. As the Court recognizes, great diversity exists among the procedures employed by the States in this aspect of their criminal justice system. Ante, at 123-124.
There will be adequate opportunity to evaluate in an appropriate future case the constitutionality of any new procedures that may be adopted by Florida in response to the Court’s judgment today holding that Florida’s present procedures are constitutionally inadequate.