County of Riverside v. McLaughlin

Petitioner
County of Riverside
Respondent
Donald Lee McLaughlin
Petitioner's Claim
That the county's providing a probable cause hearing to those arrested without a warrant within 48 hours of the arrest was acceptable.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Timothy T. Coates
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Dan Stormer
Justices for the Court
Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor (writing for the Court), William H. Rehnquist, David H. Souter, Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
Harry A. Blackmun, Thurgood Marshall, Antonin Scalia, John Paul Stevens
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
13 May 1991
Decision
Reversed the decision of the court of appeals and held that a probable causehearing must take place as soon as is reasonably feasible, but no later that48 hours after an arrest.
Significance
The ruling settled controversy which arose after Gerstein v. Pugh (1975), as to the meaning of "prompt, " when referring to the necessity of providing a prompt probable cause hearing to someone arrested without a warrant. Asuspect arrested without a warrant has a Fourth Amendment right to prompt judicial determination of whether probable cause existed for his arrest. Absentextraordinary circumstances, "prompt" means within 48 hours.
Donald Lee McLaughlin was incarcerated in the Riverside County Jail in California. He had been arrested without a warrant and had not yet received a hearing. In August of 1987, Donald Lee McLaughlin filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California seeking prompt probable cause, bail, and arraignment hearings for himself and other in-custody arrestees who had been arrested without warrants. In November of 1988 the district court certified as a "class" those prisoners in the Riverside County Jail heldthere from 1 August 1987 to the present and all future detainees denied prompt probable cause, bail, or arraignment hearings. In a class action lawsuit,a named petitioner files a complaint on behalf of himself and others who aresimilarly situated, meaning suffering from the same problem. A judge must then certify, or approve, these people filing a lawsuit as a group. If they receive certification, they become the petitioners in the lawsuit.
In County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, the petitioners asked the district court, in March of 1989, to issue a preliminary injunction (an order) to require the county to provide all those arrested without a warrant a probablecause hearing within 36 hours of their arrest. At this type of hearing, a lawenforcement officer must explain to a judge why he arrested a person withouta warrant. The officer must show that at the time of the arrest he believedan offense had been committed and that the arrestee likely committed it.
The lawsuit challenged the way that Riverside County provided probable causehearings to those arrested without a warrant. The county combined the probable cause determination with arraignment procedures. At an arraignment, the suspect is formally charged by the judge and enters a plea of guilty or not guilty. Although county policy was to conduct the arraignment without unnecessarydelay--within two days of the arrest--the two-day requirement did not compute in weekends and holidays. Thus someone arrested late in the week might be held for as long as five days before getting a probable cause determination. If the arrest took place around Thanksgiving, a seven day delay may have occurred.
The district court issued the injunction stating that the existing practice of the county violated the Supreme Court's decision in Gerstein v. Pugh, which mandated "prompt" probable cause hearings for people arrested withoutwarrants. The district court adopted a rule that the county must provide such hearings within 36 hours of arrest. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the NinthCircuit agreed with the district court's decision to grant the preliminary injunction. The court of appeals stated that the county's policy of providingprobable cause hearings within 48 hours was not in accordance with the Gerstein requirement of a hearing "promptly after arrest" because no more than 36 hours were needed. The Ninth Circuit joined the Fourth and Seventh Circuits in interpreting the Gerstein ruling to mean that a probable causehearing must immediately follow the completion of the administrative procedures that occur after an arrest. The Second Circuit, however, stressed the need for flexibility and the desire of states to combine probable cause hearingswith other pretrial proceedings.
The Promptness Requirement
In Gerstein v. Pugh, the Supreme Court attempted to reconcile important competing interests in arrests without warrants. States have a strong interest in protecting public safety and individuals have a strong interest in protecting job, income, and family. The Court sought to balance these competingconcerns and reach a practical compromise between the rights of individuals and the realities of law enforcement by stating that a probable cause hearingmust be held "promptly after arrest." In Gerstein the Court noted that"flexibility and experimentation by the States" were desirable. The Court'spurpose in Gerstein was to clarify that the Fourth Amendment requiresthe states to hold a prompt probable cause hearing, but the Constitution doesnot demand a rigid procedural framework compelling an immediate determination of probable cause upon completion of the administrative steps that go alongwith an arrest. The Fourth Amendment "permits a reasonable postponement of aprobable cause determination while the police cope with the everyday problems of processing suspects through an overly burdened criminal justice system."
Writing for the Court, Justice O'Connor noted the importance of providing sufficient guidelines for states and counties to follow. The majority of the Court agreed that providing a probable cause hearing within 48 hours of arrest would satisfy the promptness requirement in Gerstein. An arrestee's rights could still be violated if a probable cause hearing was delayed unreasonably, even if it took place within 48 hours of arrest. Some examples of an unreasonable delay are delays used to gather additional evidence to justify thearrest, delays motivated by ill-will, or delays for delays' sake. In determining if a delay is unreasonable, the courts must allow a substantial degree offlexibility. If an arrestee does not receive a probable cause hearing within48 hours, the government must demonstrate that a bona fide emergency or extraordinary circumstance prevented it. Consolidating pretrial proceedings or intervening weekends does not qualify as extraordinary circumstances.
No More Than 24 Hours Is Needed
Justice Scalia in his dissent noted that the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution) had already achieved a "balancing" between thecompeting concerns of protecting public safety and avoiding prolonged detention. "It is the function of the Bill of Rights to preserve that judgment, notonly against the changing views of Presidents and Members of Congress, but also against the changing views of Justices whom Presidents appoint and Membersof Congress confirm to this Court."
Scalia noted that in Gerstein, the Court relied upon the common law understanding that the period of warrantless detention must be limited to the time necessary to complete the arrest and get a magistrate's review. Scalia felt that the idea of flexibility and experimentation referred to the nature ofthe hearing and not to its timing. He criticized the majority's idea of "balancing." Scalia noted that the purpose of the Fourth Amendment was "to put this matter beyond time, place, and judicial predilection." A determination todeprive someone of his or her liberty should be made, not according to a schedule that suits the state's convenience, but as soon as an arrest is completed and a magistrate found. Scalia noted that no more than 24 hours is needed for this process and that most federal courts and many state courts have applied a 24-hour limit.
Scalia summed up his dissent by stating, "One hears the complaint, nowadays,that the Fourth Amendment has become constitutional law for the guilty; thatit benefits the career criminal (through the exclusionary rule) often and directly, but the ordinary citizen remotely if at all." Scalia felt that the majority's opinion in this case reinforces the public's view of the Fourth Amendment and does not benefit its intended beneficiaries, the innocent. He went on to criticize the exclusionary rule and lament the lack of protection for those presumed innocent. "While in recent years we have invented novel applications of the Fourth Amendment to release the unquestionably guilty, we today [in the majority's decision in this case] repudiate one of its core applications so that the presumptively innocent may be left in jail."
Impact
In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled in Powell v. Nevada (1994), that McLaughlin's 48-hour rule must be applied retroactively, noting that a rule for the conduct of criminal prosecutions is to be applied retroactively to all cases, state or federal, not yet final when the rule is announced. In this casethe Court also pointed out that the appropriate remedy for a delay in determining probable cause was an issue not resolved by the McLaughlin case.
In United States v. Alvarez-Sanchez, a respondent asserted that his confession was obtained during an ongoing violation of his Fourth Amendment right to a prompt determination of probable cause. The respondent, however, didnot raise a Fourth Amendment claim in the district court or the court of appeals, so the Supreme Court declined to address his Fourth Amendment argument.Not receiving a probable-cause review within 48 hours of confinement has cometo be known as a Riverside violation. In a case where the trial court determines that there was a Riverside violation but the respondent never sought tohave his confession suppressed as a result of that violation, an alleged Riverside violation is waived unless it is raised before the trial court.
In January of 1998, U.S. District Court Judge Julie E. Carnes ruled that Georgia's system for probable cause hearings provided juveniles less protection than adults. Under the Georgia law, juveniles could be incarcerated for 72 hours, or upwards of one week, if a weekend or holiday intervened, without a probable cause hearing. Judge Carnes noted that such hearings, "minimize the time a presumptively innocent individual spends in jail" and that such "pretrialdetention is an onerous experience, especially for juveniles." Gerry Weber,the Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia stated that he was pleased that the Court recognized the double standard in giving juveniles fewer due process rights than adults. He stated that "Innocent youth wrongly accused of crimes will no longer have to languish in jail for days awaiting a court's conclusion that they should never have been there in the first place."
Related Cases

• Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103 (1975).
  
• Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737 (1984).
  
• Powell v. Nevada, 511 U.S. 79 (1994).
  
• United States v. Alvarez-Sanchez, 511 U.S. 350 (1994).