Indictment by Grand Jury
      Double Jeopardy
      Development and Scope
      Reprosecution Following Mistrial
      Reprosecution Following Acquittal
            Acquittal by Jury
            Acquittal by the Trial Judge
            Trial Court Rulings Terminating Trial Before Verdict
      Reprosecution Following Conviction
            Reprosecution After Reversal on Defendant's Appeal Sentence Increases
      ``For the Same Offence''
            Legislative Discretion as to Multiple Sentences
            Successive Prosecutions for ``The Same Offense''
            The ``Same Transaction'' Problem
      Self-Incrimination
      Development and Scope
      The Power to Compel Testimony and Disclosure
            Immunity
            Required Records Doctrine
            Reporting and Disclosure
      Confessions: Police Interrogation, Due Process, and Self-Incrimination
            The Common Law Rule
            McNabb-Mallory Doctrine
      State Confession Cases
            From the Voluntariness Standard to Miranda
            Miranda v. Arizona
      The Operation of the Exclusionary Rule
            Supreme Court Review
            Procedure in the Trial Courts
      Due Process
      History and Scope
            Scope of the Guaranty
      Procedural Due Process
            Generally
            Administrative Proceedings: A Fair Hearing
            Aliens: Entry and Deportation
            Judicial Review of Administrative Proceedings
      Substantive Due Process
            Discrimination
            Congressional Police Measures
            Congressional Regulation of Public Utilities
            Congressional Regulation of Railroads
            Taxation
            Retroactive Taxes
            Deprivation of Property: Retroactive Legislation
            Bankruptcy Legislation
            Right to Sue the Government
            Congressional Power to Abolish Common Law Judicial Actions
            Deprivation of Liberty: Economic Legislation
      National Eminent Domain Power
      Overview
            Public Use
            Just Compensation
                Interest
                Rights for Which Compensation Must Be Made
                Consequential Damages
                Enforcement of Right to Compensation
            When Property Is Taken
                Government Activity Not Directed at the Property
                Navigable Waters
                Regulatory Takings

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The history of the grand jury is rooted in the common and civil law, extending back to Athens, pre-Norman England, and the Assize of Clarendon promulgated by Henry II.\1\ The right seems to have been first mentioned in the colonies in the Charter of Liberties and Privileges of 1683, which was passed by the first assembly permitted to be elected in the colony of New York.\2\ Included from the first in Madison's introduced draft of the Bill of Rights, the provision elicited no recorded debate and no opposition. ``The grand jury is an English institution, brought to this country by the early colonists and incorporated in the Constitution by the Founders. There is every reason to believe that our constitutional grand jury was intended to operate substantially like its English progenitor. The basic purpose of the English grand jury was to provide a fair method for instituting criminal proceedings against persons believed to have committed crimes. Grand jurors were selected from the body of the people and their work was not hampered by rigid procedural or evidential rules. In fact, grand jurors could act on their own knowledge and were free to make their presentments or indictments on such information as they deemed satisfactory. Despite its broad power to institute criminal proceedings the grand jury grew in popular favor with the years. It acquired an independence in England free from control by the Crown or judges. Its adoption in our Constitution as the sole method for preferring charges in serious criminal cases shows the high place it held as an instrument of justice. And in this country as in England of old the grand jury has convened as a body of laymen, free from technical rules, acting in secret, pledged to indict no one because of prejudice and to free no one because of special favor.''\3\

NOTES:

\2\1 Bernard Schwartz, The Bill of Rights: A Documentary History 162, 166 (1971). The provision read: ``That in all Cases Capitall or Criminall there shall be a grand Inquest who shall first present the offence. . . .''

\3\Costello v. United States, 350 U.S. 359, 362 (1956). ``The grand jury is an integral part of our constitutional heritage which was brought to this country with the common law. The Framers, most of them trained in the English law and traditions, accepted the grand jury as a basic guarantee of individual liberty; notwithstanding periodic criticism, much of which is superficial, overlooking relevant history, the grand jury continues to function as a barrier to reckless or unfounded charges . . . . Its historic office has been to provide a shield against arbitrary or oppressive action, by insuring that serious criminal accusations will be brought only upon the considered judgment of a representative body of citizens acting under oath and under judicial instruction and guidance.'' United States v. Mandujano, 425 U.S. 564, 571 (1976) (plurality opinion). See id. at 589-91 (Justice Brennan concurring).

The prescribed constitutional function of grand juries in federal courts\4\ is to return criminal indictments, but the juries serve a considerably broader series of purposes as well. Principal among these is the investigative function, which is served through the fact that grand juries may summon witnesses by process and compel testimony and the production of evidence generally. Operating in secret, under the direction but not control of a prosecutor, not bound by many evidentiary and constitutional restrictions, such juries may examine witnesses in the absence of their counsel and without informing them of the object of the investigation or the place of the witnesses in it.\5\ The exclusionary rule is inapplicable in grand jury proceedings, with the result that a witness called before a grand jury may be questioned on the basis of knowledge obtained through the use of illegally-seized evidence.\6\ In thus allowing the use of evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, the Court nonetheless restated the principle that, while free of many rules of evidence that bind trial courts, grand juries are not unrestrained by constitutional consideration.\7\ A witness called before a grand jury is not entitled to be informed that he may be indicted for the offense under inquiry\8\ and the commission of perjury by a witness before the grand jury is punishable, irrespective of the nature of the warning given him when he appears and regardless of the fact that he may already be a putative defendant when he is called.\9\

NOTES:

\5\Witnesses are not entitled to have counsel present in the room. Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(d). The validity of this restriction was asserted in dictum in In re Groban, 352 U.S. 330, 333 (1957), and inferentially accepted by the dissent in that case. Id. at 346-47 (Justice Black, distinguishing grand juries from the investigative entity before the Court). The decision in Coleman v. Alabama, 399 U.S. 1 (1970), deeming the preliminary hearing a ``critical stage of the prosecution'' at which counsel must be provided, called this rule in question, inasmuch as the preliminary hearing and the grand jury both determine whether there is probable cause with regard to a suspect. See id. at 25 (Chief Justice Burger dissenting). In United States v. Mandujano, 425 U.S. 564, 581 (1976) (plurality opinion), Chief Justice Burger wrote: ``Respondent was also informed that if he desired he could have the assistance of counsel, but that counsel could not be inside the grand jury room. That statement was plainly a correct recital of the law. No criminal proceedings had been instituted against respondent, hence the Sixth Amendment right to counsel had not come into play.'' By emphasizing the point of institution of criminal proceedings, relevant to the right of counsel at line-ups and the like, the Chief Justice not only reasserted the absence of a right to counsel in the room but also, despite his having referred to it, cast doubt upon the existence of any constitutional requirement that a grand jury witness be permitted to consult with counsel out of the room, and, further, raised the implication that a witness or putative defendant unable to afford counsel would have no right to appointed counsel. Concurring, Justice Brennan argued that it was essential and constitutionally required for the protection of one's constitutional rights that he have access to counsel, appointed if necessary, accepting the likelihood, without agreeing, that consultation outside the room would be adequate to preserve a witness' rights, Id. at 602-09 (with Justice Marshall). Justices Stewart and Blackmun reserved judgment. Id. at 609. The dispute appears ripe for revisiting.

\6\United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338 (1974). The Court has interpreted a provision of federal wiretap law, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2515, to prohibit utilization of unlawful wiretap information as a basis for questioning witnesses before grand juries. Gelbard v. United States, 408 U.S. 41 (1972).

\7\``Of course, the grand jury's subpoena is not unlimited. It may consider incompetent evidence, but it may not itself violate a valid privilege, whether established by the Constitution, statutes, or the common law . . . . Although, for example, an indictment based on evidence obtained in violation of a defendant's Fifth Amendment privilege is nevertheless valid . . . , the grand jury may not force a witness to answer questions in violation of that constitutional guarantee. . . . Similarly, a grand jury may not compel a person to produce books and papers that would incriminate him. . . . The grand jury is also without power to invade a legitimate privacy interest protected by the Fourth Amendment. A grand jury's subpoena duces tecum will be disallowed if it is `far too sweeping in its terms to be regarded as reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.' Hale v. Henkel, 201 U.S. 43, 76 (1906). Judicial supervision is properly exercised in such cases to prevent the wrong before it occurs.'' United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 346 (1974). See also United States v. Dionisio, 410 U.S. 1, 11-12 (1973). Grand juries must operate within the limits of the First Amendment and may not harass the exercise of speech and press rights. Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 707-08 (1972). Protection of Fourth Amendment interests is as extensive before the grand jury as before any investigative officers, Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385 (1920) (now highly qualified as to its scope, supra, p. 1265); Hale v. Henkel, 201 U.S. 43, 76-77 (1920), but not more so either. United States v. Dionisio, 410 U.S. 1 (1973) (subpoena to give voice exemplars); United States v. Mara, 410 U.S. 19 (1973) (handwriting exemplars). The Fifth Amendment's self-incrimination clause must be respected. Blau v. United States, 340 U.S. 159 (1950); Hoffman v. United States, 341 U.S. 479 (1951). On common-law privileges, see Blau v. United States, 340 U.S. 332 (1951) (husband-wife privilege); Alexander v. United States, 138 U.S. 353 (1891) (attorney-client privilege). The traditional secrecy of grand jury proceedings has been relaxed a degree to permit a limited discovery of testimony. Compare Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. v. United States, 360 U.S. 395 (1959), with Dennis v. United States, 384 U.S. 855 (1966). See Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(e) (secrecy requirements and exceptions).

\8\United States v. Washington, 431 U.S. 181 (1977). Because defendant when he appeared before the grand jury was warned of his rights to decline to answer questions on the basis of self- incrimination, the decision was framed in terms of those warnings, but the Court twice noted that it had not decided, and was not deciding, ``whether any Fifth Amendment warnings whatever are constitutionally required for grand jury witnesses. . . .'' Id. at 186, 190.

\9\United States v. Mandujano, 425 U.S. 564 (1976); United States v. Wong, 431 U.S. 174 (1977). Mandujano had been told of his right to assert the privilege against self-incrimination, of the consequences of perjury, and of his right to counsel, but not to have counsel with him in the jury room. Chief Justice Burger and Justices White, Powell, and Rehnquist took the position that no Miranda warning was required because there was no police custodial interrogation and that in any event commission of perjury was not excusable on the basis of lack of any warning. Justices Brennan, Marshall, Stewart, and Blackmun agreed that whatever rights a grand jury witness had, perjury was punishable and not to be excused. Id. at 584, 609. Wong was assumed on appeal not to have understood the warnings given her and the opinion proceeds on the premise that absence of warnings altogether does not preclude a perjury prosecution.

Of greater significance were two cases in which the Court held the Fourth Amendment to be inapplicable to grand jury subpoenas requiring named parties to give voice exemplars and handwriting samples to the grand jury for identification purposes.\10\ According to the Court, the issue turned upon a two-tiered analysis--''whether either the initial compulsion of the person to appear before the grand jury, or the subsequent directive to make a voice recording is an unreasonable `seizure' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.''\11\ First, a subpoena to appear was held not to be a seizure, because it entailed significantly less social and personal affront than did an arrest or an investigative stop, and because every citizen has an obligation, which may be onerous at times, to appear and give whatever aid he may to a grand jury.\12\ Second, the directive to make a voice recording or to produce handwriting samples did not bring the Fourth Amendment into play because no one has any expectation of privacy in the characteristics of either his voice or his handwriting.\13\ Inasmuch as the Fourth Amendment was inapplicable, there was no necessity for the government to make a preliminary showing of the reasonableness of the grand jury requests.

NOTES:

\11\Id. at 9.

\12\Id. at 9-13.

\13\Id. at 13-15. The privacy rationale proceeds from Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967).

Besides indictments, grand juries may also issue reports which may indicate nonindictable misbehavior, mis- or malfeasance of public officers, or other objectionable conduct.\14\ Despite the vast power of grand juries, there is little in the way of judicial or legislative response designed to impose some supervisory restrictions on them.\15\

NOTES:

\15\Congress has required that in the selection of federal grand juries, as well as petit juries, random selection of a fair cross section of the community is to take place, and has provided a procedure for challenging discriminatory selection by moving to dismiss the indictment. 28 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 1861-68. Racial discrimination in selection of juries is constitutionally proscribed in both state and federal courts. Infra, pp.1854-57.

Within the meaning of this article a crime is made ``infamous'' by the quality of the punishment which may be imposed.\16\ ``What punishments shall be considered as infamous may be affected by the changes of public opinion from one age to another.''\17\ Imprisonment in a state prison or penitentiary, with or without hard labor,\18\ or imprisonment at hard labor in the workhouse of the District of Columbia,\19\ falls within this category. The pivotal question is whether the offense is one for which the court is authorized to award such punishment; the sentence actually imposed is immaterial. When an accused is in danger of being subjected to an infamous punishment if convicted, he has the right to insist that he shall not be put upon his trial, except on the accusation of a grand jury.\20\ Thus, an act which authorized imprisonment at hard labor for one year, as well as deportation, of Chinese aliens found to be unlawfully within the United States, created an offense which could be tried only upon indictment.\21\ Counterfeiting,\22\ fraudulent alteration of poll books,\23\ fraudulent voting,\24\ and embezzlement,\25\ have been declared to be infamous crimes. It is immaterial how Congress has classified the offense.\26\ An act punishable by a fine of not more than $1,000 or imprisonment for not more than six months is a misdemeanor, which can be tried without indictment, even though the punishment exceeds that specified in the statutory definition of ``petty offenses.''\27\

NOTES:

\17\Id. at 427.

\18\Mackin v. United States, 117 U.S. 348, 352 (1886).

\19\United States v. Moreland, 258 U.S. 433 (1922).

\20\Ex parte Wilson, 114 U.S. 417, 426 (1885).

\21\Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228, 237 (1896).

\22\Ex parte Wilson, 114 U.S. 417 (1885).

\23\Mackin v. United States, 117 U.S. 348 (1886).

\24\Parkinson v. United States, 121 U.S. 281 (1887).

\25\United States v. DeWalt, 128 U.S. 393 (1888).

\26\Ex parte Wilson, 114 U.S. 417, 426 (1885).

\27\Duke v. United States, 301 U.S. 492 (1937).

A person can be tried only upon the indictment as found by the grand jury, and especially upon its language found in the charging part of the instrument.\28\ A change in the indictment that does not narrow its scope deprives the court of the power to try the accused.\29\ While additions to offenses alleged in an indictment are prohibited, the Court has now ruled that it is permissible ``to drop from an indictment those allegations that are unnecessary to an offense that is clearly contained within it,'' as, e.g., a lesser included offense.\30\ There being no constitutional requirement that an indictment be presented by a grand jury in a body, an indictment delivered by the foreman in the absence of other grand jurors is valid.\31\ If valid on its face, an indictment returned by a legally constituted, non-biased grand jury satisfies the requirement of the Fifth Amendment and is enough to call for a trial on the merits; it is not open to challenge on the ground that there was inadequate or incompetent evidence before the grand jury.\32\

NOTES:

\29\Ex parte Bain, 121 U.S. 1, 12 (1887). Ex parte Bain was overruled in United States v. Miller, 471 U.S. 130 (1985), to the extent that it held that a narrowing of an indictment is impermissible.

\30\United States v. Miller, 471 U.S. 130, 144 (1985).

\31\Breese v. United States, 226 U.S. 1 (1912).

\32\Costello v. United States, 350 U.S. 359 (1956); Lawn v. United States, 355 U.S. 339 (1958); United States v. Blue, 384 U.S. 251 (1966). Cf. Gelbard v. United States, 408 U.S. 41 (1972).

The protection of indictment by grand jury extends to all persons except those serving in the armed forces. All persons in the regular armed forces are subject to court martial rather than grand jury indictment or trial by jury.\33\ The exception's limiting words ``when in actual service in time of war or public danger'' apply only to members of the militia, not to members of the regular armed forces. In O'Callahan v. Parker, the Court in 1969 held that offenses that are not ``service connected'' may not be punished under military law, but instead must be tried in the civil courts in the jurisdiction where the acts took place.\34\ This decision was overruled, however, in 1987, the Court emphasizing the ``plain language'' of Art. I, Sec. 8, cl. 14,\35\ and not directly addressing any possible limitation stemming from the language of the Fifth Amendment.\36\ ``The requirements of the Constitution are not violated where . . . a court-martial is convened to try a serviceman who was a member of the armed services at the time of the offense charged.''\37\ Even under the service connection rule, it was held that offenses against the laws of war, whether committed by citizens or by alien enemy belligerents, could be tried by a military commission.\38\

NOTES:

\34\395 U.S. 258 (1969); see also Relford v. Commandant, 401 U.S. 355 (1971) (offense committed on military base against persons lawfully on base was service connected). But courts-martial of civilian dependents and discharged servicemen have been barred. Id. See supra, pp.316-19.

\35\This clause confers power on Congress to ``make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces.''

\36\Solorio v. United States, 483 U.S. 435 (1987). A 5-4 majority favored overruling O'Callahan: Chief Justice Rehnquist's opinion for the Court was joined by Justices White, Powell, O'Connor, and Scalia. Justice Stevens concurred in the judgment but thought it unnecessary to reexamine O'Callahan. Dissenting Justice Marshall, joined by Justices Brennan and Blackmun, thought the service connection rule justified by the language of the Fifth Amendment's exception, based on the nature of cases (those ``arising in the land or naval forces'') rather than the status of defendants.

\37\Id. at 450-51.

\38\Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 43, 44 (1942).

``The constitutional prohibition against `double jeopardy' was designed to protect an individual from being subjected to the hazards of trial and possible conviction more than once for an alleged offense. . . . The underlying idea, one that is deeply ingrained in at least the Anglo-American system of jurisprudence, is that the State with all its resources and power should not be allowed to make repeated attempts to convict an individual for an alleged offense, thereby subjecting him to embarrassment, expense and ordeal and compelling him to live in a continuing state of anxiety and insecurity, as well as enhancing the possibility that even though innocent he may be found guilty.''\39\ The concept of double jeopardy goes far back in history, but its development was uneven and its meaning has varied. The English development, under the influence of Coke and Blackstone, came gradually to mean that a defendant at trial could plead former conviction or former acquittal as a special plea in bar to defeat the prosecution.\40\ In this country, the common-law rule was in some cases limited to this rule and in other cases extended to bar a new trial even though the former trial had not concluded in either an acquittal or a conviction. The rule's elevation to fundamental status by its inclusion in several state bills of rights following the Revolution continued the differing approaches.\41\ Madison's version of the guarantee as introduced in the House of Representatives read: ``No person shall be subject, except in cases of impeachment, to more than one punishment or trial for the same offense.''\42\ Opposition in the House proceeded on the proposition that the language could be construed to prohibit a second trial after a successful appeal by a defendant and would therefore either constitute a hazard to the public by freeing the guilty or, more likely, result in a detriment to defendants because appellate courts would be loath to reverse convictions if no new trial could follow, but a motion to strike ``or trial'' from the clause failed.\43\ As approved by the Senate, however, and accepted by the House for referral to the States, the present language of the clause was inserted.\44\

NOTES:

\40\M. Friedland, Double Jeopardy (1969), part 1; Crist v. Bretz, 437 U.S. 28, 32-36 (1978), and id. at 40 (Justice Powell dissenting); United States v. Wilson, 420 U.S. 332, 340 (1975).

\41\J. Sigler, Double Jeopardy--The Development of a Legal and Social Policy 21-27 (1969). The first bill of rights which expressly adopted a double jeopardy clause was the New Hampshire Constitution of 1784. ``No subject shall be liable to be tried, after an acquittal, for the same crime or offence.'' Art. I, Sec. XCI, 4 F. Thorpe, The Federal and State Constitution, reprinted in H.R. Doc. No. 357, 59th Congress, 2d Sess. 2455 (1909). A more comprehensive protection was included in the Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights of 1790, which had language almost identical to the present Fifth Amendment provision. Id. at 3100.

\42\1 Annals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789).

\43\Id. at 753.

\44\2 Bernard Schwartz, The Bill of Rights: A Documentary History 1149, 1165 (1971). In Crist v. Bretz, 437 U.S. 28, 40 (1978) (dissenting), Justice Powell attributed to inadvertence the broadening of the ``rubric'' of double jeopardy to incorporate the common law rule against dismissal of the jury prior to verdict, a question the majority passed over as being ``of academic interest only.'' Id. at 34 n.10.

Throughout most of its history, this clause was binding only against the Federal Government. In Palko v. Connecticut,\45\ the Court rejected an argument that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated all the provisions of the first eight Amendments as limitations on the States and enunciated the due process theory under which most of those Amendments do now apply to the States. Some guarantees in the Bill of Rights, Justice Cardozo wrote, were so fundamental that they are ``of the very essence of the scheme of ordered liberty'' and ``neither liberty nor justice would exist if they were sacrificed.''\46\ But the double jeopardy clause, like many other procedural rights of defendants, was not so fundamental; it could be absent and fair trials could still be had. Of course, a defendant's due process rights, absent double jeopardy consideration per se, might be violated if the State ``creat[ed] a hardship so acute and shocking as to be unendurable,'' but that was not the case in Palko.\47\ In Benton v. Maryland,\48\ however, the Court concluded ``that the double jeopardy prohibition . . . represents a fundamental ideal in our constitutional heritage. . . . Once it is decided that a particular Bill of Rights guarantee is `fundamental to the American scheme of justice,' . . . the same constitutional standards apply against both the State and Federal Governments.'' Therefore, the double jeopardy limitation now applies to both federal and state governments and state rules on double jeopardy, with regard to such matters as when jeopardy attaches, must be considered in the light of federal standards.\49\

NOTES:

\46\Id. at 325, 326.

\47\Id. at 328.

\48\395 U.S. 784, 794-95 (1969).

\49\Crist v. Bretz, 437 U.S. 28, 37-38 (1978). But see id. at 40 (Justices Powell and Rehnquist and Chief Justice Burger dissenting) (standard governing States should be more relaxed).

In a federal system, different units of government may have different interests to serve in the definition of crimes and the enforcement of their laws, and where the different units have overlapping jurisdictions a person may engage in conduct that will violate the laws of more than one unit.\50\ Although the Court had long accepted in dictum the principle that prosecution by two governments of the same defendant for the same conduct would not constitute double jeopardy,\51\ it was not until United States v. Lanza\52\ that the conviction in federal court of a person previously convicted in a state court for performing the same acts was sustained. ``We have here two sovereignties, deriving power from different sources, capable of dealing with the same subject-matter within the same territory . . . Each government in determining what shall be an offense against its peace and dignity is exercising its own sovereignty, not that of the other.''\53\ The ``dual sovereignty'' doctrine is not only tied into the existence of two sets of laws often serving different federal-state purposes and the now overruled principle that the double jeopardy clause restricts only the national government and not the States,\54\ but it also reflects practical considerations that undesirable consequences could follow an overruling of the doctrine. Thus, a State might preempt federal authority by first prosecuting and providing for a lenient sentence (as compared to the possible federal sentence) or acquitting defendants who had the sympathy of state authorities as against federal law enforcement.\55\ The application of the clause to the States has therefore worked no change in the ``dual sovereign'' doctrine.\56\ Of course, when in fact two different units of the government are subject to the same sovereign, the double jeopardy clause does bar separate prosecutions by them for the same offense.\57\ The dual sovereignty doctrine has also been applied to permit successive prosecutions by two states for the same conduct.\58\

NOTES:

\51\Id. And see cases cited in Bartkus v. Illinois, 359 U.S. 121, 132 n.19 (1959), and Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187, 192-93 (1959).

\52\260 U.S. 377 (1922).

\53\Id. at 382. See also Hebert v. Louisiana, 272 U.S. 312 (1924); Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 108 (1945); Jerome v. United States, 318 U.S. 101 (1943).

\54\Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784 (1969), extended the clause to the States.

\55\Reaffirmation of the doctrine against double jeopardy claims as to the Federal Government and against due process claims as to the States occurred in Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187 (1959), and Bartkus v. Illinois, 359 U.S. 121 (1959), both cases containing extensive discussion and policy analyses. The Justice Department follows a policy of generally not duplicating a state prosecution brought and carried out in good faith, see Petite v. United States, 361 U.S. 529, 531 (1960); Rinaldi v. United States, 434 U.S. 22 (1977), and several provisions of federal law forbid a federal prosecution following a state prosecution. E.g., 18 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 659, 660, 1992, 2117. The Brown Commission recommended a general statute to this effect, preserving discretion in federal authorities to proceed upon certification by the Attorney General that a United States interest would be unduly harmed if there were no federal prosecution. National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws, Final Report 707 (1971).

\56\United States v. Wheeler, 435 U.S. 313 (1978) (dual sovereignty doctrine permits federal prosecution of an Indian for statutory rape following his plea of guilty in a tribal court to contributing to the delinquency of a minor, both charges involving the same conduct; tribal law stemmed from the retained sovereignty of the tribe and did not flow from the Federal Government).

\57\Grafton v. United States, 206 U.S. 333 (1907) (trial by military court-martial precluded subsequent trial in territorial court); Waller v. Florida, 397 U.S. 387 (1970) (trial by municipal court precluded trial for same offense by state court). It was assumed in an early case that refusal to answer questions before one House of Congress could be punished as a contempt by that body and by prosecution by the United States under a misdemeanor statute, In re Chapman, 166 U.S. 661, 672 (1897), but there had been no dual proceedings in that case and it seems highly unlikely that the case would now be followed. Cf. Colombo v. New York, 405 U.S. 9 (1972).

\58\Heath v. Alabama, 474 U.S. 82 (1985) (defendant crossed state line in course of kidnap murder, was prosecuted for murder in both states).

The clause speaks of being put in ``jeopardy of life or limb,'' which as derived from the common law, generally referred to the possibility of capital punishment upon conviction, but it is now settled that the clause protects with regard ``to every indictment or information charging a party with a known and defined crime or misdemeanor, whether at the common law or by statute.''\59\ Despite the Clause's literal language, it can apply as well to sanctions that are civil in form if they clearly are applied in a manner that constitutes ``punishment.''\60\

NOTES:

\60\The clause applies in juvenile court proceedings which are formally civil. Breed v. Jones, 421 U.S. 519 (1975). See also United States v. Halper, 490 U.S. 435 (1989) (civil penalty under the False Claims Act constitutes punishment if it is overwhelmingly disproportionate to compensating the government for its loss, and if it can be explained only as serving retributive or deterrent purposes); United States v. One Assortment of 89 Firearms, 465 U.S. 354 (1984) (in determining whether a forfeiture proceeding is remedial or punitive, congressional preference for a civil sanction will be overridden only by ``the clearest proof'' to the contrary).

Because one prime purpose of the clause is the protection against the burden of multiple trials, a defendant who raises and loses a double jeopardy claim during pretrial or trial may immediately appeal the ruling, a rare exception to the general rule prohibiting appeals from nonfinal orders.\61\

NOTE:

During the 1970s especially, the Court decided an uncommonly large number of cases raising double jeopardy claims.\62\ Instead of the clarity that often emerges from intense consideration of a particular issue, however, double jeopardy doctrine has descended into a state of ``confusion,'' with the Court acknowledging that its decisions ``can hardly be characterized as models of consistency and clarity.''\63\ In large part, the re-evaluation of doctrine and principle has not resulted in the development of clear and consistent guidelines because of the differing emphases of the Justices upon the purposes of the clause and the consequent shifting coalition of majorities based on highly technical distinctions and individualistic fact patterns. Thus, some Justices have expressed the belief that the purpose of the clause is only to protect final judgments relating to culpability, either of acquittal or conviction, and that English common law rules designed to protect the defendant's right to go to the first jury picked had early in our jurisprudence become confused with the double jeopardy clause. While they accept the present understanding, they do so as part of the Court's superintending of the federal courts and not because the understanding is part and parcel of the clause; in so doing, of course, they are likely to find more prosecutorial discretion in the trial process.\64\ Others have expressed the view that the clause not only protects the integrity of final judgments but, more important, that it protects the accused against the strain and burden of multiple trials, which would also enhance the ability of government to convict.\65\ Still other Justices have engaged in a form of balancing of defendants' rights with society's rights to determine when reprosecution should be permitted when a trial ends prior to a final judgment not hinged on the defendant's culpability.\66\ Thus, the basic area of disagreement, though far from the only one, centers on the trial from the attachment of jeopardy to the final judgment.

NOTES:

\63\Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1, 9, 15 (1978). One result is instability in the law. Thus, Burks overruled, to the extent inconsistent, four cases decided between 1950 and 1960, and United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82 (1978), overruled a case decided just three years earlier, United States v. Jenkins, 420 U.S. 358 (1975).

\64\See Crist v. Bretz, 437 U.S. 28, 40 (1978) (dissenting opinion). Justice Powell, joined by Chief Justice Burger and Justice Rehnquist, argued that with the double jeopardy clause so interpreted the due process clause could be relied on to prevent prosecutorial abuse during the trial designed to abort the trial and obtain a second one. Id. at 50. All three have joined, indeed, in some instances, have authored, opinions adverting to the role of the double jeopardy clause in protecting against such prosecutorial abuse. E.g., United States v. Scott, 437 U.S 82, 92-94 (1978); Oregon v. Kennedy, 456 U.S. 667 (1982) (but narrowing scope of concept).

\65\United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 101 (1978) (dissenting opinion) (Justices Brennan, White, Marshall, and Stevens).

\66\Thus, Justice Blackmun has enunciated positions recognizing a broad right of defendants much like the position of the latter three Justices, Crist v. Bretz, 437 U.S. 28, 38 (1978) (concurring), and he joined Justice Stevens' concurrence in Oregon v. Kennedy, 456 U.S. 667, 681 (1982), but he also joined the opinions in United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82 (1978), and Arizona v. Washington, 434 U.S. 497 (1978) (Justice Blackmun concurring only in the result).

The common law generally required that the previous trial must have ended in a judgment, of conviction or acquittal, but the constitutional rule is that jeopardy attaches much earlier, in jury trials when the jury is sworn, and in trials before a judge without a jury, when the first evidence is presented.\67\ Therefore, if after jeopardy attaches the trial is terminated for some reason, it may be that a second trial, even if the termination was erroneous, is barred.\68\ The reasons the Court has given for fixing the attachment of jeopardy at a point prior to judgment and thus making some terminations of trials before judgment final insofar as the defendant is concerned is that a defendant has a ``valued right to have his trial completed by a particular tribunal.''\69\ The reason the defendant's right is so ``valued'' is that he has a legitimate interest in completing the trial ``once and for all'' and ``conclud[ing] his confrontation with society,''\70\ so as to be spared the expense and ordeal of repeated trials, the anxiety and insecurity of having to live with the possibility of conviction, and the possibility that the prosecution may strengthen its case with each try as it learns more of the evidence and of the nature of the defense.\71\ These reasons both inform the determination when jeopardy attaches and the evaluation of the permissibility of retrial depending upon the reason for a trial's premature termination.

NOTES:

\68\Cf. United States v. Jorn, 400 U.S. 470 (1971); Downum v. United States, 372 U.S. 734 (1963). ``Even if the first trial is not completed, a second prosecution may be grossly unfair. It increases the financial and emotional burden on the accused, prolongs the period in which he is stigmatized by an unresolved accusation of wrongdoing, and may even enhance the risk that an innocent defendant may be convicted. The danger of such unfairness to the defendant exists whenever a trial is aborted before it is completed. Consequently, as a general rule, the prosecutor is entitled to one, and only one, opportunity to require an accused to stand trial.'' Arizona v. Washington, 434 U.S. 497, 503-05 (1978).

\69\Wade v. Hunter, 336 U.S. 684, 689 (1949).

\70\United States v. Jorn, 400 U.S. 470, 486 (1971) (plurality opinion).

\71\Arizona v. Washington, 434 U.S. 497, 503-05 (1978); Crist v. Bretz, 437 U.S. 28, 35-36 (1978). See Westen & Drubel, Toward a General Theory of Double Jeopardy, 1978 Sup. Ct. Rev. 81, 86-97.

A mistrial may be the result of ``manifest necessity,''\72\ such as where, for example, the jury cannot reach a verdict\73\ or circumstances plainly prevent the continuation of the trial.\74\ Difficult has been the answer, however, when the doctrine of ``manifest necessity'' has been called upon to justify a second trial following a mistrial granted by the trial judge because of some event within the prosecutor's control or because of prosecutorial misconduct or because of error or abuse of discretion by the judge himself. There must ordinarily be a balancing of the defendant's right in having the trial completed against the public interest in fair trials designed to end in just judgments.\75\ Thus, when, after jeopardy attached, a mistrial was granted because of a defective indictment, the Court held that retrial was not barred; a trial judge ``properly exercises his discretion'' in cases in which an impartial verdict cannot be reached or in which a verdict on conviction would have to be reversed on appeal because of an obvious error. ``If an error could make reversal on appeal a certainty, it would not serve `the ends of public justice' to require that the Government proceed with its proof when, if it succeeded before the jury, it would automatically be stripped of that success by an appellate court.''\76\ On the other hand, when, after jeopardy attached, a prosecutor successfully moved for a mistrial because a key witness had inadvertently not been served and could not be found, the Court held a retrial barred, because the prosecutor knew prior to the selection and swearing of the jury that the witness was unavailable.\77\ Although this case appeared to establish the principle that an error of the prosecutor or of the judge leading to a mistrial could not constitute a ``manifest necessity'' for terminating the trial, Somerville distinguished and limited Downum to situations in which the error lends itself to prosecutorial manipulation, in being the sort of instance which the prosecutor could use to abort a trial that was not proceeding successfully and to obtain a new trial in which his advantage would be increased.\78\

NOTES:

\73\Id.; Logan v. United States, 144 U.S. 263 (1892).

\74\Simmons v. United States, 142 U.S. 148 (1891) (juror's impartiality became questionable during trial); Thompson v. United States, 155 U.S. 271 (1884) (discovery during trial that one of the jurors had served on the grand jury which indicted defendant and was therefore disqualified); Wade v. Hunter, 336 U.S. 684 (1949) (court- martial discharged because enemy advancing on site).

\75\Illinois v. Somerville, 410 U.S. 458, 463 (1973).

\76\Id. at 464.

\77\Downum v. United States, 372 U.S. 734 (1963).

\78\Illinois v. Somerville, 410 U.S. 458, 464-65, 468-69 (1973).

Another kind of case arises when the prosecutor moves for mistrial because of prejudicial misconduct by the defense. In Arizona v. Washington,\79\ defense counsel in his opening statement made prejudicial comments about the prosecutor's past conduct, and the prosecutor's motion for a mistrial was granted over defendant's objections. The Court ruled that retrial was not barred by double jeopardy. Granting that in a strict, literal sense, mistrial was not ``necessary'' because the trial judge could have given limiting instructions to the jury, the Court held that the highest degree of respect should be given to the trial judge's evaluation of the likelihood of the impairment of the impartiality of one or more jurors. As long as support for a mistrial order can be found in the trial record, no specific statement of ``manifest necessity'' need be made by the trial judge.\80\

NOTES:

\80\``Manifest necessity'' characterizes the burden the prosecutor must shoulder in justifying retrial. Id. at 505-06. But ``necessity'' cannot be interpreted literally; it means rather a ``high degree'' of necessity, and some instances, such as hung juries, easily meet that standard. Id. at 506-07. In a situation like that presented in this case, great deference must be paid to the trial judge's decision because he was in the best position to determine the extent of the possible bias, having observed the jury's response, and to respond by the course he deems best suited to deal with it. Id. at 510-14. Here, ``the trial judge acted responsibly and deliberately, and accorded careful consideration to respondent's interest in having the trial concluded in a single proceeding. [H]e exercised `sound discretion'. . . .'' Id. at 516.

Emphasis upon the trial judge's discretion has an impact upon the cases in which it is the judge's error, in granting sua sponte a mistrial or granting the prosecutor's motion. The cases are in doctrinal disarray. Thus, in Gori v. United States,\81\ the Court permitted retrial of the defendant when the trial judge had, on his own motion and with no indication of the wishes of defense counsel, declared a mistrial because he thought the prosecutor's line of questioning was intended to expose the defendant's criminal record, which would have constituted prejudicial error. Although the Court thought the judge's action was an abuse of discretion, it approved retrial on the conclusion that the judge's decision had been taken for defendant's benefit. This rationale was disapproved in the next case, in which the trial judge discharged the jury erroneously and in abuse of his discretion, because he disbelieved the prosecutor's assurance that certain witnesses had been properly apprised of their constitutional rights.\82\ Refusing to permit retrial, the Court observed that the ``doctrine of manifest necessity stands as a command to trial judges not to foreclose the defendant's option [to go to the first jury and perhaps obtain an acquittal] until a scrupulous exercise of judicial discretion leads to the conclusion that the ends of public justice would not be served by a continuation of the proceedings.''\83\ The later cases appear to accept Jorn as an example of a case where the trial judge ``acts irrationally or irresponsibly.'' But if the trial judge acts deliberately, giving prosecution and defense the opportunity to explain their positions, and according respect to defendant's interest in concluding the matter before the one jury, then he is entitled to deference. This approach perhaps rehabilitates the result if not the reasoning in Gori and maintains the result and much of the reasoning of Jorn.\84\

NOTES:

\82\United States v. Jorn, 400 U.S. 470, 483 (1971).

\83\Id. at 485. The opinion of the Court was by a plurality of four, but two other Justices joined it after first arguing that jurisdiction was lacking to hear the Government's appeal.

\84\Arizona v. Washington, 434 U.S. 497, 514, 515-16 (1978). See also Illinois v. Somerville, 410 U.S. 458, 462, 465-66, 469-71 (1973) (discussing Gori and Jorn.)

Of course, ``a motion by the defendant for mistrial is ordinarily assumed to remove any barrier to reprosecution, even if the defendant's motion is necessitated by a prosecutorial or judicial error.''\85\ ``Such a motion by the defendant is deemed to be a deliberate election on his part to forgo his valued right to have his guilt or innocence determined before the first trier of fact.''\86\ In United States v. Dinitz,\87\ the trial judge had excluded defendant's principal attorney for misbehavior and had then given defendant the option of recess while he appealed the exclusion, a mistrial, or continuation with an assistant defense counsel. Holding that the defendant could be retried after he chose a mistrial, the Court reasoned that, while the exclusion might have been in error, it was not done in bad faith to goad the defendant into requesting a mistrial or to prejudice his prospects for acquittal. The defendant's choice, even though difficult, to terminate the trial and go on to a new trial should be respected and a new trial not barred. To hold otherwise would necessitate requiring the defendant to shoulder the burden and anxiety of proceeding to a probable conviction followed by an appeal, which if successful would lead to a new trial, and neither the public interest nor defendant's interests would thereby be served.

NOTES:

\86\United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 93 (1978).

\87\424 U.S. 600 (1976). See also Lee v. United States, 432 U.S. 23 (1977) (defendant's motion to dismiss because the information was improperly drawn made after opening statement and renewed at close of evidence was functional equivalent of mistrial and when granted did not bar retrial, Court emphasizing that defendant by his timing brought about foreclosure of opportunity to stay before the same trial).

But the Court has also reserved the possibility that the defendant's motion might be necessitated by prosecutorial or judicial overreaching motivated by bad faith or undertaken to harass or prejudice, and in those cases retrial would be barred. It was unclear what prosecutorial or judicial misconduct would constitute such overreaching,\88\ but in Oregon v. Kennedy,\89\ the Court adopted a narrow ``intent'' test, so that ``[o]nly where the governmental conduct in question is intended to `goad' the defendant into moving for a mistrial may a defendant raise the bar of double jeopardy to a second trial after having succeeded in aborting the first on his own motion.'' Therefore, ordinarily, a defendant who moves for or acquiesces in a mistrial is bound by his decision and may be required to stand for retrial.

NOTES:

\89\456 U.S. 667, 676 (1982). The Court thought a broader standard requiring an evaluation of whether acts of the prosecutor or the judge prejudiced the defendant would be unmanageable and would be counterproductive because courts would be loath to grant motions for mistrials knowing that reprosecution would be barred. Id. at 676-77. The defendant had moved for mistrial after the prosecutor had asked a key witness a prejudicial question. Four Justices concurred, noting that the question did not constitute overreaching or harassment and objecting both to the Court's reaching the broader issue and to its narrowing the exception. Id. at 681.

Reprosecution Following Acquittal. -- That a defendant may not be retried following an acquittal is ``the most fundamental rule in the history of double jeopardy jurisprudence.''\90\ ``[T]he law attaches particular significance to an acquittal. To permit a second trial after an acquittal, however mistaken the acquittal may have been, would present an unacceptably high risk that the Government, with its vastly superior resources, might wear down the defendant so that `even though innocent he may be found guilty.'''\91\ While in other areas of double jeopardy doctrine consideration is given to the public-safety interest in having a criminal trial proceed to an error- free conclusion, no such balancing of interests is permitted with respect to acquittals, ``no matter how erroneous,'' no matter even if they were ``egregiously erroneous.''\92\

NOTES:

\91\United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 91 (1978) (quoting Green v. United States, 355U.S. 184, 188 (1957)). For the conceptually related problem of trial for a ``separate'' offense arising out of the same ``transaction,'' see infra, pp.1299-1302.

\92\Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1, 16 (1978); Fong Foo v. United States, 369 U.S. 141, 143 (1962). For evaluation of those interests of the defendant that might support the absolute rule of finality, and rejection of all such interests save the right of the jury to acquit against the evidence and the trial judge's ability to temper legislative rules with leniency, see Westen & Drubel, Toward a General Theory of Double Jeopardy, 1978 Sup. Ct. Rev. 81, 122-37.

The acquittal being final, there is no governmental appeal constitutionally possible from such a judgment. This was firmly established in Kepner v. United States,\93\ which arose under a Philippines appeals system in which the appellate court could make an independent review of the record, set aside the trial judge's decision, and enter a judgment of conviction.\94\ Previously, under the due process clause, there was no barrier to state provision for prosecutorial appeals from acquittals.\95\ But there are instances in which the trial judge will dismiss the indictment or information without intending to acquit or in circumstances in which retrial would not be barred, and the prosecution, of course, has an interest in seeking on appeal to have errors corrected. Until 1971, however, the law providing for federal appeals was extremely difficult to apply and insulated from review many purportedly erroneous legal rulings,\96\ but in that year Congress enacted a new statute permitting appeals in all criminal cases in which indictments are dismissed, except in those cases in which the double jeopardy clause prohibits further prosecution.\97\ In part because of the new law, the Court has dealt in recent years with a large number of problems in this area.

NOTES:

\94\In dissent, Justice Holmes, joined by three other Justices, propounded a theory of ``continuing jeopardy,'' so that until the case was finally concluded one way or another, through judgment of conviction or acquittal, and final appeal, there was no second jeopardy no matter how many times a defendant was tried. Id. at 134. The Court has numerous times rejected any concept of ``continuing jeopardy.'' E.g., Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184, 192 (1957); United States v. Wilson, 420 U.S. 332, 351-53 (1975); Breed v. Jones, 421 U.S. 519, 533-35 (1975).

\95\Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319 (1937). Palko is no longer viable. Cf. Greene v. Massey, 437 U.S. 19 (1978).

\96\The Criminal Appeals Act of 1907, 34 Stat. 1246, was ``a failure . . . , a most unruly child that has not improved with age.'' United States v. Sisson, 399 U.S. 267, 307 (1970). See also United States v. Oppenheimer, 242 U.S. 85 (1916); Fong Foo v. United States, 369 U.S. 141 (1962).

\97\Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control Act, Pub. L. No. 91- 644, 84 Stat. 1890, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3731. Congress intended to remove all statutory barriers to governmental appeal and to allow appeals whenever the Constitution would permit, so that interpretation of the statute requires constitutional interpretation as well. United States v. Wilson, 420 U.S. 332, 337 (1974). See Sanabria v. United States, 437 U.S. 54, 69 n.23 (1978), and id. at 78 (Justice Stevens concurring).

Acquittal by Jury. -- Little or no controversy accompanies the rule that once a jury has acquitted a defendant, government may not, through appeal of the verdict or institution of a new prosecution, place the defendant on trial again. Thus, the Court early held that, when the results of a trial are set aside because the first indictment was invalid or for some reason the trial's results were voidable, a judgment of acquittal must nevertheless remain undisturbed.\98\

NOTE:

Acquittal by the Trial Judge. -- Similarly, when a trial judge acquits a defendant, that action concludes the matter.\99\ There is no possibility of retrial for the same offense.\100\ But it may be difficult at times to determine whether the trial judge's action was in fact an acquittal or was a dismissal or some other action which the prosecution may be able to appeal. The question is ``whether the ruling of the judge, whatever its label, actually represents a resolution, correct or not, of some or all of the factual elements of the offense charged.''\101\ Thus, an appeal by the Government was held barred in a case in which the deadlocked jury had been discharged, and the trial judge had granted the defendant's motion for a judgment of acquittal under the appropriate federal rule, explicitly based on the judgment that the Government had not proved facts constituting the offense.\102\ Even if, as happened in Sanabria v. United States,\103\ the trial judge erroneously excludes evidence and then acquits on the basis that the remaining evidence is insufficient to convict, the judgment of acquittal produced thereby is final and unreviewable.

NOTES:

\100\In Fong Foo v. United States, 369 U.S. 141 (1962), the Court acknowledged that the trial judge's action in acquitting was ``based upon an egregiously erroneous foundation,'' but it was nonetheless final and could not be reviewed. Id. at 143.

\101\United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., 430 U.S. 564, 571 (1977).

\102\Id. at 570-76. See also United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 87-92 (1978); Smalis v. Pennsylvania, 476 U.S. 140 (1986) (demurrer sustained on basis of insufficiency of evidence is acquittal).

\103\437 U.S. 54 (1978). The double jeopardy applications of an appellate court's reversal for insufficient evidence are discussed infra, pp.1294-95.

Some limited exceptions do exist with respect to the finality of trial judge acquittal. First, because a primary purpose of the due process clause is the prevention of successive trials and not of prosecution appeals per se, it is apparently the case that if the trial judge permits the case to go to the jury, which convicts, and the judge thereafter enters a judgment of acquittal, even one founded upon his belief that the evidence does not establish guilt, the prosecution may appeal, because the effect of a reversal would be not a new trial but reinstatement of the jury's verdict and judgment thereon.\104\ Second, if the trial judge enters or grants a motion of acquittal, even one based on the conclusion that the evidence is insufficient to convict, the prosecution may appeal if jeopardy had not yet attached in accordance with the federal standard.\105\

NOTES:

\105\Serfass v. United States, 420 U.S. 377 (1975) (after request for jury trial but before attachment of jeopardy judge dismissed indictment because of evidentiary insufficiency; appeal allowed); United States v. Sanford, 429 U.S. 14 (1976) (judge granted mistrial after jury deadlock, then four months later dismissed indictment for insufficient evidence; appeal allowed, because granting mistrial had returned case to pretrial status).

Trial Court Rulings Terminating Trial Before Verdict. -- If, after jeopardy attaches, a trial judge grants a motion for mistrial, ordinarily the defendant is subject to retrial;\106\ if, after jeopardy attaches, but before a jury conviction occurs, the trial judge acquits, perhaps on the basis that the prosecution has presented insufficient evidence or that the defendant has proved a requisite defense such as insanity or entrapment, the defendant is not subject to retrial.\107\ However, it may be that the trial judge will grant a motion to dismiss that is neither a mistrial nor an acquittal, but is instead a termination of the trial in defendant's favor based on some decision not relating to his factual guilt or innocence, such as prejudicial preindictment delay.\108\ The prosecution may not simply begin a new trial but must seek first to appeal and overturn the dismissal, a course that was not open to federal prosecutors until enactment of the 1971 law.\109\ That law has resulted in tentative and uncertain rulings with respect to when such dismissals may be appealed and further proceedings directed. In the first place, it is unclear in many instances whether a judge's ruling is a mistrial, a dismissal, or an acquittal.\110\ In the second place, because the Justices have such differing views about the policies underlying the double jeopardy clause, determinations of which dismissals preclude appeals and further proceedings may result from shifting coalitions and from revised perspectives. Thus, the Court first fixed the line between permissible and impermissible appeals at the point at which further proceedings would have had to take place in the trial court if the dismissal were reversed. If the only thing that had to be done was to enter a judgment on a guilty verdict after reversal, appeal was constitutional and permitted under the statute;\111\ if further proceedings, such as continuation of the trial or some further factfinding, was necessary, appeal was not permitted.\112\ Now, but by a close division of the Court, the determining factor is not whether further proceedings must be had but whether the action of the trial judge, whatever its label, correct or not, resolved some or all of the factual elements of the offense charged in defendant's favor, whether, that is, the court made some determination related to the defendant's factual guilt or innocence.\113\ Such dismissals relating to guilt or innocence are functional equivalents of acquittals, whereas all other dismissals are functional equivalents of mistrials.

NOTES:

\107\Supra, p.1290.

\108\United States v. Wilson, 420 U.S. 332 (1975) (preindictment delay); United States v. Jenkins, 420 U.S. 358 (1975) (determination of law based on facts adduced at trial; ambiguous whether judge's action was acquittal or dismissal); United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82 (1978) (preindictment delay).

\109\Supra, pp.1289-90. See United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 84-86 (1978); United States v. Sisson, 399 U.S. 267, 291-96 (1970).

\110\Cf. Lee v. United States, 432 U.S. 23 (1977).

\111\United States v. Wilson, 420 U.S. 332 (1975) (after jury guilty verdict, trial judge dismissed indictment on grounds of preindictment delay; appeal permissible because upon reversal all trial judge had to do was enter judgment on the jury's verdict).

\112\United States v. Jenkins, 420 U.S. 358 (1975) (after presentation of evidence in bench trial, judge dismissed indictment; appeal impermissible because if dismissal was reversed there would have to be further proceedings in the trial court devoted to resolving factual issues going to elements of offense charged and resulting in supplemental findings).

\113\United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82 (1978) (at close of evidence, court dismissed indictment for preindictment delay; ruling did not go to determination of guilt or innocence, but, like a mistrial, permitted further proceedings that would go to factual resolution of guilt or innocence). The Court thought that double jeopardy policies were resolvable by balancing the defendant's interest in having the trial concluded in one proceeding against the government's right to one complete opportunity to convict those who have violated the law. The defendant chose to move to terminate the proceedings and, having made a voluntary choice, is bound to the consequences, including the obligation to continue in further proceedings. Id. at 95-101. The four dissenters would have followed Jenkins, and accused the Court of having adopted too restrictive a definition of acquittal. Their view is that the rule against retrials after acquittal does not, as the Court believed, ``safeguard determination of innocence; rather, it is that a retrial following a final judgment for the accused necessarily threatens intolerable interference with the constitutional policy against multiple trials.'' Id. at 101, 104 (Justices Brennan, White, Marshall, and Stevens). They would, therefore, treat dismissals as functional equivalents of acquittals, whenever further proceedings would be required after reversals.

A basic purpose of the double jeopardy clause is to protect a defendant ``against a second prosecution for the same offense after conviction.''\114\ It is ``settled'' that ``no man can be twice lawfully punished for the same offense.''\115\ Of course, the defendant's interest in finality, which informs much of double jeopardy jurisprudence, is quite attenuated following conviction, and he will most likely appeal, whereas the prosecution will ordinarily be content with its judgment.\116\ The situation involving reprosecution ordinarily arises, therefore, only in the context of successful defense appeals and controversies over punishment.

NOTES:

\115\Ex parte Lange, 85 U.S. (18 Wall.) 163 (1873). For the conceptually-related problem of trial for a ``separate'' offense arising out of the same transaction, see infra, pp.1299-1301.

\116\A prosecutor dissatisfied with the punishment imposed upon the first conviction might seek another trial in order to obtain a greater sentence. Cf. Ciucci v. Illinois, 356 U.S. 571 (1958) (under due process clause, double jeopardy clause not then applying to States).

Reprosecution After Reversal on Defendant's Appeal. -- Generally, a defendant who is successful in having his conviction set aside on appeal may be tried again for the same offense, the assumption being made in the first case on the subject that, by appealing, a defendant has ``waived'' his objection to further prosecution by challenging the original conviction.\117\ Although it has characterized the ``waiver'' theory as ``totally unsound and indefensible,''\118\ the Court has been hesitant in formulating a new theory in maintaining the practice.\119\

NOTES:

\118\Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184, 197 (1957). The more recent cases continue to reject a ``waiver'' theory. E.g., United States v. Dinitz, 424 U.S. 600, 609 n.11 (1976); United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 99 (1978).

\119\Justice Holmes in dissent in Kepner v. United States, 195 U.S. 100, 134 (1904), rejected the ``waiver'' theory and propounded a theory of ``continuing jeopardy,'' which also continues to be rejected. See supra, p.1289 n.94. In some cases, a concept of ``election'' by the defendant has been suggested, United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 93 (1978); Jeffers v. United States, 432 U.S. 137, 152-54 (1977), but it is not clear how this formulation might differentiate itself from ``waiver.'' Chief Justice Burger has suggested that ``probably a more satisfactory explanation'' for permissibility of retrial in this situation ``lies in analysis of the respective interests involved,'' Breed v. Jones, 421 U.S. 519, 533-35 (1975), and a determination that on balance the interests of both prosecution and defense are well served by the rule. See United States v. Tateo, 377 U.S. 463, 466 (1964); Tibbs v. Florida, 457 U.S. 31, 39-40 (1982).

An exception to full application of the retrial rule exists, however, when defendant on trial for an offense is convicted of a lesser offense and succeeds in having that conviction set aside. Thus, in Green v. United States,\120\ defendant had been placed on trial for first degree murder but convicted of second degree murder; the Court held that, following reversal of that conviction, he could not be tried again for first degree murder, although he certainly could be for second degree murder, on the theory that the first verdict was an implicit acquittal of the first degree murder charge.\121\ Even though the Court thought the jury's action in the first trial was clearly erroneous, the double jeopardy clause required that the jury's implicit acquittal be respected.\122\

NOTES:

\121\The decision necessarily overruled Trono v. United States, 199 U.S. 521 (1905), although the Court purported to distinguish the decision. Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184, 194-97 (1957). See also Brantley v. Georgia, 217 U.S. 284 (1910) (no due process violation where defendant is convicted of higher offense on second trial).

\122\See also Price v. Georgia, 398 U.S. 323 (1970). The defendant was tried for murder and was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. He obtained a reversal, was again tried for murder, and again convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Acknowledging that, after reversal, Price could have been tried for involuntary manslaughter, the Court nonetheless reversed the second conviction because he had been subjected to the hazard of twice being tried for murder, in violation of the double jeopardy clause, and the effect on the jury of the murder charge being pressed could have prejudiced him to the extent of the second conviction. But cf. Morris v. Mathews, 475 U.S. 237 (1986) (inadequate showing of prejudice resulting from reducing jeopardy-barred conviction for aggravated murder to non-jeopardy-barred conviction for first degree murder). ``To prevail in a case like this, the defendant must show that, but for the improper inclusion of the jeopardy-barred charge, the result of the proceeding probably would have been different.'' Id. at 247.

Still another exception arises out of appellate reversals grounded on evidentiary insufficiency. Thus, in Burks v. United States,\123\ the appellate court set aside the defendant's conviction on the basis that the prosecution had failed to rebut defendant's proof of insanity. In directing that the defendant could not be retried, the Court observed that if the trial court ``had so held in the first instance, as the reviewing court said it should have done, a judgment of acquittal would have been entered and, of course, petitioner could not be retried for the same offense. . . . [I]t should make no difference that the reviewing court, rather than the trial court, determined the evidence to be insufficient.''\124\ The policy underlying the clause of not allowing the prosecution to make repeated efforts to convict forecloses giving the prosecution another opportunity to supply evidence which it failed to muster in the first proceeding. On the other hand, if a reviewing court reverses a jury conviction because of its disagreement on the weight rather than the sufficiency of the evidence, retrial is permitted; the appellate court's decision does not mean that acquittal was the only proper course, hence the deference required for acquittals is not merited.\125\ Also, the Burks rule does not bar reprosecution following a reversal based on erroneous admission of evidence, even if the remaining properly admitted evidence would be insufficient to convict.\126\

NOTES:

\124\Id. at 10-11. See also Greene v. Massey, 437 U.S. 19 (1978) (remanding for determination whether appellate majority had reversed for insufficient evidence or whether some of the majority had based decision on trial error); Hudson v. Louisiana, 450 U.S. 40 (1981) (Burks applies where appellate court finds some but insufficient evidence adduced, not only where it finds no evidence). Burks was distinguished in Justices of Boston Municipal Court v. Lydon, 466 U.S. 294 (1984), holding that a defendant who had elected to undergo a bench trial with no appellate review but with right of trial de novo before a jury (and with appellate review available) could not bar trial de novo and reverse his bench trial conviction by asserting that the conviction had been based on insufficient evidence. The two-tiered system in effect gave the defendant two chances at acquittal; under those circumstances jeopardy was not terminated by completion of the first entirely optional stage.

\125\Tibbs v. Florida, 457 U.S. 31 (1982). The decision was 5- to-4, the dissent arguing that weight and insufficiency determinations should be given identical double jeopardy clause treatment. Id. at 47 (Justices White, Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun).

\126\Lockhart v. Nelson, 488 U.S. 33 (1988) (state may reprosecute under habitual offender statute even though evidence of a prior conviction was improperly admitted; at retrial, state may attempt to establish other prior convictions as to which no proof was offered at prior trial).

Sentence Increases. -- The double jeopardy clause protects against imposition of multiple punishment for the same offense.\127\ The application of the principle leads, however, to a number of complexities. In a simple case, it was held that where a court inadvertently imposed both a fine and imprisonment for a crime for which the law authorized one or the other but not both, it could not, after the fine had been paid and the defendant had entered his short term of confinement, recall the defendant and change its judgment by sentencing him to imprisonment only.\128\ But the Court has held that the imposition of a sentence does not from the moment of imposition have the finality that a judgment of acquittal has. Thus, it has long been recognized that in the same term of court and before the defendant has begun serving the sentence the court may recall him and increase his sentence.\129\ Moreover, a defendant who is retried after he is successful in overturning his first conviction is not protected by the double jeopardy clause against receiving a greater sentence upon his second conviction.\130\ An exception exists with respect to capital punishment, the Court having held that government may not again seek the death penalty on retrial when on the first trial the jury had declined to impose a death sentence.\131\

NOTES:

\128\Ex parte Lange, 85 U.S. (18 Wall.) 163 (1874).

\129\Bozza v. United States, 330 U.S. 160 (1947). See also Pollard v. United States, 352 U.S. 354, 359-60 (1957) (imposition of prison sentence two years after court imposed an invalid sentence of probation approved). Dicta in some cases had cast doubt on the constitutionality of the practice. United States v. Benz, 282 U.S. 304, 307 (1931). However, United States v. DiFrancesco, 449 U.S. 117, 133-36, 138-39 (1980), upholding a statutory provision allowing the United States to appeal a sentence imposed on a ``dangerous special offender,'' removes any doubt on that score. The Court there reserved decision on whether the government may appeal a sentence that the defendant has already begun to serve.

\130\North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 719-21 (1969). See also Chaffin v. Stynchcombe, 412 U.S. 17, 23-24 (1973). The principle of implicit acquittal of an offense drawn from Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184 (1957), does not similarly apply to create an implicit acquittal of a higher sentence. Pearce does hold that a defendant must be credited with the time served against his new sentence. Supra, 395 U.S. at 717-19.

\131\Bullington v. Missouri, 451 U.S. 430 (1981). Four Justices dissented. Id. at 447 (Justices Powell, White, Rehnquist, and Chief Justice Burger). The Court disapproved Stroud v. United States 251 U.S. 15 (1919), although formally distinguishing it. Bullington was followed in Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U.S. 203 (1984), also involving a separate sentencing proceeding in which a life imprisonment sentence amounted to an acquittal on imposition of the death penalty. Rumsey was decided by 7-2 vote, with only Justices White and Rehnquist dissenting.

Applying and modifying these principles, the Court narrowly approved the constitutionality of a statutory provision for sentencing of ``dangerous special offenders,'' which authorized prosecution appeals of sentences and permitted the appellate court to affirm, reduce, or increase the sentence.\132\ The Court held that the provision did not offend the double jeopardy clause. Sentences had never carried the finality that attached to acquittal, and its precedents indicated to the Court that imposition of a sentence less than the maximum was in no sense an ``acquittal'' of the higher sentence. Appeal resulted in no further trial or other proceedings to which a defendant might be subjected, only the imposition of a new sentence. An increase in a sentence would not constitute multiple punishment, the Court continued, inasmuch as it would be within the allowable sentence and the defendant could have no legitimate expectation of finality in the sentence as first given because the statutory scheme alerted him to the possibility of increase. Similarly upheld as within the allowable range of punishment contemplated by the legislature was a remedy for invalid multiple punishments under consecutive sentences: a shorter felony conviction was vacated, and time served was credited to the life sentence imposed for felony-murder. Even though the first sentence had been commuted and hence fully satisfied at the time the trial court revised the second sentence, the resulting punishment was ``no greater than the legislature intended,'' hence there was no double jeopardy violation.\133\

NOTES:

\133\Jones v. Thomas, 491 U.S. 376, 381-82 (1989).

Sometimes as difficult as determining when a defendant has been placed in jeopardy is determining whether he was placed in jeopardy for the same offense. As noted previously, the same conduct may violate the laws of two different sovereigns, and a defendant may be proceeded against by both because each may have different interests to serve.\134\ The same conduct may transgress two or more different statutes, because laws reach lesser and greater parts of one item of conduct, or may violate the same statute more than once, as when one robs several people in a group at the same time.

NOTE:

Legislative Discretion as to Multiple Sentences. -- It frequently happens that one activity of a criminal nature will violate one or more laws or that one or more violations may be charged.\135\ Although the question is not totally free of doubt, it appears that the double jeopardy clause does not limit the legislative power to split a single transaction into separate crimes so as to give the prosecution a choice of charges that may be tried in one proceeding, thereby making multiple punishments possible for essentially one transaction.\136\ ``Where a legislature specifically authorizes cumulative punishment under two statutes, regardless of whether those two statutes proscribe the `same' conduct under Blockburger, a court's task of statutory construction is at an end and . . . . the trial court or jury may impose cumulative punishment under such statutes in a single trial.''\137\ The clause does, however, create a rule of construction, a presumption against the judiciary imposing multiple punishments for the same transaction unless Congress has ``spoken in language that is clear and definite''\138\ to pronounce its intent that multiple punishments indeed be imposed. The commonly used test in determining whether Congress would have wanted to punish as separate offenses conduct occurring in the same transaction, absent otherwise clearly expressed intent, is the ``same evidence'' rule. The rule, announced in Blockburger v. United States,\139\ ``is that where the same act or transaction constitutes a violation of two distinct statutory provisions, the test to be applied to determine whether there are two offenses or only one, is whether each provision requires proof of a fact which the other does not.'' Thus, in Gore v. United States,\140\ the Court held that defendant's one act of selling narcotics had violated three distinct criminal statutes, each of which required proof of a fact not required by the others; prosecuting him on all three counts in the same proceeding was therefore permissible.\141\ So too, the same evidence rule does not upset the ``established doctrine'' that, for double jeopardy purposes, ``a conspiracy to commit a crime is a separate offense from the crime itself,''\142\ or the related principle that Congress may prescribe that predicate offenses and ``continuing criminal enterprise'' are separate offenses.\143\ On the other hand, in Whalen v. United States,\144\ the Court determined that a defendant could not be separately punished for rape and for killing the same victim in the perpetration of the rape, because it is not the case that each statute requires proof of a fact that the other does not, and no indication existed in the statutes and the legislative history that Congress wanted the separate offenses punished.\145\ In this as in other areas, a guilty plea ordinarily precludes collateral attack.\146\

NOTES:

\136\Albernaz v. United States, 450 U.S. 333, 343-44 (1981) (defendants convicted on separate counts of conspiracy to import marijuana and conspiracy to distribute marijuana, both charges relating to the same marijuana.) The concurrence objected that the clause does preclude multiple punishments for separate statutory offenses unless each requires proof of a fact that the others do not. Id. at 344. Inasmuch as the case involved separate offenses which met this test, Albernaz strictly speaking is not a square holding and previous dicta is otherwise, but Albernaz is well-considered dicta in view of the positions of at least four of its Justices who have objected to the dicta in other cases suggesting a constitutional restraint by the clause. Whalen v. United States, 445 U.S. 684, 695, 696, 699 (1980) (Justices White, Blackmun, Rehnquist, and Chief Justice Burger).

\137\Missouri v. Hunter, 459 U.S. 359 (1983) (separate offenses of ``first degree robbery,'' defined to include robbery under threat of violence, and ``armed criminal action''). Only Justices Marshall and Stevens dissented, arguing that the legislature should not be totally free to prescribe multiple punishment for the same conduct, and that the same rules should govern multiple prosecutions and multiple punishments.

\138\United States v. Universal C.I.T. Corp., 344 U.S. 218, 221- 22 (1952).

\139\284 U.S. 299, 304 (1932). This case itself was not a double jeopardy case, but it derived the rule from Gavieres v. United States, 220 U.S. 338, 342 (1911), which was a double jeopardy case. See also Carter v. McClaughry, 183 U.S. 365 (1902); Morgan v. Devine, 237 U.S. 632 (1915); Albrecht v. United States, 273 U.S. 1 (1927); Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640 (1946); American Tobacco Co. v. United States, 328 U.S. 781 (1946); United States v. Michener, 331 U.S. 789 (1947); Pereira v. United States, 347 U.S. 1 (1954); Callanan v. United States, 364 U.S. 587 (1961).

\140\357 U.S. 386 (1958).

\141\See also Albernaz v. United States, 450 U.S. 333 (1981); Iannelli v. United States, 420 U.S. 770 (1975) (defendant convicted on two counts, one of the substantive offense, one of conspiracy to commit the substantive offense; defense raised variation of Blockburger test, Wharton's Rule requiring that one may not be punished for conspiracy to commit a crime when the nature of the crime necessitates participation of two or more persons for its commission; Court recognized Wharton's Rule as a double-jeopardy inspired presumption of legislative intent but held that congressional intent in this case was ``clear and unmistakable'' that both offenses be punished separately).

\142\United States v. Felix, 112 S. Ct. 1377, 1385 (1992).

\143\Garrett v. United States, 471 U.S. 773 (1985) (``continuing criminal enterprise'' is a separate offense under the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970).

\144\445 U.S. 684 (1980).

\145\The Court reasoned that a conviction for killing in the course of rape could not be had without providing all of the elements of the offense of rape. See also Jeffers v. United States, 432 U.S. 137 (1977) (no indication in legislative history Congress intended defendant to be prosecuted both for conspiring to distribute drugs and for distributing drugs in concert with five or more persons); Simpson v. United States, 435 U.S. 6 (1978) (defendant improperly prosecuted both for committing bank robbery with a firearm and for using a firearm to commit a felony); Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 81 (1955) (simultaneous transportation of two women across state lines for immoral purposes one violation of Mann Act rather than two).

\146\United States v. Broce, 488 U.S. 563 (1989) (defendant who pled guilty to two separate conspiracy counts is barred from collateral attack alleging that in fact there was only one conspiracy and that double jeopardy applied).

Successive Prosecutions for ``the Same Offense.'' -- Successive prosecutions raise fundamental double jeopardy concerns extending beyond those raised by enhanced and multiple punishments. It is more burdensome for a defendant to face charges in separate proceedings, and if those proceedings are strung out over a lengthy period the defendant is forced to live in a continuing state of uncertainty. At the same time, multiple prosecutions allow the state to hone its trial strategies through successive attempts at conviction.\147\ In Brown v. Ohio,\148\ the Court, apparently for the first time, applied the same evidence test to bar successive prosecutions in state court for different statutory offenses involving the same conduct. The defendant had been convicted of ``joyriding,'' of operating a motor vehicle without the owner's consent, and was then prosecuted and convicted of stealing the same automobile. Because the state courts had conceded that joyriding was a lesser included offense of auto theft, the Court observed that each offense required the same proof and for double jeopardy purposes met the Blockburger test. The second conviction was overturned.\149\ Application of the same principles resulted in a holding that a prior conviction of failing to reduce speed to avoid an accident did not preclude a second trial for involuntary manslaughter, inasmuch as failing to reduce speed was not a necessary element of the statutory offense of manslaughter, unless the prosecution in the second trial had to prove failing to reduce speed to establish this particular offense.\150\ In Grady v. Corbin,\151\ the Court modified the Brown approach, stating that the appropriate focus is on same conduct rather than same evidence. A subsequent prosecution is barred, the Court explained, if the government, to establish an essential element of an offense, will prove conduct that constitutes an offense for which the defendant has already been prosecuted.\152\ The Brown Court had noted some limitations applicable to its holding,\153\ and more have emerged subsequently. Principles appropriate in the ``classically simple'' lesser-included offense and related situations are not readily transposible to ``multilayered conduct'' governed by the law of conspiracy and continuing criminal enterprise, and it remains the law that ``a substantive crime and a conspiracy to commit that crime are not the `same offense' for double jeopardy purposes.''\154\

NOTES:

\148\432 U.S. 161 (1977). Cf. In re Nielson, 131 U.S. 176 (1889) (prosecution of Mormon for adultery held impermissible following his conviction for cohabiting with more than one woman, even though second prosecution required proof of an additional fact--that he was married to another woman).

\149\See also Harris v. Oklahoma, 433 U.S. 682 (1977) (defendant who had been convicted of felony murder for participating in a store robbery with another person who shot a store clerk could not be prosecuted for robbing the store, since store robbery was a lesser- included crime in the offense of felony murder).

\150\Illinois v. Vitale, 447 U.S. 410 (1980).

\151\495 U.S. 508 (1990).

\152\Id. at 521 (holding that the state could not prosecute a traffic offender for negligent homicide because it would attempt to prove conduct for which the defendant had already been prosecuted-- driving while intoxicated and failure to keep to the right of the median).

\153\The Court suggested that if the legislature had provided that joyriding is a separate offense for each day the vehicle is operated without the owner's consent, so that the two indictments each specifying a different date on which the offense occurred would have required different proof, the result might have been different, but this, of course, met the Blockburger problem. Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161, 169 n.8 (1977). The Court also suggested that an exception might be permitted where the State is unable to proceed on the more serious charge at the outset because the facts necessary to sustain that charge had not occurred or had not been discovered. Id. at 169 n.7. See also Jeffers v. United States, 432 U.S. 137, 150-54 (1977) (plurality opinion) (exception where defendant elects separate trials); Ohio v. Johnson, 467 U.S. 493 (1984) (trial court's acceptance of guilty plea to lesser included offense and dismissal of remaining charges over prosecution's objections does not bar subsequent prosecution on those ``remaining'' counts).

\154\United States v. Felix, 112 S. Ct. 1377, 1384 (1992).

The ``Same Transaction'' Problem. -- The same conduct may also give rise to multiple offenses in a way that would satisfy the Blockburger test if that conduct victimizes two or more individuals, and therefore constitutes a separate offense as to each of them. In Hoag v. New Jersey,\155\ before the double jeopardy clause was applied to the States, the Court found no due process problem in successive trials arising out of a tavern hold-up in which five customers were robbed. Ashe v. Swenson,\156\ however, presented the Court with the Hoag fact situation directly under the double jeopardy clause. The defendant had been acquitted at trial of robbing one player in a poker game; the defense offered no testimony and did not contest evidence that a robbery had taken place and that each of the players had lost money. A second trial was held on a charge that the defendant had robbed a second of the seven poker players, and on the basis of stronger identification testimony the defendant was convicted. Reversing the conviction, the Court held that the doctrine of collateral estoppel\157\ was a constitutional rule made applicable to the States through the double jeopardy clause. Because the only basis upon which the jury could have acquitted the defendant at his first trial was a finding that he was not present at the robbery, hence was not one of the robbers, the State could not relitigate that issue; with that issue settled, there could be no conviction.\158\ Several Justices would have gone further and required a compulsory joinder of all charges against a defendant growing out of a single criminal act, occurrence, episode, or transaction, except where a crime is not discovered until prosecution arising from the same transaction has begun or where the same jurisdiction does not have cognizance of all the crimes.\159\ But the Court has ``steadfastly refused to adopt the `single transaction' view of the Double Jeopardy Clause.''\160\

NOTES:

\156\397 U.S. 436 (1970).

\157\```Collateral estoppel' is an awkward phrase . . . [which] means simply that when an issue of ultimate fact has once been determined by a final judgment, that issue cannot again be litigated between the same parties in any future lawsuit.'' Id. at 443. First developed in civil litigation, the doctrine was applied in a criminal case in United States v. Oppenheimer, 242 U.S. 85 (1916). See also Sealfon v. United States, 332 U.S. 575 (1948).

\158\Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 466 (1970). See also Harris v. Washington, 404 U.S. 55 (1971); Turner v. Arkansas, 407 U.S. 366 (1972). Cf. Dowling v. United States, 493 U.S. 342 (1990), in which the Court concluded that the defendant's presence at an earlier crime for which he had been acquitted had not necessarily been decided in his acquittal. Dowling is distinguishable from Ashe, however, because in Dowling the evidence relating to the first conviction was not a necessary element of the second offense.

\159\Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 448 (1970) (Justices Brennan, Douglas, and Marshall concurring). Justices Brennan and Marshall adhered to their position in Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161, 170 (1977) (concurring); and Thompson v. Oklahoma, 429 U.S. 1053 (1977) (dissenting from denial of certiorari).

\160\Garrett v. United States, 471 U.S. 773, 790 (1985). Earlier, the approach had been rejected by Chief Justice Burger in Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 468 (1970) (dissenting), by him and Justice Blackmun in Harris v. Washington, 404 U.S. 55, 57 (1971) (dissenting), and, perhaps, by Justice Rehnquist in Turner v. Arkansas, 407 U.S. 366, 368 (1972) (dissenting).

Source of this clause was the maxim ``nemo tenetur seipsum accusare,'' that ``no man is bound to accuse himself.'' The maxim is but one aspect of two different systems of law enforcement which competed in England for acceptance; the accusatorial and the inquisitorial. In the accusatorial system, which predated the reign of Henry II but was expanded and extended by him, first the community and then the state by grand and petit juries proceeded against alleged wrongdoers through the examination of others, and in the early years through examination of the defendant as well. The inquisitorial system, which developed in the ecclesiastical courts, compelled the alleged wrongdoer to affirm his culpability through the use of the oath ex officio. Under the oath, an official had the power to make a person before him take an oath to tell the truth to the full extent of his knowledge as to all matters about which he would be questioned; before administration of the oath the person was not advised of the nature of the charges against him, or whether he was accused of crime, and was also not informed of the nature of the questions to be asked.\161\

NOTE:

The use of this oath in Star Chamber proceedings, especially to root out political heresies, combined with opposition to the ecclesiastical oath ex officio, led over a long period of time to general acceptance of the principle that a person could not be required to accuse himself under oath in any proceeding before an official tribunal seeking information looking to a criminal prosecution, or before a magistrate investigating an accusation against him with or without oath, or under oath in a court of equity or a court of common law.\162\ The precedents in the colonies are few in number, but following the Revolution six states had embodied the privilege against self-incrimination in their constitutions,\163\ and the privilege was one of those recommended by several state ratifying conventions for inclusion in a federal bill of rights.\164\ Madison's version of the clause read ``nor shall be compelled to be a witness against himself,''\165\ but upon consideration by the House an amendment was agreed to insert ``in any criminal case'' in the provision.\166\

NOTES:

\163\3 F. Thorpe, The Federal and State Constitutions, reprinted in H. Doc. No. 357, 59th Congress, 2d sess. 1891 (1909) (Massachusetts); 4 id. at 2455 (New Hampshire); 5 id. at 2787 (North Carolina), 3038 (Pennsylvania); 6 id. at 3741 (Vermont); 7 id. at 3813 (Virginia).

\164\Amendments were recommended by an ``Address'' of a minority of the Pennsylvania convention after they had been voted down as a part of the ratification action, 2 Bernard Schwartz, The Bill of Rights: A Documentary History 628, 658, 664 (1971), and then the ratifying conventions of Massachusetts, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, and New York formally took this step.

\165\1 Annals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789).

\166\Id. at 753 (August 17, 1789).

The historical studies cited demonstrate that in England and the colonies the privilege was narrower than the interpretation now prevailing, a common situation reflecting the gradual expansion, or occasional contracting, of constitutional guarantees based on the judicial application of the policies underlying the guarantees in the context of new factual patterns and practices. The difficulty is that the Court has generally failed to articulate the policy objectives underlying the privilege, usually citing a ``complex of values'' when it has attempted to state the interests served by it.\167\ Commonly mentioned in numerous cases was the assertion that the privilege was designed to protect the innocent and to further the search for truth.\168\ It appears now, however, that the Court has rejected both of these as inapplicable and has settled upon the principle that the clause serves two interrelated interests: the preservation of an accusatorial system of criminal justice, which goes to the integrity of the judicial system, and the preservation of personal privacy from unwarranted governmental intrusion.\169\ In order to protect these interests and to preserve these values, the privilege ``is not to be interpreted literally.'' Rather, the ``sole concern [of the privilege] is, as its name indicates, with the danger to a witness forced to give testimony leading to the infliction of penalties affixed to the criminal acts.''\170\

NOTES:

\168\E.g. Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U.S. 78, 91 (1908); Ullmann v. United States, 350 U.S. 422, 426 (1956); Quinn v. United States, 349 U.S. 155, 162-63 (1955).

\169\``[T]he basic purposes that lie behind the privilege against self-incrimination do not relate to protecting the innocent from conviction, but rather to preserving the integrity of a judicial system in which even the guilty are not to be convicted unless the prosecution `shoulder the entire load.' . . .       ``The basic purpose of a trial is the determination of truth, and it is self-evident that to deny a lawyer's help through the technical intricacies of a criminal trial or to deny a full opportunity to appeal a conviction because the accused is poor is to impede that purpose and to infect a criminal proceeding with the clear danger of convicting the innocent. . . . By contrast, the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination is not an adjunct to the ascertainment of truth. That privilege, like the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment, stands as a protection of quite different constitutional values--values reflecting the concern of our society for the right of each individual to be let alone.'' Tehan v. United States ex rel. Shott, 382 U.S. 406, 415, 416 (1966); Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 460 (1966); Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 760-765 (1966). See also California v. Byers, 402 U.S. 424, 448-58 (1971) (Justice Harlan concurring). For a critical modern view of the privilege, see Friendly, The Fifth Amendment Tomorrow: The Case for Constitutional Change, 37 U. Cin. L. Rev. 671 (1968).

\170\Ullmann v. United States, 350 U.S. 422, 438-39 (1956).

``The privilege afforded not only extends to answers that would in themselves support a conviction . . . but likewise embraces those which would furnish a link in the chain of evidence needed to prosecute . . . . [I]f the witness, upon interposing his claim, were required to prove the hazard . . . he would be compelled to surrender the very protection which the privilege is designed to guarantee. To sustain the privilege, it need only be evident from the implications of the question, in the setting in which it is asked, that a responsive answer to the question or an explanation of why it cannot be answered might be dangerous because injurious disclosure could result.''\171\ Thus, a judge who would deny a claim of the privilege must be ```perfectly clear, from a careful consideration of all the circumstances in the case, that the witness is mistaken, and that the answer[s] cannot possibly have such tendency' to incriminate.''\172\ The witness must have reasonable cause to apprehend danger from an answer, but he may not be the sole judge of the validity of his claim. While the trial judge may not require a witness to disclose so much of the danger as to render the privilege nugatory, he must determine whether there is a reasonable apprehension of incrimination by considering the circumstances of the case, his knowledge of matters surrounding the inquiry, and the nature of the evidence which is demanded from the witness.\173\ One must explicitly claim his privilege or he will be deemed to have waived it, and waiver may be found where the witness has answered some preliminary questions but desires to stop at a certain point.\174\

NOTES:

\172\341 U.S. at 488 (quoting Temple v. Commonwealth, 75 Va. 892, 898 (1881)). For an application of these principles, see Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 11-14 (1964), and id. at 33 (Justices White and Stewart dissenting). Where government is seeking to enforce an essentially noncriminal statutory scheme through compulsory disclosure, some Justices would apparently relax the Hoffman principles. Cf. California v. Byers, 402 U.S. 424 (1971) (plurality opinion).

\173\Hoffman v. United States, 341 U.S. 479 (1951); Mason v. United States, 244 U.S. 362 (1917).

\174\Rogers v. United States, 340 U.S. 367 (1951); United States v. Monia, 317 U.S. 424 (1943). The ``waiver'' concept here as in other recent cases has been pronounced ``analytically [un]sound,'' with the Court preferring to reserve the term ``waiver'' ``for the process by which one affirmatively renounces the protection of the privilege.'' Garner v. United States, 424 U.S. 648, 654, n.9 (1976). Thus, the Court has settled upon the concept of ``compulsion'' as applied to ``cases where disclosures are required in the face of claim of privilege.'' Id. ``[I]n the ordinary case, if a witness under compulsion to testify makes disclosures instead of claiming the privilege, the Government has not `compelled' him to incriminate himself.'' Id. at 654. Similarly, the Court has enunciated the concept of ``voluntariness'' to be applied in situations where it is claimed that a particular factor denied the individual a ``free choice to admit, to deny, or to refuse to answer.'' Id. at 654 n.9, 656-65.

The privilege against self-incrimination is a personal one and cannot be utilized by or on behalf of any organization, such as a corporation. Thus, a corporation cannot object on self-incrimination grounds to a subpoena of its records and books or to the compelled testimony of those corporate agents who have been given personal immunity from criminal prosecution.\175\ Neither may a corporate official with custody of corporate documents which incriminate him personally resist their compelled production on the assertion of his personal privilege.\176\

NOTES:

\176\United States v. White, supra, 699-700; Wilson v. United States, 221 U.S. 361, 384-385 (1911). But the government may make no evidentiary use of the act of production in proceeding individually against the corporate custodian. Braswell v. United States, 487 U.S. 99 (1988). Cf. George Campbell Painting Corp. v. Reid, 392 U.S. 286 (1968); United States v. Rylander, 460 U.S. 752 (1983) (witness who had failed to appeal production order and thus had burden in contempt proceeding to show inability to then produce records could not rely on privilege to shift this evidentiary burden).

A witness has traditionally been able to claim the privilege in any proceeding whatsoever in which testimony is legally required when his answer might be used against him in that proceeding or in a future criminal proceeding or when it might be exploited to uncover other evidence against him.\177\ Conversely, there is no valid claim on the ground that the information sought can be used in proceedings which are not criminal in nature.\178\ The Court in recent years has also applied the privilege to situations, such as police interrogation of suspects, in which there is no legal compulsion to speak.\179\ What the privilege protects against is compulsion of ``testimonial'' disclosures; requiring a person in custody to stand or walk in a police lineup, to speak prescribed words, to model particular clothing, or to give samples of handwriting, fingerprints, or blood does not compel him to incriminate himself within the meaning of the clause,\180\ although compelling him to produce private papers may.\181\

NOTES:

\178\Allen v. Illinois, 478 U.S. 364 (1986) (declaration that person is ``sexually dangerous'' under Illinois law is not a criminal proceeding); Minnesota v. Murphy, 465 U.S. 420, 435 n.7 (1984) (revocation of probation is not a criminal proceeding, hence ``there can be no valid claim of the privilege on the ground that the information sought can be used in revocation proceedings''). In Murphy, the Court went on to explain that ``a State may validly insist on answers to even incriminating questions and hence sensibly administer its probation system, as long as it recognizes that the required answers may not be used in a criminal proceeding and thus eliminates the threat of incrimination. Under such circumstances, a probationer's `right to immunity as a result of his compelled testimony would not be at stake' . . . and nothing in the Federal Constitution would prevent a State from revoking probation for a refusal to answer . . . .'' Id.

\179\Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).

\180\Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 764 (1966); United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 221-23 (1967); Holt v. United States, 218 U.S. 245, 252 (1910). In California v. Byers, 402 U.S. 424 (1971), four Justices believed that requiring any person involved in a traffic accident to stop and give his name and address did not involve testimonial compulsion and therefore the privilege was inapplicable, id. at 431-34 (Chief Justice Burger and Justices Stewart, White, and Blackmun), but Justice Harlan, id. at 434 (concurring), and Justices Black, Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall, id. at 459, 464 (dissenting), disagreed. In South Dakota v. Neville, 459 U.S. 553 (1983), the Court indicated as well that a State may compel a motorist suspected of drunk driving to submit to a blood alcohol test, and may also give the suspect a choice about whether to submit, but use his refusal to submit to the test as evidence against him. The Court rested its evidentiary ruling on absence of coercion, preferring not to apply the sometimes difficult distinction between testimonial and physical evidence. In another case, involving roadside videotaping of a drunk driving suspect, the Court found that the slurred nature of the suspect's speech, as well as his answers to routine booking questions as to name, address, weight, height, eye color, date of birth, and current age, were not testimonial in nature. Pennsylvania v. Muniz, 496 U.S. 582 (1990). On the other hand, the suspect's answer to a request to identify the date of his sixth birthday was considered testimonial. Id.

\181\Fisher v. United States, 425 U.S. 391 (1976), however, holds that compelling a taxpayer by subpoena to produce documents produced by his accountants from his own papers does not involve testimonial self-incrimination and is not barred by the privilege. ``[T]he Fifth Amendment does not independently proscribe the compelled production of every sort of incriminating evidence but applies only when the accused is compelled to make a testimonial communication that is incriminating.'' Id. at 408 (emphasis by Court). Even if the documents contained the writing of the person being compelled to produce them, that would be insufficient to trigger the privilege, unless the government had compelled him to write in the first place. Id. at 410 n.11. Only if by complying with the subpoena the person would be making a communication that was both ``testimonial'' and ``incriminating,'' such as by conceding the existence of the papers or indicating that these are the papers sought, would he have a valid claim of privilege, and even there one would have to evaluate the facts and circumstances of the particular case to reach a determination. Id. at 410. Even further removed from the protection of the privilege is seizure pursuant to a search warrant of business records in the handwriting of the defendant. Andresen v. Maryland, 427 U.S. 463 (1976). A court order compelling a target of a grand jury investigation to sign a consent directive authorizing foreign banks to disclose records of any and all accounts over which he had a right of withdrawal is not testimonial in nature, since the factual assertions are required of the banks and not of the target. Doe v. United States, 487 U.S. 201 (1988). But in United States v. Doe, 465 U.S. 605 (1984), the Court distinguished Fisher, upholding lower courts' findings that the act of producing tax records implicates the privilege because it would compel admission that the records exist, that they were in the taxpayer's possession, and that they are authentic. Similarly, a juvenile court's order to produce a child implicates the privilege, because the act of compliance ``would amount to testimony regarding [the subject's] control over and possession of [the child].'' Baltimore Dep't of Social Services v. Bouknight, 493 U.S. 549, 555 (1990).

The protection is against ``compulsory'' incrimination, and traditionally the Court has treated within the clause only those compulsions which arise from legally enforceable obligations, culminating in imprisonment for refusal to testify or to produce documents.\182\ But the compulsion need not be imprisonment; it can as well be termination of public employment\183\ or disbarment of a lawyer\184\ as a legal consequence of a refusal to make incriminating admissions. In extending the concept of coercion, however, the Court has not developed a clear doctrinal explanation to identify the differences between permissible and impermissible coercion. As a general rule, it may be said that all of these cases involve the ordering of some feature of a trial in such a way that a defendant must choose between or among rights, with one choice being to risk or to submit to self-incriminating disclosures by his actions.

NOTES:

\183\Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U.S. 493 (1967); Gardner v. Broderick, 392 U.S. 273 (1968); Uniformed Sanitation Men Ass'n v. Commissioner of Sanitation, 392 U.S. 280 (1968). See also Lefkowitz v. Turley, 414 U.S. 70 (1973), holding unconstitutional state statutes requiring the disqualification for five years of contractors doing business with the State if at any time they refused to waive immunity and answer questions respecting their transactions with the State. The State can require employees or contractors to respond to inquiries, but only if it offers them immunity sufficient to supplant the privilege against self-incrimination. See also Lefkowitz v. Cunningham, 431 U.S. 801 (1977).

\184\Spevack v. Klein, 385 U.S. 511 (1967).

It has long been the rule that a defendant who takes the stand in his own behalf cannot then claim the privilege to defeat cross- examination on matters reasonably related to the subject matter of his direct examination,\185\ and that such a defendant may be impeached by proof of prior convictions.\186\ But in Griffin v. California,\187\ the Court refused to permit prosecutorial or judicial comment to the jury upon a defendant's refusal to take the stand in his own behalf, because such comment was a ``penalty imposed by courts for exercising a constitutional privilege'' and ``[i]t cuts down on the privilege by making its assertion costly.''\188\ Prosecutors' comments violating the Griffin rule can nonetheless constitute harmless error.\189\ Neither may a prosecutor impeach a defendant's trial testimony through use of the fact that upon his arrest and receipt of a Miranda warning he remained silent and did not give the police the exculpatory story he told at trial.\190\ But where the defendant took the stand and testified, the Court permitted the impeachment use of his pre-arrest silence when that silence had in no way been officially encouraged, through a Miranda warning or otherwise.\191\

NOTES:

\186\Spencer v. Texas, 385 U.S. 554, 561 (1967); cf. Michelson v. United States, 335 U.S. 469 (1948).

\187\380 U.S. 609, 614 (1965). The result had been achieved in federal court through statutory enactment. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3481. See Wilson v. United States, 149 U.S. 60 (1893). In Carter v. Kentucky, 450 U.S. 288 (1981), the Court held that the self-incrimination clause required a State, upon defendant's request, to give a cautionary instruction to the jurors that they must disregard defendant's failure to testify and not draw any adverse inferences from it. This result, too, had been accomplished in the federal courts through statutory construction. Bruno v. United States, 308 U.S. 287 (1939). In Lakeside v. Oregon, 435 U.S. 333 (1978), the Court held that a court may give such an instruction, even over defendant's objection. Carter v. Kentucky was applied in James v. Kentucky, 466 U.S. 341 (1983) (request for jury ``admonition'' sufficient to invoke right to ``instruction'').

\188\While the Griffin rule continues to apply when the prosecutor on his own initiative asks the jury to draw an adverse inference from a defendant's silence, it does not apply to a prosecutor's ``fair response'' to a defense counsel's allegation that the government had denied his client the opportunity to explain his actions. United States v. Robinson, 485 U.S. 25, 32 (1988).

\189\Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967); United States v. Hasting, 461 U.S. 499 (1983).

\190\Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610 (1976). Post-arrest silence, the Court stated, is inherently ambiguous, and to permit use of the silence would be unfair since the Miranda warning told the defendant he could be silent. The same result had earlier been achieved under the Court's supervisory power over federal trials in United States v. Hale, 422 U.S. 171 (1975). The same principles apply to bar a prosecutor's use of Miranda silence as evidence of an arrestee's sanity. Wainwright v. Greenfield, 474 U.S. 284 (1986).

\191\Jenkins v. Anderson, 447 U.S. 231 (1980). Cf. Baxter v. Palmigiano, 425 U.S. 308 (1976) (prison disciplinary hearing may draw adverse inferences from inmate's assertion of privilege so long as this was not the sole basis of decision against him).

Further, the Court held inadmissible at the subsequent trial a defendant's testimony at a hearing to suppress evidence wrongfully seized, since use of the testimony would put the defendant to an impermissible choice between asserting his right to remain silent and invoking his right to be free of illegal searches and seizures.\192\ The Court also proscribed the introduction at a second trial of the defendant's testimony at his first trial, given to rebut a confession which was subsequently held inadmissible, since the testimony was in effect ``fruit of the poisonous tree,'' and had been ``coerced'' from the defendant through use of the confession.\193\ Most potentially far- reaching was a holding that invalidated the penalty structure of a statute under which defendants could escape a possible death sentence by entering a guilty plea; the statute ``needlessly encourage[d]'' waivers of defendant's Fifth Amendment right to plead not guilty and his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial.\194\

NOTES:

\193\Harrison v. United States, 392 U.S. 219 (1968).

\194\Jackson v. United States, 390 U.S. 570, 583 (1968).

While this ``needless encouragement'' test assessed the nature of the choice required to be made by defendants against the strength of the governmental interest in the system requiring the choice, the Court soon devolved another test stressing the voluntariness of the choice. A guilty plea entered by a defendant who correctly understands the consequences of the plea is voluntary unless coerced or obtained under false pretenses; moreover, there is no impermissible coercion where the defendant has the effective assistance of counsel.\195\ The Court in an opinion by Justice Harlan then formulated still another test in holding that a defendant in a capital case in which the jury in one process decides both guilt and sentence could be put to a choice between remaining silent on guilt or admitting guilt and being able to put on evidence designed to mitigate the possible sentence. The pressure to take the stand in response to the sentencing issue, said the Court, was not so great as to impair the policies underlying the self-incrimination clause, policies described in this instance as proscription of coercion and of cruelty in putting the defendant to an undeniably ``hard'' choice.\196\ Similarly, it has been held that requiring a defendant to give notice to the prosecution before trial of his intention to rely on an alibi defense and to give the names and addresses of witnesses who will support it does not violate the clause.\197\ Neither does it violate a defendant's self-incrimination privilege to create a presumption upon the establishment of certain basic facts which the jury may utilize to infer defendant's guilt unless he rebuts the presumption.\198\

NOTES:

\196\McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 210-20 (1971). When the Court subsequently required bifurcated trials in capital cases, it was on the basis of the Eighth Amendment, and represented no withdrawal from the position described here. Cf. Corbitt v. New Jersey, 439 U.S. 212 (1978); Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357 (1978).

\197\Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 80-86 (1970). The compulsion of choice, Justice White argued for the Court, proceeded from the strength of the State's case and not from the disclosure requirement. That is, the rule did not affect whether or not the defendant chose to make an alibi defense and to call witnesses, but merely required him to accelerate the timing. It appears, however, that in Brooks v. Tennessee, 406 U.S. 605 (1972), the Court utilized the ``needless encouragement'' test in striking down a state rule requiring the defendant to testify before any other defense witness or to forfeit the right to testify at all. In the Court's view, this impermissibly burdened the defendant's choice whether to testify or not. Another prosecution discovery effort was approved in United States v. Nobles, 422 U.S. 233 (1975), in which a defense investigator's notes of interviews with prosecution witnesses were ordered disclosed to the prosecutor for use in cross-examination of the investigator. The Court discerned no compulsion upon defendant to incriminate himself.

\198\``The same situation might present itself if there were no statutory presumption and a prima facie case of concealment with knowledge of unlawful importation were made by the evidence. The necessity of an explanation by the accused would be quite as compelling in that case as in this; but the constraint upon him to give testimony would arise there, as it arises here, simply from the force of circumstances and not from any form of compulsion forbidden by the Constitution.'' Yee Hem v. United States, 268 U.S. 178, 185 (1925), quoted with approval in Turner v. United States, 396 U.S. 398, 418 n.35 (1970). Justices Black and Douglas dissented on self-incrimination grounds. Id. at 425. And see United States v. Gainey, 380 U.S. 63, 71, 74 (1965) (dissenting opinions). For due process limitations on such presumptions, see discussion under the Fourteenth Amendment, infra.

The obligation to testify is not relieved by this clause, if, regardless of whether incriminating answers are given, a prosecution is precluded,\199\ or if the result of the answers is not incrimination, but rather harm to reputation or exposure to infamy or disgrace.\200\ The clause does not prevent a public employer from discharging an employee who, in an investigation specifically and narrowly directed at the performance of the employee's official duties, refuses to cooperate and to provide the employer with the desired information on grounds of self-incrimination.\201\ But it is unclear under what other circumstances a public employer may discharge an employee who has claimed his privilege before another investigating agency.\202\

NOTES:

\200\Brown v. Walker, 161 U.S. 591, 605-06 (1896); Ullmann v. United States, 350 U.S. 422, 430-31 (1956). Minorities in both cases had contended for a broader rule. Walker, 161 U.S. at 631 (Justice Field dissenting); Ullmann, 350 U.S. at 454 (Justice Douglas dissenting).

\201\Gardner v. Broderick, 392 U.S. 273, 278 (1968). Testimony compelled under such circumstances is, even in the absence of statutory immunity, barred from use in a subsequent criminal trial by force of the Fifth Amendment itself. Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U.S. 493 (1967). However, unlike public employees, persons subject to professional licensing by government appear to be able to assert their privilege and retain their licenses. Cf. Spevack v. Klein, 385 U.S. 511 (1967) (lawyer may not be disbarred solely because he refused on self-incrimination grounds to testify at a disciplinary proceeding), approved in Gardner v. Broderick, 392 U.S. at 277-78. Justices Harlan, Clark, Stewart, and White dissented generally. 385 U.S. 500, 520, 530.

\202\See Slochower v. Board of Education, 350 U.S. 551 (1956), limited by Lerner v. Casey, 357 U.S. 468 (1958), and Nelson v. County of Los Angeles, 362 U.S. 1 (1960), which were in turn apparently limited by Garrity and Gardner.

Finally, the rules established by the clause and the judicial interpretations are applicable against the States to the same degree that they apply to the Federal Government,\203\ and neither sovereign can compel discriminatory admissions which would incriminate the person in the other jurisdiction.\204\

NOTES:

\204\Murphy v. Waterfront Comm'n, 378 U.S. 52 (1964), (overruling United States v. Murdock, 284 U.S. 141 (1931) (Federal Government could compel a witness to give testimony which might incriminate him under state law), Knapp v. Schweitzer, 357 U.S. 371 (1958) (State may compel a witness to give testimony which might incriminate him under federal law), and Feldman v. United States, 322 U.S. 487 (1944) (testimony compelled by a State may be introduced into evidence in the federal courts)). Murphy held that a State could compel testimony under a grant of immunity but that since the State could not extend the immunity to federal courts the Supreme Court would not permit the introduction of evidence into federal courts which had been compelled by a State or which had been discovered because of state compelled testimony. The result was apparently a constitutionally compelled one arising from the Fifth Amendment itself, 378 U.S. at 75- 80, rather than one taken pursuant to the Court's supervisory power as Justice Harlan would have preferred. Id. at 80 (concurring). Congress has power to confer immunity in state courts as well as in federal in order to elicit information, Adams v. Maryland, 347 U.S. 179 (1954), but whether Congress must do so or whether the immunity would be conferred simply through the act of compelling the testimony Murphy did not say.            Whether testimony could be compelled by either the Federal Government or a State that could incriminate a witness in a foreign jurisdiction is unsettled, see Zicarelli v. New Jersey State Comm'n of Investigation, 406 U.S. 472, 480, 481 (1972) (reserving question), but an affirmative answer seems unlikely. Cf. Murphy, supra, 378 U.S. at 58- 63, 77.

Immunity. -- ``Immunity statutes, which have historical roots deep in Anglo-American jurisprudence, are not incompatible [with the values of the self-incrimination clause]. Rather they seek a rational accommodation between the imperatives of the privilege and the legitimate demands of government to compel citizens to testify. The existence of these statutes reflects the importance of testimony, and the fact that many offenses are of such a character that the only persons capable of giving useful testimony are those implicated in the crime.''\205\ Apparently the first immunity statute was enacted by Parliament in 1710 \206\ and it was widely copied in the colonies. The first federal immunity statute was enacted in 1857, and immunized any person who testified before a congressional committee from prosecution for any matter ``touching which'' he had testified.\207\

NOTES:

\206\9 Anne, c. 14, 3-4 (1710). See Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441, 445 n.13 (1972).

\207\Ch. 19, 11 Stat. 155 (1857). There was an exception for perjury committed while testifying before Congress.

Revised in 1862 so as merely to prevent the use of the congressional testimony at a subsequent prosecution of any congressional witness,\208\ the statute was soon rendered unenforceable by the ruling in Counselman v. Hitchcock\209\ that an analogous limited immunity statute was unconstitutional because it did not confer an immunity coextensive with the privilege it replaced. Counselman was ambiguous with regard to its grounds because it identified two faults in the statute: it did not proscribe ``derivative'' evidence\210\ and it only prohibited future use of the compelled testimony.\211\ The latter language accentuated a division between adherents of ``transactional'' immunity and of ``use'' immunity which has continued to the present.\212\ In any event, following Counselman, Congress enacted a statute which conferred transactional immunity as the price for being able to compel testimony,\213\ and the Court sustained this law in a five-to-four decision.\214\

NOTES:

\209\142 U.S. 547 (1892). The statute struck down was ch. 13, 15 Stat. 37 (1868).

\210\Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U.S. 547, 564 (1892). And see id. at 586.

\211\Id. at 585-86.

\212\``Transactional'' immunity means that once a witness has been compelled to testify about an offense, he may never be prosecuted for that offense, no matter how much independent evidence might come to light; ``use'' immunity means that no testimony compelled to be given and no evidence derived from or obtained because of the compelled testimony may be used if the person were subsequently prosecuted on independent evidence for the offense.

\213\Ch. 83, 27 Stat. 443 (1893).

\214\Brown v. Walker, 161 U.S. 591 (1896). The majority reasoned that one was excused from testifying only if there could be legal detriment flowing from his act of testifying. If a statute of limitations had run or if a pardon had been issued with regard to a particular offense, a witness could not claim the privilege and refuse to testify, no matter how much other detriment, such as loss of reputation, would attach to his admissions. Therefore, since the statute acted as a pardon or amnesty and relieved the witness of all legal detriment, he must testify. The four dissenters contended essentially that the privilege protected against being compelled to incriminate oneself regardless of any subsequent prosecutorial effort, id. at 610, and that a witness was protected against infamy and disparagement as much as prosecution. Id. at 628.

``The 1893 statute has become part of our constitutional fabric and has been included `in substantially the same terms, in virtually all of the major regulatory enactments of the Federal Government.'''\215\ So spoke Justice Frankfurter in 1956, broadly reaffirming Brown v. Walker and upholding the constitutionality of a federal immunity statute.\216\ Because all but one of the immunity acts passed after Brown v. Walker were transactional immunity statutes,\217\ the question of the constitutional sufficiency of use immunity did not arise, although dicta in cases dealing with immunity continued to assert the necessity of the former type of grant.\218\ But beginning in 1964, when it applied the self-incrimination clause to the States, the Court was faced with the problem which arose because a State could grant immunity only in its own courts and not in the courts of another State or of the United States.\219\ On the other hand, to foreclose the States from compelling testimony because they could not immunize a witness in a subsequent ``foreign'' prosecution would severely limit state law enforcement efforts. Therefore, the Court emphasized the ``use'' restriction rationale of Counselman and announced that as a ``constitutional rule, a state witness could not be compelled to incriminate himself under federal law unless federal authorities were precluded from using either his testimony or evidence derived from it,'' and thus formulated a use restriction to that effect.\220\ Then, while refusing to adopt the course because of statutory interpretation reasons, the Court indicated that use restriction in a federal regulatory scheme requiring the reporting of incriminating information was ``in principle an attractive and apparently practical resolution of the difficult problem before us,'' citing Murphy with apparent approval.\221\

NOTES:

\216\``[The] sole concern [of the privilege] is . . . with the danger to a witness forced to give testimony leading to the infliction of `penalties affixed to the criminal acts'. . . . Immunity displaces the danger. Once the reason for the privilege ceases, the privilege ceases.'' Id. at 438-39. The internal quotation is from Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 634 (1886).

\217\Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441, 457-58 (1972); Piccirillo v. New York, 400 U.S. 548, 571 (1971) (Justice Brennan dissenting). The exception was an immunity provision of the bankruptcy laws, 30 Stat. 548 (1898), 11 U.S.C. Sec. 25(a)(10), repealed by 84 Stat. 931 (1970). The right of a bankrupt to insist on his privilege against self-incrimination as against this statute was recognized in McCarthy v. Arndstein, 266 U.S. 34, 42 (1924), ``because the present statute fails to afford complete immunity from a prosecution.'' The statute also failed to prohibit the use of derivative evidence. Arndstein v. McCarthy, 254 U.S. 71 (1920).

\218\E.g., Hale v. Henkel, 201 U.S. 43, 67 (1906); United States v. Monia, 317 U.S. 424, 425, 428 (1943); Smith v. United States, 337 U.S. 137, 141, 146 (1949); United States v. Murdock, 284 U.S. 141 149 (1931); Adams v. Maryland, 347 U.S. 179, 182 (1954). In Ullmann v. United States, 350 U.S. 422, 436-37 (1956), Justice Frankfurter described the holding of Counselman as relating to the absence of a prohibition on the use of derivative evidence.

\219\Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1 (1964), extended the clause to the States. That Congress could immunize a federal witness from state prosecution and, of course, extend use immunity to state courts, was held in Adams v. Maryland, 347 U.S. 179 (1954), and had been recognized in Brown v. Walker, 161 U.S. 591 (1896).

\220\Murphy v. Waterfront Comm'n, 378 U.S. 52, 77-99 (1964). Concurring, Justices White and Stewart argued at length in support of the constitutional sufficiency of use immunity and the lack of a constitutional requirement of transactional immunity. Id. at 92. See also Gardner v. Broderick, 392 U.S. 273 (1968); Uniformed Sanitation Men Ass'n v. Commissioner of Sanitation, 392 U.S. 280 (1968); Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U.S. 493 (1967), recognizing the propriety of compelling testimony with a use restriction attached.

\221\Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39, 58 (1968).

Congress thereupon enacted a statute replacing all prior immunity statutes and adopting a use-immunity restriction only.\222\ Soon tested, this statute was sustained in Kastigar v. United States.\223\ ``[P]rotection coextensive with the privilege is the degree of protection which the Constitution requires,'' wrote Justice Powell for the Court, ``and is all that the Constitution requires. . . .''\224\ ``Transactional immunity, which accords full immunity from prosecution for the offense to which the compelled testimony relates, affords the witness considerably broader protection than does the Fifth Amendment privilege. The privilege has never been construed to mean that one who invokes it cannot subsequently be prosecuted. Its sole concern is to afford protection against being `forced to give testimony leading to the infliction of ``penalties affixed to . . . criminal acts.''' Immunity from the use of compelled testimony and evidence derived directly and indirectly therefrom affords this protection. It prohibits the prosecutorial authorities from using the compelled testimony in any respect, and it therefore insures that the testimony cannot lead to the infliction of criminal penalties on the witness.''\225\

NOTES:

\223\406 U.S. 441 (1972). A similar state statute was sustained in Zicarelli v. New Jersey State Comm'n of Investigation, 406 U.S. 472 (1972).

\224\Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441, 459 (1972).

\225\Id. at 453. Joining Justice Powell in the opinion were Justices Stewart, White, and Blackmun, and Chief Justice Burger. Justices Douglas and Marshall dissented, contending that a ban on use could not be enforced even if a use ban was constitutionally adequate. Id. at 462, 467. Justices Brennan and Rehnquist did not participate but Justice Brennan's views that transactional immunity was required had been previously stated. Piccirillo v. New York, 400 U.S. 548, 552 (1971) (dissenting). See also New Jersey v. Portash, 440 U.S. 451 (1979) (prosecution use of defendant's immunized testimony to impeach him at trial violates self-incrimination clause). Neither the clause nor the statute prevents the perjury prosecution of an immunized witness or the use of all his testimony to prove the commission of perjury. United States v. Apfelbaum, 445 U.S. 115 (1980). See also United States v. Wong, 431 U.S. 174 (1977); United States v. Mandujano, 425 U.S. 564 (1976). Because use immunity is limited, a witness granted use immunity for grand jury testimony may validly invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege in a civil deposition proceeding when asked whether he had ``so testified'' previously, the deposition testimony not being covered by the earlier immunity. Pillsbury Co. v. Conboy, 459 U.S. 248 (1983).

Required Records Doctrine. -- While the privilege is applicable to one's papers and effects,\226\ it does not extend to corporate persons, hence corporate records, as has been noted, are subject to compelled production.\227\ In fact, however, the Court has greatly narrowed the protection afforded in this area to natural persons by developing the ``required records'' doctrine. That is, it has held ``that the privilege which exists as to private papers cannot be maintained in relation to `records required by law to be kept in order that there may be suitable information of transactions which are the appropriate subjects of governmental regulation and the enforcement of restrictions validly established.'''\228\ This exception developed out of, as Justice Frankfurter showed in dissent, the rule that documents which are part of the official records of government are wholly outside the scope of the privilege; public records are the property of government and are always accessible to inspection. Because government requires certain records to be kept to facilitate the regulation of the business being conducted, so the reasoning goes, the records become public at least to the degree that government could always scrutinize them without hindrance from the record-keeper. ``If records merely because required to be kept by law ipso facto become public records, we are indeed living in glass houses. Virtually every major public law enactment--to say nothing of State and local legislation--has record-keeping provisions. In addition to record- keeping requirements, is the network of provisions for filing reports. Exhaustive efforts would be needed to track down all the statutory authority, let alone the administrative regulations, for record-keeping and reporting requirements. Unquestionably they are enormous in volume.''\229\

NOTES:

\227\Supra, p.1305.

\228\Shapiro v. United States, 335 U.S. 1, 33 (1948), (quoting Davis v. United States, 328 U.S. 582, 589-90 (1946), (quoting in turn Wilson v. United States, 221 U.S. 361, 380 (1911))). Wilson is the source of the required-records doctrine in its dicta, the holding in the case being the familiar one that a corporate officer cannot claim the privilege against self-incrimination to refuse to surrender corporate records in his custody. Cf. Heike v. United States, 227 U.S. 131 (1913). Davis was a search and seizure case and dealt with gasoline ration coupons which were government property even though in private possession. See Shapiro, supra, 36, 56-70 (Justice Frankfurter dissenting).

\229\Id. at 51.

``It may be assumed at the outset that there are limits which the Government cannot constitutionally exceed in requiring the keeping of records which may be inspected by an administrative agency and may be used in prosecuting statutory violations committed by the recordkeeper himself.''\230\ But the only limit which the Court suggested in Shapiro was that there must be ``a sufficient relation between the activity sought to be regulated and the public concern so that the Government can constitutionally regulate or forbid the basic activity concerned, and can constitutionally require the keeping of particular records, subject to inspection by the Administrator.''\231\ That there are limits established by the self-incrimination clause itself rather than by a subject matter jurisdiction test is evident in the Court's consideration of reporting and disclosure requirements implicating but not directly involving the required-records doctrine.

NOTES:

\231\Id.

Reporting and Disclosure. -- The line of cases begins with United States v. Sullivan\232\ in which a unanimous Court held that the Fifth Amendment did not privilege a bootlegger in not filing an income tax return because the filing would have disclosed the illegality in which he was engaged. ``It would be an extreme if not an extravagant application of the Fifth Amendment to say that it authorized a man to refuse to state the amount of his income because it had been made in crime.'' Justice Holmes stated for the Court. However, ``[i]f the form of return provided called for answers that the defendant was privileged from making he could have raised the objection in the return . . . .'' Utilizing its taxing power to reach gambling activities over which it might not have had jurisdiction otherwise,\233\ Congress enacted a complicated statute imposing an annual occupational tax on gamblers and an excise tax on all their wages, and coupled the tax with an annual registration requirement under which each gambler must file with the IRS a declaration of his business with identification of his place of business and his employees and agents, filings which were made available to state and local law enforcement agencies. These requirements were upheld by the Court against self-incrimination challenges on the three grounds that (1) the privilege did not excuse a complete failure to file, (2) since the threshold decision to gamble was voluntary, the required disclosures were not compulsory, and (3) since registration required disclosure only of prospective conduct, the privilege, limited to past or present acts, did not apply.\234\

NOTES:

\233\The expansion of the commerce power would now obviate reliance on the taxing power.

\234\United States v. Kahriger, 345 U.S. 22 (1953); Lewis v. United States, 348 U.S. 419 (1955).

Constitutional limitations appeared, however, in Albertson v. SACB,\235\ which struck down under the self-incrimination clause an order pursuant to statute requiring registration by individual members of the Communist Party or associated organizations. ``In Sullivan the questions in the income tax return were neutral on their face and directed at the public at large, but here they are directed at a highly selective group inherently suspect of criminal activities. Petitioners' claims are not asserted in an essentially noncriminal and regulatory area of inquiry, but against an inquiry in an area permeated with criminal statutes, where response to any of the form's questions in context might involve the petitioners in the admission of a crucial element of a crime.''\236\

NOTES:

\236\Id. at 79. The decision was unanimous, Justice White not participating. The same issue had been held not ripe for adjudication in Communist Party v. SACB, 367 U.S. 1, 105-10 (1961).

The gambling tax reporting scheme was next struck down by the Court.\237\ Because of the pervasiveness of state laws prohibiting gambling, said Justice Harlan for the Court, ``the obligations to register and to pay the occupational tax created for petitioner `real and appreciable,' and not merely `imaginary and unsubstantial,' hazards of self-incrimination.''\238\ Overruling Kahriger and Lewis, the Court rejected its earlier rationales. Registering per se would have exposed a gambler to dangers of state prosecution, so Sullivan did not apply.\239\ Any contention that the voluntary engagement in gambling ``waived'' the self-incrimination claim, because there is ``no constitutional right to gamble,'' would nullify the privilege.\240\ And the privilege was not governed by a ``rigid chronological distinction'' so that it protected only past or present conduct, but also reached future self-incrimination the danger of which is not speculative and insubstantial.\241\ Significantly, then, Justice Harlan turned to distinguishing the statutory requirements here from the ``required records'' doctrine of Shapiro. ``First, petitioner . . . was not . . . obliged to keep and preserve records `of the same kind as he has customarily kept'; he was required simply to provide information, unrelated to any records which he may have maintained, about his wagering activities. This requirement is not significantly different from a demand that he provide oral testimony . . . . Second, whatever `public aspects' there were to the records at issue in Shapiro, there are none to the information demanded from Marchetti. The Government's anxiety to obtain information known to a private individual does not without more render that information public; if it did, no room would remain for the application of the constitutional privilege. Nor does it stamp information with a public character that the Government has formalized its demands in the attire of a statute; if this alone were sufficient, the constitutional privilege could be entirely abrogated by any Act of Congress. Third, the requirements at issue in Shapiro were imposed in `an essentially non-criminal and regulatory area of inquiry' while those here are directed to a `selective group inherently suspect of criminal activities.' The United States' principal interest is evidently the collection of revenue, and not the punishment of gamblers, . . . but the characteristics of the activities about which information is sought, and the composition of the groups to which inquiries are made, readily distinguish this situation from that in Shapiro.''\242\

NOTES:

\238\Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39, 48 (1968).

\239\``Every element of these requirements would have served to incriminate petitioners; to have required him to present his claim to Treasury officers would have obliged him `to prove guilt to avoid admitting it.''' Id. at 50.

\240\``The question is not whether petitioner holds a `right' to violate state law, but whether, having done so, he may be compelled to give evidence against himself. The constitutional privilege was intended to shield the guilty and imprudent as well as the innocent and foresighted; if such an inference of antecedent choice were alone enough to abrogate the privilege's protection, it would be excluded from the situations in which it has historically been guaranteed, and withheld from those who most require it.'' Id. at 51. But cf. California v. Byers, 402 U.S. 424, 434 (1971) (plurality opinion), in which it is suggested that because there is no ``right'' to leave the scene of an accident a requirement that a person involved in an accident stop and identify himself does not violate the self-incrimination clause.

\241\Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39, 52-54 (1968). ``The central standard for the privilege's application has been whether the claimant is confronted by substantial and `real,' and not merely trifling or imaginary, hazards of incrimination. This principle does not permit the rigid chronological distinctions adopted in Kahriger and Lewis. We see no reason to suppose that the force of the constitutional prohibition is diminished merely because confession of a guilty purpose precedes the act which it is subsequently employed to evidence.'' Id. at 53-54. Cf. United States v. Freed, 401 U.S. 601, 605-07 (1971).

\242\Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39, 57 (1968).

Most recent of this line of cases is California v. Byers,\243\ which indicates that the Court has yet to settle on an ascertainable standard for judging self-incrimination claims in cases where government is asserting an interest other than criminal law enforcement. Byers sustained the constitutionality of a statute which required the driver of any automobile involved in an accident to stop and give his name and address. The state court had held that a driver who reasonably believed that compliance with the statute would result in self-incrimination could refuse to comply. A plurality of the Court, however, determined that Sullivan and Shapiro applied and not the Albertson-Marchetti line of cases, because the purpose of the statute was to promote the satisfaction of civil liabilities resulting from automobile accidents and not criminal prosecutions, and because the statute was directed to all drivers and not to a group which was either ``highly selective'' or ``inherently suspect of criminal activities.'' The combination of a noncriminal motive with the general character of the requirement made too slight for reliance the possibility of incrimination.\244\ Justice Harlan concurred to make up the majority on the disposition of the case, disagreeing with the plurality's conclusion that the stop and identification requirement did not compel incrimination.\245\ However, the Justice thought that where there is no governmental purpose to enforce a criminal law and instead government is pursuing other legitimate regulatory interests, it is permissible to apply a balancing test between the government's interest and the individual's interest. When he balanced the interests protected by the Amendment--protection of privacy and maintenance of an accusatorial system--with the noncriminal purpose, the necessity for self-reporting as a means of securing information, and the nature of the disclosures required, Justice Harlan voted to sustain the statute.\246\ Byers was applied in Baltimore Dep't of Social Services v. Bouknight\247\ to uphold a juvenile court's order that the mother of a child under the court's supervision produce the child. Although in this case the mother was suspected of having abused or murdered her child, the order was justified for ``compelling reasons unrelated to criminal law enforcement'': concern for the child's safety.\248\ Moreover, because the mother had custody of her previously abused child only as a result of the juvenile court's order, the Court analogized to the required records cases to conclude that the mother had submitted to the requirements of the civil regulatory regime as the child's ``custodian.''

NOTES:

\244\Id. at 427-31 (Chief Justice Burger and Justices Stewart, White, and Blackmun).

\245\``The California Supreme Court was surely correct in considering that the decisions of this Court have made it clear that invocation of the privilege is not limited to situations where the purpose of the inquiry is to get an incriminating answer . . . . [I]t must be recognized that a reading of our more recent cases . . . suggests the conclusion that the applicability of the privilege depends exclusively on a determination that, from the individual's point of view, there are `real' and not `imaginary' risks of self-incrimination in yielding to state compulsion. Thus, Marchetti and Grosso . . . start from an assumption of a non-prosecutorial governmental purpose in the decision to tax gambling revenues; those cases go on to apply what in another context I have called the `real danger v. imaginary possibility standard . . . .' A judicial tribunal whose position with respect to the elaboration of constitutional doctrine is subordinate to that of this Court certainly cannot be faulted for reading these opinions as indicating that the `inherently-suspect-class' factor is relevant only as an indicium of genuine incriminating risk as assessed from the individual's point of view.'' Id. at 437-38.

\246\Id. at 448-58. The four dissenters argued that it was unquestionable that Byers would have faced real risks of self- incrimination by compliance with the statute and that this risk was sufficient to invoke the privilege. Id. at 459, 464 (Justices Black, Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall).

\247\493 U.S. 549 (1990).

\248\Id. at 561. By the same token, the Court concluded that the targeted group--persons who care for children pursuant to a juvenile court's custody order--is not a group ``inherently suspect of criminal activities'' in the Albertson-Marchetti sense.

``In criminal trials, in the courts of the United States, wherever a question arises whether a confession is incompetent because not voluntary, the issue is controlled by that portion of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, commanding that no person `shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.'''\249\ This language in an 1897 case marked a sharp if unacknowledged break with the doctrine of previous cases in which the Court had applied the common-law test of voluntariness to determine the admissibility of confessions, and, while the language was never expressly disavowed in subsequent cases, the Court seems nevertheless to have proceeded along due process standards rather than self- incrimination analysis. Because the self-incrimination clause for most of this period was not applicable to the States, the admissibility of confessions in state courts was determined under due process standards developed from common-law voluntariness principles. It was only after the Court extended the self-incrimination clause to the States that a divided Court reaffirmed and extended the 1897 ruling and imposed on both federal and state trial courts new rules for admitting or excluding confessions and other admissions made to police during custodial interrogation.\250\ Though recent research tends to treat as oversimplified Wigmore's conclusion that ``there never was any historical connection . . . between the constitutional clause and the confession-doctrine,''\251\ the fact is that the contention, coupled with the inapplicability of the self-incrimination clause to the States, was apparently the basis until recently for the Supreme Court's adjudication of confession cases.

NOTES:

\250\Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).

\251\3 J. Wigmore, A Treatise on the Anglo-American System of Evidence Sec. 823, at 250 n.5 (3d ed. 1940); see also vol. 8 id., Sec. 2266 (McNaughton rev. 1961). It appears that while the two rules did develop separately, they did stem from some of the same considerations, and, in fact, the confession rule may be considered in important respects to be an off-shoot of the privilege against self- incrimination. See L. Levy, Origins of the Fifth Amendment--The Right against Self-Incrimination 325-32, 495 n.43 (1968). See also Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U.S. 568, 581-84, especially 583 n.25 (1961) (Justice Frankfurter announcing judgment of the Court).

The Common Law Rule. -- Not until the latter part of the eighteenth century did there develop a rule excluding coerced confessions from admission at trial; prior to that time, even confessions obtained by torture were admissible. As the rule developed in England and in early United States jurisprudence, the rationale was the unreliability of the confession's contents when induced by a promise of benefit or a threat of harm.\252\ In its first decision on the admissibility of confessions, the Court adopted the common-law rule, stressing that while a ``voluntary confession of guilt is among the most effectual proofs in the law, from the very nature of such evidence it must be subjected to careful scrutiny and received with great caution.'' ``[T]he presumption upon which weight is given to such evidence, namely, that one who is innocent will not imperil his safety or prejudice his interests by an untrue statement, ceases when the confession appears to have been made either in consequence of inducements of a temporal nature, held out by one in authority, touching the charge preferred, or because of a threat or promise by or in the presence of such person, which, operating upon the fears or hopes of the accused, in reference to the charge, deprives him of that freedom of will or self-control essential to make his confession voluntary within the meaning of the law.''\253\ Subsequent cases followed essentially the same line of thought.\254\ Then, in Bram v. United States\255\ the Court assimilated the common-law rule thus mentioned as a command of the Fifth Amendment and indicated that henceforth a broader standard for judging admissibility was to be applied.\256\ Though this rule\257\ and the case itself were subsequently approved in several cases,\258\ the Court could hold within a few years that a confession should not be excluded merely because the authorities had not warned a suspect of his right to remain silent,\259\ and more than once later Courts could doubt ``whether involuntary confessions are excluded from federal criminal trials on the ground of a violation of the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination, or from a rule that forced confessions are untrustworthy. . . .''\260\

NOTES:

\253\Hopt v. Utah, 110 U.S. 574, 584-85 (1884). Utah at this time was a territory and subject to direct federal judicial supervision.

\254\Pierce v. United States, 160 U.S. 335 (1896); Sparf v. United States, 156 U.S. 51 (1895). In Wilson v. United States, 162 U.S. 613 (1896), failure to provide counsel or to warn the suspect of his right to remain silent was held to have no effect on the admissibility of a confession but was only to be considered in assessing its credibility.

\255\168 U.S. 532 (1897). ``[T]he generic language of the [Fifth] Amendment was but a crystallization of the doctrine as to confessions, well settled when the Amendment was adopted. . . .'' Id. at 543.

\256\Id. at 549.

\257\Ziang Sun Wan v. United States, 266 U.S. 1, 14-15 (1924). This case first held that the circumstances of detention and interrogation were relevant and perhaps controlling on the question of admissibility of a confession.

\258\Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U.S. 465, 475 (1921); Powers v. United States, 223 U.S 303, 313 (1912); Shotwell Mfg. Co. v. United States, 371 U.S. 342, 347 (1963).

\259\Powers v. United States, 223 U.S. 303 (1912).

\260\United States v. Carignan, 342 U.S. 36, 41 (1951). See also McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 346 (1943); Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278, 285 (1936); Stein v. New York, 346 U.S. 156, 191 n.35 (1953).

McNabb-Mallory Doctrine -- Perhaps one reason the Court did not squarely confront the application of the self-incrimination clause to police interrogation and the admissibility of confessions in federal courts was that in McNabb v. United States\261\ it promulgated a rule excluding confessions obtained after an ``unnecessary delay'' in presenting a suspect for arraignment after arrest.\262\ This rule, developed pursuant to the Court's supervisory power over the lower federal courts\263\ and hence not applicable to the States as a constitutional rule would have been,\264\ was designed to implement the guarantees assured to a defendant by the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure,\265\ and was clearly informed with concern over incommunicado interrogation and coerced confessions.\266\ While the Court never attempted to specify a minimum time after which delay in presenting a suspect for arraignment would invalidate confessions, Congress in 1968 legislated to set a six-hour period for interrogation following arrest before the suspect must be presented.\267\

NOTES:

\262\In Upshaw v. United States, 335 U.S. 410 (1948), the Court rejected lower court interpretations that delay in arraignment was but one factor in determining the voluntariness of a confession, and held that a confession obtained after a thirty-hour delay was inadmissible per se. Mallory v. United States, 354 U.S. 449 (1957), held that any confession obtained during an unnecessary delay in arraignment was inadmissible. A confession obtained during a lawful delay before arraignment was admissible. United States v. Mitchell, 322 U.S. 65 (1944).

\263\McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 340 (1943); Upshaw v. United States, 335 U.S. 410, 414 n.2 (1948). Burns v. Wilson, 346 U.S. 137, 145 n.12 (1953), indicated that because the Court had no supervisory power over courts-martial, the rule did not apply in military courts.

\264\Gallegos v. Nebraska, 342 U.S. 55, 60, 63-64, 71-73 (1951); Stein v. New York, 346 U.S. 156, 187-88 (1953); Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U.S. 568, 599-602 (1961) (Justice Frankfurter announcing judgment of the Court).

\265\Rule 5(a) requiring prompt arraignment was promulgated in 1946, but the Court in McNabb relied on predecessor statutes, some of which required prompt arraignment. Cf. Mallory v. United States, 354 U.S. 449, 451-54 (1957). Rule 5(b) requires that the magistrate at arraignment must inform the suspect of the charge against him, must warn him that what he says may be used against him, must tell him of his right to counsel and his right to remain silent, and must also provide for the terms of bail.

\266\McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 343 (1943); Mallory v. United States, 354 U.S. 449, 452-53 (1957).

\267\The provision was part of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 82 Stat. 210, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3501(c).

State Confession Cases. -- In its first encounter with a confession case arising from a state court, the Supreme Court set aside a conviction based solely on confessions of the defendants which had been extorted from them through repeated whippings with ropes and studded belts.\268\ For some thirty years thereafter the Court attempted through a consideration of the ``totality of the circumstances'' surrounding interrogation to determine whether a confession was ``voluntary'' and admissible or ``coerced'' and inadmissible. During this time, the Court was balancing, in Justice Frankfurter's explication, a view that police questioning of suspects was indispensable in solving many crimes, on the one hand, with the conviction that the interrogation process is not to be used to overreach persons who stand helpless before it.\269\ ``The ultimate test remains that which has been the only clearly established test in Anglo-American courts for two hundred years: the test of voluntariness. Is the confession the product of an essentially free and unconstrained choice by its maker? If it is, if he has willed to confess, it may be used against him. If it is not, if his will has been overborne and his capacity for self-determination critically impaired, the use of his confession offends due process.''\270\ Obviously, a court seeking to determine whether the making of a confession was voluntary operated under a severe handicap, inasmuch as the interrogation process was in secret with only police and the suspect witness to it, and inasmuch as the concept of voluntariness referred to the defendant's mental condition.\271\ Despite, then, a bountiful number of cases, binding precedents were few.

NOTES:

\269\Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U.S. 568, 570-602 (1961) (announcing judgment of the Court).

\270\Id. at 602.

\271\``The inquiry whether, in a particular case, a confession was voluntarily or involuntarily made involves, at the least, a three- phased process. First, there is the business of finding the crude historical facts, the external `phenomenological' occurrences and events surrounding the confession. Second, because the concept of `voluntariness' is one which concerns a mental state, there is the imaginative recreation, largely inferential, of internal, `psychological' fact. Third, there is the application to this psychological fact of standards for judgment informed by the larger legal conceptions ordinarily characterized as rules of law but which, also, comprehend both induction from, and anticipation of, factual circumstances.'' Id. at 603. See Developments in the Law--Confessions, 79 Harv. L. Rev. 935, 973-82 (1966).

On the one hand, many of the early cases disclosed rather clear instances of coercion of a nature that the Court could little doubt produced involuntary confessions. Not only physical torture,\272\ but other overtly coercive tactics as well have been condemned. Chambers v. Florida\273\ held that five days of prolonged questioning following arrests without warrants and incommunicado detention made the subsequent confessions involuntary. Ashcraft v. Tennessee\274\ held inadmissible a confession obtained near the end of a 36-hour period of practically continuous questioning, under powerful electric lights, by relays of officers, experienced investigators, and highly trained lawyers. Similarly, Ward v. Texas,\275\ voided a conviction based on a confession obtained from a suspect who had been arrested illegally in one county and brought some 100 miles away to a county where questioning began, and who had then been questioned continuously over the course of three days while being driven from county to county and being told falsely of a danger of lynching. ``Since Chambers v. State of Florida, . . . this Court has recognized that coercion can be mental as well as physical and that the blood of the accused is not the only hallmark of an unconstitutional inquisition. A number of cases have demonstrated, if demonstrations were needed, that the efficiency of the rack and thumbscrew can be matched, given the proper subject, by more sophisticated modes of `persuasion'. A prolonged interrogation of the accused who is ignorant of his rights and who has been cut off from the moral support of friends and relatives is not infrequently an effective technique of terror.''\276\

NOTES:

\273\309 U.S. 227 (1940).

\274\322 U.S. 143 (1944). Dissenting, Justices Jackson, Frankfurter, and Roberts protested that ``interrogation per se is not, while violence per se is, an outlaw.'' A confession made after interrogation was not truly ``voluntary'' because all questioning is ``inherently coercive,'' because it puts pressure upon a suspect to talk. Thus, in evaluating a confession made after interrogation, the Court must, they insisted, determine whether the suspect was in possession of his own will and self-control and not look alone to the length or intensity of the interrogation. They accused the majority of ``read[ing] an indiscriminating hostility to mere interrogation into the Constitution'' and preparing to bar all confessions made after questioning. Id. at 156. A possible result of the dissent was the decision in Lyons v. Oklahoma, 322 U.S. 596 (1944), which stressed deference to state-court factfinding in assessing the voluntariness of confessions.

\275\316 U.S. 547 (1942). See also Canty v. Alabama, 309 U.S. 629 (1940); White v. Texas, 310 U.S. 530 (1940); Lomax v. Texas, 313 U.S. 544 (1941); Vernon v. Alabama, 313 U.S. 540 (1941).

\276\Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U.S. 199, 206 (1960).

While the Court would not hold that prolonged questioning by itself made a resultant confession involuntary,\277\ it did increasingly find coercion present even in intermittent questioning over a period of days of incommunicado detention.\278\ In Stein v. New York,\279\ however, the Court affirmed convictions of experienced criminals who had confessed after twelve hours of intermittent questioning over a period of thirty-two hours of incommunicado detention. While the questioning was less intensive than in the prior cases, Justice Jackson for the majority stressed that the correct approach was to balance ``the circumstances of pressure against the power of resistance of the person confessing. What would be overpowering to the weak of will or mind might be utterly ineffective against an experienced criminal.''\280\ But by the time Haynes v. Washington\281\ was decided, holding inadmissible a confession made by an experienced criminal because of the ``unfair and inherently coercive context'' in which the statement was made, it was clear that the Court was adhering to a rule which found coercion in the fact of prolonged interrogation without regard to the individual characteristics of the suspect.\282\ However, the age and intelligence of suspects have been repeatedly cited by the Court in appropriate cases as demonstrating the particular susceptibility of the suspects to even mild coercion.\283\ But a suspect's mental state alone--even insanity--is insufficient to establish involuntariness absent some coercive police activity.\284\

NOTES:

\278\Watts v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49 (1949) (Suspect held incommunicado without arraignment for seven days without being advised of his rights. He was held in solitary confinement in a cell with no place to sleep but the floor and questioned each day except Sunday by relays of police officers for periods ranging in duration from three to nine-and-one-half hours); Turner v. Pennsylvania, 338 U.S. 62 (1949) (suspect held on suspicion for five days without arraignment and without being advised of his rights. He was questioned by relays of officers for periods briefer than in Watts during both days and nights); Harris v. South Carolina, 338 U.S. 68 (1949) (Suspect in murder case arrested in Tennessee on theft warrant, taken to South Carolina, and held incommunicado. He was questioned for three days for periods as long as 12 hours, not advised of his rights, not told of the murder charge, and denied access to friends and family while being told his mother might be arrested for theft). Justice Jackson dissented in the latter two cases, willing to hold that a confession obtained under lengthy and intensive interrogation should be admitted short of a showing of violence or threats of it and especially if the truthfulness of the confession may be corroborated by independent means. Id. at 57.

\279\346 U.S. 156 (1953).

\280\Id. at 185.

\281\373 U.S. 503 (1963) (confession obtained some 16 hours after arrest but interrogation over this period consumed little more than two hours; he was refused in his requests to call his wife and told that his cooperation was necessary before he could communicate with his family).

\282\Id. at 514. See also Spano v. New York, 360 U.S. 315 (1959). (After eight hours of almost continuous questioning, suspect was induced to confess by rookie policeman who was a childhood friend and who played on suspect's sympathies by falsely stating that his job as a policeman and the welfare of his family was at stake); Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534 (1961) (suspect resisted questioning for six hours but yielded when officers threatened to bring his invalid wife to headquarters). More recent cases include Davis v. North Carolina, 384 U.S. 737 (1966) (escaped convict held incommunicado 16 days but periods of interrogation each day were about an hour each); Greenwald v. Wisconsin, 390 U.S. 519 (1968); Darwin v. Connecticut, 391 U.S. 346 (1968).

\283\Gallegos v. Colorado, 370 U.S. 49 (1962); Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U.S. 199 (1960); Fikes v. Alabama, 352 U.S. 191 (1957); Payne v. Arkansas, 356 U.S. 560 (1958); Reck v. Pate, 367 U.S. 433 (1961); Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U.S. 568 (1961). The suspect in Spano v. New York, 360 U.S. 315 (1959), was a 25-year-old foreigner with a history of emotional instability. The fact that the suspect was a woman was apparently significant in Lynumn v. Illinois, 372 U.S. 528 (1963), in which officers threatened to have her children taken from her and to have her taken off the welfare relief rolls.

\284\Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157 (1986).

Where, however, interrogation was not so prolonged that the Court would deem it ``inherently coercive,'' the ``totality of the circumstances'' was looked to in determining admissibility. Although in some of the cases a single factor may well be thought to stand out as indicating the involuntariness of the confession,\285\ generally the recitation of factors, including not only the age and intelligence of the suspect but also such things as the illegality of the arrest, the incommunicado detention, the denial of requested counsel, the denial of access to friends, the employment of trickery, and other things, seemed not to rank any factor above the others.\286\ Of course, confessions may be induced through the exploitation of some illegal action, such as an illegal arrest\287\ or an unlawful search and seizure,\288\ and when that occurs the confession is inadmissible. Where police obtain a subsequent confession after obtaining one that is inadmissible as involuntary, the Court will not assume that the subsequent confession was similarly involuntary, but will independently evaluate whether the coercive actions which produced the first continued to produce the later confession.\289\

NOTES:

\286\E.g., Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U.S. 719 (1966); Davis v. North Carolina, 384 U.S. 737 (1966); Ashdown v. Utah, 357 U.S. 426 (1958); Thomas v. Arizona, 356 U.S. 390 (1958).

\287\Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963).

\288\Fahy v. Connecticut, 375 U.S. 85 (1963).

\289\United States v. Bayer, 331 U.S. 532 (1947); Lyons v. Oklahoma, 322 U.S. 596 (1944); Leyra v. Denno, 347 U.S. 556 (1954); Darwin v. Connecticut, 391 U.S. 346 (1968).

From the Voluntariness Standard to Miranda. -- Invocation by the Court of a self-incrimination standard for judging the fruits of police interrogation was no unheralded novelty in Miranda v. Arizona.\290\ The rationale of the confession cases changed over time to one closely approximating the foundation purposes the Court has attributed to the self-incrimination clause. Historically, the basis of the rule excluding coerced and involuntary confessions was their untrustworthiness, their unreliability.\291\ It appears that this basis informed the Court's judgment in the early state confession cases\292\ as it had in earlier cases from the lower federal courts.\293\ But in Lisenba v. California,\294\ Justice Roberts drew a distinction between the confession rule and the standard of due process. ``[T]he fact that the confessions have been conclusively adjudged by the decision below to be admissible under State law, notwithstanding the circumstances under which they were made, does not answer the question whether due process was lacking. The aim of the rule that a confession is inadmissible unless it was voluntarily made is to exclude false evidence. Tests are invoked to determine whether the inducement to speak was such that there is a fair risk the confession is false. . . . The aim of the requirement of due process is not to exclude presumptively false evidence, but to prevent fundamental unfairness in the use of evidence, whether true or false.'' Over the next several years, while the Justices continued to use the terminology of voluntariness, the Court accepted at different times the different rationales of trustworthiness and constitutional fairness.\295\

NOTES:

\291\3 J. Wigmore, A Treatise on the Anglo-American System of Evidence Sec. 882, at 246 (3d ed. 1940).

\292\Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278 (1936); Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940); White v. Texas, 310 U.S. 530 (1940).

\293\Hopt v. Utah, 110 U.S. 574 (1884); Wilson v. United States, 162 U.S. 613 (1896).

\294\314 U.S. 219, 236 (1941).

\295\Compare Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U.S. 143 (1944), with Lyons v. Oklahoma, 322 U.S. 596 (1944), and Malinski v. New York, 324 U.S. 401 (1945). In Watts v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49 (1949), Harris v. South Carolina, 338 U.S. 68 (1949), and Turner v. Pennsylvania, 338 U.S. 62 (1949), five Justices followed the due process-fairness standard while four adhered to a trustworthiness rationale. See id. at 57 (Justice Jackson concurring and dissenting). In Stein v. New York, 346 U.S. 156, 192 (1953), the trustworthiness rationale had secured the adherence of six Justices. The primary difference between the two standards is the admissibility under the trustworthiness standard of a coerced confession if its trustworthiness can be established, if, that is, it can be corroborated.

Ultimately, however, those Justices who chose to ground the exclusionary rule on the latter consideration predominated, so that in Rogers v. Richmond\296\ Justice Frankfurter spoke for six other Justices in writing: ``Our decisions under that [Fourteenth] Amendment have made clear that convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i.e., the product of coercion, either physical or psychological, cannot stand. This is so not because such confessions are unlikely to be true but because the methods used to extract them offend an underlying principle in the enforcement of our criminal law: that ours is an accusatorial and not an inquisitorial system--a system in which the State must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured and may not by coercion prove its charges against an accused out of his own mouth.'' Nevertheless, the Justice said in another case, ``[n]o single litmus-paper test for constitutionally impermissible interrogation has been evolved.''\297\ Three years later, however, in Malloy v. Hogan,\298\ in the process of applying the self-incrimination clause to the States, Justice Brennan for the Court reinterpreted the line of cases since Brown v. Mississippi\299\ to conclude that the Court had initially based its rulings on the common-law confession rationale, but that beginning with Lisenba v. California,\300\ a ``federal standard'' had been developed. The Court had engaged in a ``shift [which] reflects recognition that the American system of criminal prosecution is accusatorial, not inquisitorial, and that the Fifth Amendment privilege is its essential mainstay.'' Today, continued Justice Brennan, ``the admissibility of a confession in a state criminal prosecution is tested by the same standard applied in federal prosecutions since 1897,'' when Bram v. United States had announced that the self-incrimination clause furnished the basis for admitting or excluding evidence in federal courts.\301\

NOTES:

\297\Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U.S. 568, 601 (1961). The same thought informs the options of the Court in Haynes v. Washington, 373 U.S. 503 (1963).

\298\378 U.S. 1 (1964).

\299\297 U.S. 278 (1936).

\300\314 U.S. 219 (1941).

\301\Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 6-7 (1964). Protesting that this was ``post facto reasoning at best,'' Justice Harlan contended that the ``majority is simply wrong'' in asserting that any of the state confession cases represented anything like a self-incrimination basis for the conclusions advanced. Id. at 17-19. Bram v. United States, 168 U.S. 532 (1897), is discussed supra, p.1321.

One week after the decision in Malloy v. Hogan, the Court essayed to define the rules of admissibility of confessions in different terms than its previous case; while it continued to emphasize voluntariness, it did so in self-incrimination terms rather than in due process terms. In Escobedo v. Illinois,\302\ it held inadmissible the confession obtained from a suspect in custody who had repeatedly requested and had repeatedly been refused an opportunity to consult with his retained counsel, who was present at the police station seeking to gain access to Escobedo.\303\ While Escobedo appeared in the main to be a Sixth Amendment right-to-counsel case, the Court at several points emphasized, in terms that clearly implicated self-incrimination considerations, that the suspect had not been warned of his constitutional rights.\304\

NOTES:

\303\Previously, it had been held that a denial of a request to consult counsel was but one of the factors to be considered in assessing voluntariness. Crooker v. California, 357 U.S. 433 (1958); Cicenia v. Lagay, 357 U.S. 504 (1958). Chief Justice Warren and Justices Black, Douglas, and Brennan were prepared in these cases to impose a requirement of right to counsel per se. Post-indictment interrogation without the presence of counsel seemed doomed after Spano v. New York, 360 U.S. 315 (1959), and this was confirmed in Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S 201 (1964). See discussion under Sixth Amendment, infra.

\304\Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 485, 491 (1964) (both pages containing assertions of the suspect's ``absolute right to remain silent'' in the context of police warnings prior to interrogation).

Miranda v. Arizona. -- The Sixth Amendment holding of Escobedo was deemphasized and the Fifth Amendment self-incrimination rule made preeminent in Miranda v. Arizona,\305\ in which the Court summarized its holding as follows: ``[T]he prosecution may not use statements, whether exculpatory or inculpatory, stemming from custodial interrogation of the defendant unless it demonstrates the use of procedural safeguards effective to secure the privilege against self-incrimination. By custodial interrogation, we mean questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way. As for the procedural safeguards to be employed, unless other fully effective means are devised to inform accused persons of their right of silence and to assure a continuous opportunity to exercise it, the following measures are required. Prior to any questioning, the person must be warned that he has a right to remain silent, that any statement he does make may be used as evidence against him, and that he has a right to the presence of an attorney, either retained or appointed. The defendant may waive effectuation of these rights, provided the waiver is made voluntarily, knowingly and intelligently. If, however, he indicates in any manner and at any stage of the process that he wishes to consult with an attorney before speaking there can be no questioning. Likewise, if the individual is alone and indicates in any manner that he does not wish to be interrogated, the police may not question him. The mere fact that he may have answered some questions or volunteered some statements on his own does not deprive him of the right of refrain from answering any further inquiries until he has consulted with an attorney and thereafter consents to be questioned.''

NOTE:

The basis for the Court's conclusions was the determination that police interrogation as conceived and practiced was inherently coercive and that this compulsion, though informal and legally sanctionless, was contrary to the protection assured by the self-incrimination clause, the protection afforded in a system of criminal justice which convicted a defendant on the basis of evidence independently secured and not out of his own mouth. In the Court's view, this had been the law in the federal courts since 1897, and the application of the clause to the States in 1964 necessitated the application of the principle in state courts as well. Therefore, the clause requires that police interrogation practices be so structured as to secure to suspects that they not be stripped of the ability to make a free and rational choice between speaking and not speaking. The warnings and the provision of counsel were essential, the Court said, to this type of system.\306\ ``In these cases,'' said Chief Justice Warren, ``we might not find the defendants' statements to have been involuntary in traditional terms.''\307\ The acknowledgment that the decision considerably expanded upon previous doctrine, even if the assimilation of self-incrimination values by the confession-exclusion rule be considered complete, was more clearly made a week after Miranda when, in denying retroactivity to that case and to Escobedo, the Court asserted that law enforcement officers had relied justifiably upon prior cases, ``now no longer binding,'' which treated the failure to warn a suspect of his rights or the failure to grant access to counsel as one of the factors to be considered.\308\ It was thus not the application of the self-incrimination clause to police interrogation in Miranda that constituted a major change from precedent but rather the series of warnings and guarantees which the Court imposed as security for the observance of the privilege.

NOTES:

\307\Id. at 457. For the continuing recognition of the difference between the traditional involuntariness test and the Miranda test, see Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U.S. 433, 443-46 (1974); Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 396-402 (1978).

\308\Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U.S. 719, 731 (1966).

While the Court's decision rapidly became highly controversial and the source of much political agitation, including a prominent role in the 1968 presidential election, the Court has continued to adhere to it,\309\ albeit not without considerable qualification. In 1968, Congress enacted a statute designed to set aside Miranda in the federal courts and to reinstate the traditional voluntariness test; an effort to enact a companion provision applicable to the state courts was defeated.\310\ The statute, however, appears to lie unimplemented because of constitutional doubts about it,\311\ and changing membership of the Court has resulted only in some curtailing of the case's principles.

NOTES:

\310\Pub. L. No. 90-351, Sec. 701(a), 82 Stat. 210, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3501. See S. Rept. No. 1097, 90th Congress, 2d sess. 37-53 (1968).

\311\But cf. United States v. Crocker, 510 F.2d 1129 (10th Cir. 1975).

In one respect, though, it appears that the Court, by suggesting that Miranda claims could be disallowed in most instances in federal habeas corpus cases, has constructed a rationale that could lead to a substantial limitation on Miranda's operation.\312\ This potential limitation flows from the analysis in Michigan v. Tucker,\313\ in which the Court was confronted with the question whether Miranda required the exclusion of the testimony of a witness who had been discovered because of the defendant's statement during interrogation following an inadequate Miranda warning.\314\ The interrogation had taken place prior to Miranda, but the trial had followed the Court's decision,\315\ leading to the exclusion of defendant's statement but not of the testimony of the witness. The actual holding of the Court and the concurrence of two Justices turned on the fact that the interrogation preceded Miranda and that warnings had been given, although not the full Miranda warnings; thus, in some respects, the decision is in the line of retroactivity cases. But of great possible significance was the language of the Court in considering ``whether the police conduct complained of directly infringed upon respondent's rights against compulsory self-incrimination or whether it instead violated only the prophylactic rules developed to protect that right.''\316\ Finding that the defendant's statement had not been coerced or otherwise procured in violation of his privilege, the Court found that good-faith, inadvertent error in not fully complying with the ``prophylactic'' Miranda rules did not require exclusion of the testimony, because the error preceded Miranda, because exclusion would not deter wrongful conduct, and because admission would not implicate the trial court in the use of possibly untrustworthy evidence.\317\ Obviously, dividing the question in this way between a constitutional right and a judicially-created enforcement mechanism permits courts a considerable degree of flexibility to apply or not apply the exclusionary rule previously thought to be fairly rigid under Miranda.\318\

NOTES:

\313\417 U.S. 433 (1974).

\314\It is not clear that the witness' testimony was suppressible in any event. Cf. United States v. Ceccolini, 435 U.S. 268 (1978) (a Fourth Amendment case).

\315\See Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U.S. 719 (1966).

\316\Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U.S. 433, 439 (1974). Justices Rehnquist, Stewart, Blackmun, Powell, and Chief Justice Burger joined the opinion of the Court. Justices Brennan and Marshall concurred on retroactivity grounds, id. at 453, and Justice Stewart noted he could have joined this opinion as well. Id. Justice White, continuing to think Miranda was wrongly decided, concurred because he did not think the ``fruits'' of a Miranda violation should be excluded. Id. at 460.

\317\Id. at 446-52. The similarity with opinions interpreting the search and seizure exclusionary rule is striking. Supra, pp.1264-69.

\318\While the exclusionary rule may not be directly mandated by the constitutional provision in issue, it must be a constitutional standard, because if it were not the Court could not impose it on the States. See Monaghan, Foreword: Constitutional Common Law, 89 Harv. L. Rev. 1 (1975); Schrock, Welsh & Collins, Interrogational Rights: Reflections on Miranda v. Arizona, 52 So. Cal. L. Rev. 1 (1978).

In any event, the Court has established several lines of decisions interpreting Miranda.

First, persons who are questioned while they are in custody must be given the Miranda warnings. Miranda applies to ``questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way.''\319\ Clearly, a suspect detained in jail is in custody, even if the detention is for some offense other than the one about which he is questioned.\320\ If he is placed under arrest, even if he is in his own home, the questioning is custodial.\321\ But the fact that a suspect may be present in a police station does not, in the absence of indicia that he was in custody, mean that the questioning is custodial,\322\ and the fact that he is in his home or other familiar surroundings will ordinarily lead to a conclusion that the inquiry was noncustodial.\323\ As with investigative stops under the Fourth Amendment, there is a wide variety of police-citizen contacts, and the Supreme Court has not explored at any length the application of Miranda to questioning on the street and elsewhere in situations in which the police have not asserted authority sufficient to place the citizen in custody.\324\

NOTES:

\320\Mathis v. United States, 391 U.S. 1 (1968) (suspect in state jail questioned by federal officer about a federal crime). But even though a suspect is in jail, hence in custody ``in a technical sense,'' a conversation with an undercover agent does not create a coercive, police-dominated environment and does not implicate Miranda if the suspect does not know that he is conversing with a government agent. Illinois v. Perkins, 110 S. Ct. 2394 (1990).

\321\Orozco v. Texas, 394 U.S. 324 (1969) (four policemen entered suspect's bedroom at 4 a.m. and questioned him; though not formally arrested, he was in custody).

\322\Oregon v. Mathiason, 429 U.S. 492 (1977) (suspect came voluntarily to police station to be questioned, he was not placed under arrest while there, and he was allowed to leave at end of interview, even though he was named by victim as culprit, questioning took place behind closed doors, and he was falsely informed his fingerprints had been found at scene of crime). See also Minnesota v. Murphy, 465 U.S. 420 (1984) (required reporting to probationary officer is not custodial situation).

\323\Beckwith v. United States, 425 U.S. 341 (1976) (IRS agents' interview with taxpayer in private residence was not a custodial interrogation, although inquiry had ``focused'' on him).

\324\Cf. United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544 (1980); Reid v. Georgia, 448 U.S. 438 (1980); Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47 (1979); Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 440 (1984) (roadside questioning of motorist stopped for traffic violation is not custodial interrogation until his ``freedom of action is curtailed to a `degree associated with formal arrest''').

Second, persons who are interrogated while they are in custody must be given the Miranda warnings. It is not necessary under Miranda that the police squarely ask a question. The breadth of the interrogation concept is demonstrated in Rhode Island v. Innis.\325\ There, police had apprehended the defendant as a murder suspect but had not found the weapon used. While he was being transported to police headquarters in a squad car, the defendant, who had been given the Miranda warnings and had asserted he wished to consult a lawyer before submitting to questioning, was not asked questions by the officers. However, the officers engaged in conversation among themselves, in which they indicated that a school for handicapped children was near the crime scene and that they hoped the weapon was found before a child discovered it and was injured. The defendant then took them to the weapon's hiding place.

NOTE:

Unanimously rejecting a contention that Miranda would have been violated only by express questioning, the Court said: ``We conclude that the Miranda safeguards come into play whenever a person in custody is subjected to either express questioning or its functional equivalent. That is to say, the term `interrogation' under Miranda refers not only to express questioning, but also to any words or actions on the part of the police (other than those normally attendant to arrest and custody) that the police should know are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from the suspect. The latter portion of this definition focuses primarily upon the perceptions of the suspect, rather than the intent of the police. This focus reflects the fact that the Miranda safeguards were designed to vest a suspect in custody with an added measure of protection against coercive police practices, without regard to objective proof of the underlying intent of the police.''\326\ A divided Court then concluded that the officers' conversation did not amount to a functional equivalent of questioning and that the evidence was admissible.\327\

NOTES:

\327\Id. at 302-04. Justices Marshall, Brennan, and Stevens dissented, Id. at 305, 307. Similarly, the Court found no functional equivalent of interrogation when police allowed a suspect's wife to talk to him in the presence of a police officer who openly tape recorded the conversation. Arizona v. Mauro, 481 U.S. 520 (1987). See also Illinois v. Perkins, 496 U.S. 292 (1990) (absence of coercive environment makes Miranda inapplicable to jail cell conversation between suspect and police undercover agent).

In Estelle v. Smith,\328\ the Court held that a court-ordered jailhouse interview with the defendant by a psychiatrist seeking to determine his competency to stand trial, when the defense had raised no issue of insanity or incompetency, constituted interrogation for Miranda purposes; the psychiatrist's conclusions about the defendant's dangerousness were inadmissible at the capital sentencing phase of the trial because the defendant had not been given his Miranda warnings prior to the interview. That the defendant had been questioned by a psychiatrist designated to conduct a neutral competency examination, rather than by a police officer, was ``immaterial,'' the Court concluded, since the psychiatrist's testimony at the penalty phase changed his role from one of neutrality to that of an agent of the prosecution.\329\ Other instances of questioning in less formal contexts in which the issues of custody and interrogation intertwine, e.g., in on-the-street encounters, await explication by the Court.

NOTES:

\329\Id. at 467.

Third, before a suspect in custody is interrogated, he must be given full warnings, or the equivalent, of his rights. Miranda, of course, required express warnings to be given to an in-custody suspect of his right to remain silent, that anything he said may be used as evidence against him, that he has a right to counsel, and that if he cannot afford counsel he is entitled to an appointed attorney.\330\ The Court recognized that ``other fully effective means'' could be devised to convey the right to remain silent,\331\ but it was firm that the prosecution was not permitted to show that an unwarned suspect knew of his rights in some manner.\332\ But it is not necessary that the police give the warnings as a verbatim recital of the words in the Miranda opinion itself, so long as the words used ``fully conveyed'' to a defendant his rights.\333\

NOTES:

\331\Id.

\332\Id. at 469.

\333\California v. Prysock, 453 U.S. 355 (1981). Rephrased, the test is whether the warnings ``reasonably conveyed'' a suspect's rights, the Court adding that reviewing courts ``need not examine Miranda warnings as if construing a will or defining the terms of an easement.'' Duckworth v. Egan, 492 U.S. 195, 203 (1989) (upholding warning that included possibly misleading statement that a lawyer would be appointed ``if and when you go to court'').

Fourth, once a warned suspect asserts his right to silence and requests counsel, the police must scrupulously respect his assertion of right. The Miranda Court strongly stated that once a warned suspect ``indicates in any manner, at any time prior to or during questioning, that he wishes to remain silent, the interrogation must cease.'' Further, if the suspect indicates he wishes the assistance of counsel before interrogation, the questioning must cease until he has counsel.\334\ At least with respect to counsel, the Court has created practically a per se rule barring the police from continuing or from reinitiating interrogation with a suspect requesting counsel until counsel is present, save only that the suspect himself may initiate further proceedings. Thus, in Edwards v. Arizona,\335\ the Court ruled that Miranda had been violated when police reinitiated questioning after the suspect had requested counsel. Questioning had ceased as soon as the suspect had requested counsel, and the suspect had been returned to his cell. Questioning had resumed the following day only after different police officers had confronted the suspect and again warned him of his rights; the suspect agreed to talk and thereafter incriminated himself. Nonetheless, the Court held, ``when an accused has invoked his right to have counsel present during custodial interrogation, a valid waiver of that right cannot be established by showing only that he responded to further police-initiated custodial interrogation even if he has been advised of this rights. We further hold that an accused . . . , having expressed his desire to deal with the police only through counsel, is not subject to further interrogation by the authorities until counsel has been made available to him, unless the accused himself initiates further communication, exchanges, or conversations with the police.''\336\ The Edwards rule bars police-initiated questioning stemming from a separate investigation as well as questioning relating to the crime for which the suspect was arrested.\337\

NOTES:

\335\451 U.S. 477 (1981).

\336\Id. at 484-85. The decision was unanimous, but three concurrences objected to a special rule limiting waivers with respect to counsel to suspect-initiated further exchanges. Id. at 487, 488 (Chief Justice Burger and Justices Powell and Rehnquist). In Oregon v. Bradshaw, 462 U.S. 1039 (1983), the Court held, albeit without a majority of Justices in complete agreement as to rationale, that an accused who had initiated further conversations with police had knowingly and intelligently waived his right to have counsel present. So too, an accused who expressed a willingness to talk to police, but who refused to make a written statement without presence of counsel, was held to have waived his rights with respect to his oral statements. Connecticut v. Barrett, 479 U.S. 523 (1987). The Court has held that Edwards should not be applied retroactively to a conviction that had become final, Solem v. Stumes, 465 U.S. 638 (1984), but that Edwards does apply to cases pending on appeal at the time it was decided. Shea v. Louisiana, 470 U.S. 51 (1985).

\337\Arizona v. Roberson, 486 U.S. 675 (1988). By contrast, the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is offense-specific, and does not bar questioning about a crime unrelated to the crime for which the suspect has been charged. See McNeil v. Wisconsin, 501 U.S. 171 (1991).

However, the suspect must specifically ask for counsel; if he requests the assistance of someone else he thinks may be helpful to him, that is not a valid assertion of Miranda rights.\338\ Moreover, the rigid Edwards rule is not applicable to other aspects of the warnings. That is, if the suspect asserts his right to remain silent, the questioning must cease, but officers are not precluded from subsequently initiating a new round of interrogation, provided only that they again give the Miranda warnings.\339\

NOTES:

\339\Michigan v. Mosley, 423 U.S. 96 (1975) (suspect given Miranda warnings at questioning for robbery, requested cessation of interrogation, and police complied; some two hours later, a different policeman interrogated suspect about a murder, gave him a new Miranda warning, and suspect made incriminating admission; since police ``scrupulously honored'' suspect's request, admission valid).

Fifth, a properly warned suspect may waive his Miranda rights and submit to custodial interrogation. Miranda recognized that a suspect may voluntarily and knowingly give up his rights and respond to questioning, but the Court cautioned that the prosecution bore a ``heavy burden'' to establish that a valid waiver had occurred.\340\ While the waiver need not be express in order for it to be valid,\341\ neither may a suspect's silence or similar conduct constitute a waiver.\342\ It must be shown that the suspect was competent to understand and appreciate the warning and to be able to waive his rights.\343\ Essentially, resolution of the issue of waiver ``must be determined on `the particular facts and circumstances surrounding that case, including the background, experience, and conduct of the accused.'''\344\

NOTES:

\341\North Carolina v. Butler, 441 U.S. 369 (1979).

\342\Id. at 373. But silence, ``coupled with an understanding of his rights and a course of conduct indicating waiver,'' may support a conclusion of waiver. Id.

\343\Tague v. Louisiana, 444 U.S. 469 (1980). A knowing and intelligent waiver need not be predicated on complete disclosure by police of the intended line of questioning, hence an accused's signed waiver following arrest for one crime is not invalidated by police having failed to inform him of intent to question him about another crime. Colorado v. Spring, 479 U.S. 564 (1987).

\344\North Carolina v. Butler, 441 U.S. 369, 374-75 (1979) (quoting Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 464 (1938)). In Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. 298 (1985), the Court held that a confession following a Miranda warning is not necessarily tainted by an earlier confession obtained without a warning, as long as the earlier confession had been voluntary. And see Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412 (1986) (signed waivers following Miranda warnings not vitiated by police having kept from suspect information that attorney had been retained for him by relative).

Sixth, the admissions of an unwarned or improperly warned suspect may not be used directly against him at trial, but the Court has permitted some use for other purposes, such as impeachment. A confession or other incriminating admissions obtained in violation of Miranda may not, of course, be introduced against him at trial for purposes of establishing guilt\345\ or for determining the sentence, at least in bifurcated trials in capital cases,\346\ and neither may the ``fruits'' of such a confession or admission be used.\347\ The Court, in opinions which bespeak a sense of necessity to narrowly construe Miranda, has broadened the permissible impeachment purposes for which unlawful confessions and admissions may be used.\348\ Thus, in Harris v. New York,\349\ the Court held that the prosecution could use statements, obtained in violation of Miranda, to impeach the defendant's testimony if he voluntarily took the stand and denied commission of the offense. Subsequently, in Oregon v. Hass,\350\ the Court permitted impeachment use of a statement made by the defendant after police had ignored his request for counsel following his Miranda warning. Such impeachment material, however, must still meet the standard of voluntariness associated with the pre-Miranda tests for the admission of confessions and statements.\351\

NOTES:

\346\Estelle v. Smith, 451 U.S. 454 (1981). The Court has yet to consider the applicability of the ruling in a noncapital, nonbifurcated trial case.

\347\Cf. Harrison v. United States, 392 U.S. 219 (1968) (after confessions obtained in violation of McNabb-Mallory were admitted against him, defendant took the stand to rebut them and made damaging admissions; after his first conviction was reversed, he was retried without the confessions, but the prosecutor introduced his rebuttal testimony from the first trial; Court reversed conviction because testimony was tainted by the admission of the confessions). But see Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U.S. 433 (1974). Confessions may be the poisonous fruit of other constitutional violations, such as illegal searches or arrests. E.g., Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590 (1975); Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200 (1979); Taylor v. Alabama, 457 U.S. 687 (1982).

\348\Under Walter v. United States, 347 U.S. 62 (1954), the defendant not only denied the offense of which he was accused (sale of drugs), but also asserted he had never dealt in drugs. The prosecution was permitted to impeach him concerning heroin seized illegally from his home two years before. The Court observed that the defendant could have denied the offense without making the ``sweeping'' assertions, as to which the government could impeach him.

\349\401 U.S. 222 (1971). The defendant had denied only the commission of the offense. The Court observed that it was only ``speculative'' to think that impermissible police conduct would be encouraged by permitting such impeachment, a resort to deterrence analysis being contemporaneously used to ground the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule, whereas the defendant's right to testify was the obligation to testify truthfully and the prosecution could impeach him for committing perjury. See also United States v. Havens, 446 U.S. 620 (1980) (Fourth Amendment).

\350\420 U.S. 714 (1975). By contrast, a defendant may not be impeached by evidence of his silence after police have warned him of his right to remain silent. Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610 (1976).

\351\E.g., Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385 (1978); New Jersey v. Portash, 440 U.S. 450 (1979).

The Court has created a ``public safety'' exception to the Miranda warning requirement, but has refused to create another exception for misdemeanors and lesser offenses. In New York v. Quarles,\352\ the Court held admissible a recently apprehended suspect's response in a public supermarket to the arresting officer's demand to know the location of a gun that the officer had reason to believe the suspect had just discarded or hidden in the supermarket. The Court, in an opinion by Justice Rehnquist,\353\ declined to place officers in the ``untenable position'' of having to make instant decisions as to whether to proceed with Miranda warnings and thereby increase the risk to themselves or to the public or whether to dispense with the warnings and run the risk that resulting evidence will be excluded at trial. While acknowledging that the exception itself will ``lessen the desirable clarity of the rule,'' the Court predicted that confusion would be slight: ``[w]e think that police officers can and will distinguish almost instinctively between questions necessary to secure their own safety or the safety of the public and questions designed solely to elicit testimonial evidence from a suspect.''\354\ No such compelling justification was offered for a Miranda exception for lesser offenses, however, and protecting the rule's ``simplicity and clarity'' counseled against creating one.\355\ ``[A] person subjected to custodial interrogation is entitled to the benefit of the procedural safeguards enunciated in Miranda, regardless of the nature or severity of the offense of which he is suspected or for which he was arrested.''\356\

NOTES:

\353\The Court's opinion was joined by Chief Justice Burger and by Justices White, Blackmun, and Powell. Justice O'Connor would have ruled inadmissible the suspect's response, but not the gun retrieved as a result of the response, and Justices Marshall, Brennan, and Stevens dissented.

\354\467 U.S. at 658-59.

\355\Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 432 (1984).

\356\468 U.S. at 434.

Supreme Court Review. -- The Court's review of the question of admissibility of confessions or other incriminating statements is designed to prevent the foreclosure of the very question to be decided by it, the issue of voluntariness under the due process standard, the issue of the giving of the requisite warnings and the subsequent waiver, if there is one, under the Miranda rule. Recurring to Justice Frankfurter's description of the inquiry as a ``three-phased process'' in due process cases at least,\357\ it can be seen that the Court's self-imposed rules of restraint on review of lower-court factfinding greatly influenced the process. The finding of facts surrounding the issue of coercion--the length of detention, circumstances of interrogation, use of violence or of tricks and ruses, et cetera--is the proper function of the trial court which had the advantage of having the witnesses before it. ``This means that all testimonial conflict is settled by the judgment of the state courts. Where they have made explicit findings of fact, those findings conclude us and form the basis of our review--with the one caveat, necessarily, that we are not to be bound by findings wholly lacking support in evidence.''\358\

NOTES:

\358\Id. at 603. See Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U.S. 143, 152-53 (1944); Lyons v. Oklahoma, 322 U.S. 596, 602-03 (1944); Watts v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49, 50-52 (1949); Gallegos v. Nebraska, 342 U.S. 55, 60-62 (1951); Stein v. New York, 346 U.S. 156, 180-82 (1953); Payne v. Arkansas, 356 U.S. 560, 561-62 (1958).

However, the conclusions of the lower courts as to how the accused reacted to the circumstances of his interrogation, and as to the legal significance of how he reacted, are subject to open review. ``No more restricted scope of review would suffice adequately to protect federal constitutional rights. For the mental state of involuntariness upon which the due process question turns can never be affirmatively established other than circumstantially -- that is, by inference; and it cannot be competent to the trier of fact to preclude our review simply be declining to draw inferences which the historical facts compel. Great weight, of course, is to be accorded to the inferences which are drawn by the state courts. In a dubious case, it is appropriate . . . that the state court's determination should control. But where, on the uncontested external happenings, coercive forces set in motion by state law enforcement officials are unmistakably in action; where these forces, under all the prevailing states of stress, are powerful enough to draw forth a confession; where, in fact, the confession does come forth and is claimed by the defendant to have been extorted from him; and where he has acted as a man would act who is subjected to such an extracting process--where this is all that appears in the record--a State judgment that the confession was voluntary cannot stand.''\359\ Miranda, of course, does away with the judgments about the effect of lack of warnings, and the third phase, the legal determination of the interaction of the first two phases, is determined solely by two factual determinations: whether the warnings were given and if so whether there was a valid waiver. Presumably, supported determinations of these two facts by trial courts would preclude independent review by the Supreme Court. Yet, the Court has been clear that it may and will independently review the facts when the factfinding has such a substantial effect on constitutional rights.\360\

NOTES:

\360\``In cases in which there is a claim of denial of rights under the Federal Constitution this Court is not bound by the conclusions of lower courts, but will re-examine the evidentiary basis on which those conclusions are founded.'' Niemotko v. Maryland, 340 U.S. 268, 271 (1951); Time, Inc. v. Pape, 401 U.S. 279, 284 (1971), and cases cited therein.

Procedure in the Trial Courts. -- The Court has placed constitutional limitations upon the procedures followed by trial courts for determining the admissibility of confessions and other incriminating admissions. Three procedures were developed over time to deal with the question of admissibility when involuntariness was claimed. By the orthodox method, the trial judge heard all the evidence on voluntariness in a separate and preliminary hearing, and if he found the confession involuntary the jury never received it, while if he found it voluntary the jury received it with the right to consider its weight and credibility, which consideration included the circumstances of its making. By the New York method, the judge first reviewed the confession under a standard leading to its exclusion only if he found it not possible that ``reasonable men could differ over the [factual] inferences to be drawn'' from it; otherwise, the jury would receive the confession with instructions to first determine its voluntariness and to consider it if it were voluntary and to disregard it if it were not. By the Massachusetts method, the trial judge himself determined the voluntariness question and if he found the confession involuntary the jury never received it; if he found it to have been voluntarily made he permitted the jury to receive it with instructions that the jurors should make their own independent determination of voluntariness.\361\

NOTE:

The New York method was upheld against constitutional attack in Stein v. New York,\362\ but eleven years later a five-to-four decision in Jackson v. Denno,\363\ found it inadequate to protect the due process rights of defendants. The procedure did not, the Court held, ensure a ``reliable determination on the issue of voluntariness'' and did not sufficiently guarantee that convictions would not be grounded on involuntary confessions. Since there was only a general jury verdict of guilty, it was impossible to determine whether the jury had first focused on the issue of voluntariness and then either had found the confession voluntary and considered it on the question of guilt or had found it involuntary, disregarded it, and reached a conclusion of guilt on wholly independent evidence. It was doubtful that a jury could appreciate the values served by the exclusion of involuntary confessions and put out of mind the content of the confession no matter what was determined with regard to its voluntariness. The rule was reiterated in Sims v. Georgia,\364\ in which the Court voided a state practice permitting the judge to let the confession go to the jury for the ultimate decision on voluntariness, upon an initial determination merely that the prosecution had made out a prima facie case that the confession was voluntary. The Court has interposed no constitutional objection to utilization of either the orthodox or the Massachusetts method for determining admissibility.\365\ It has held that the prosecution bears the burden of establishing voluntariness by a preponderance of the evidence, rejecting a contention that it should be determined only upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt,\366\ or by clear and convincing evidence.\367\

NOTES:

\363\378 U.S. 368 (1964). On the sufficiency of state court determinations, see Swenson v. Stidham, 409 U.S. 224 (1972); La Vallee v. Della Rose, 410 U.S. 690 (1973).

\364\385 U.S. 538 (1967).

\365\Jackson v. Denno, 378, 378 U.S. 368 and n.8 (1964); Lego v. Twomey, 404 U.S. 477, 489-90 (1972) (rejecting contention that jury should be required to pass on voluntariness following judge's determination).

\366\Lego v. Twomey, 404 U.S. 477 (1972).

\367\Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157 (1986).

``It is now the settled doctrine of this Court that the Due Process Clause embodies a system of rights based on moral principles so deeply imbedded in the traditions and feelings of our people as to be deemed fundamental to a civilized society as conceived by our whole history. Due Process is that which comports with the deepest notions of what is fair and right and just.''\1\ The content of due process is ``a historical product''\2\ that traces all the way back to chapter 39 of Magna Carta, in which King John promised that ``[n]o free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseized or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.''\3\ The phrase ``due process of law'' first appeared in a statutory rendition of this chapter in 1354. ``No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken, nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law.''\4\ Though Magna Carta was in essence the result of a struggle over interest between the King and his barons,\5\ this particular clause over time transcended any such limitation of scope, and throughout the fourteenth century parliamentary interpretation expanded far beyond the intention of any of its drafters.\6\ The understanding which the founders of the American constitutional system, and those who wrote the due process clauses, brought to the subject they derived from Coke, who in his Second Institutes expounded the proposition that the term ``by law of the land'' was equivalent to ``due process of law,'' which he in turn defined as ``by due process of the common law,'' that is, ``by the indictment or presentment of good and lawful men . . . or by writ original of the Common Law.''\7\ The significance of both terms was procedural, but there was in Coke's writings on chapter 29 a rudimentary concept of substantive restrictions, which did not develop in England because of parliamentary supremacy, but which was to flower in the United States.

NOTES:

\2\Jackman v. Rosenbaum Co., 260 U.S. 22, 31 (1922).

\3\Text and commentary on this chapter may be found in W. McKechnie, Magna Carta--A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John 375-95 (Glasgow, 2d rev. ed. 1914). The chapter became chapter 29 in the Third Reissue of Henry III in 1225. Id. at 504, and see 139-59. As expanded, it read: ``No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or deprived of his freehold or his liberties or free customs, or outlawed or exiled, or in any manner destroyed, nor shall we come upon him or send against him, except by a legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.'' See also J. Holt, Magna Carta 226-29 (Cambridge: 1965). The 1225 reissue also added to chapter 29 the language of chapter 40 of the original text: ``To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.'' This 1225 reissue became the standard text thereafter.

\4\28 Edw. III, c. 3. See F. Thompson, Magna Carta--Its Role in the Making of the English Constitution, 1300-1629, 86-97 (1948), recounting several statutory reconfirmations. Note that the limitation of ``free man'' had given way to the all-inclusive delineation.

\5\W. McKechnie, Magna Carta--A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John (Glasgow: 2d rev. ed. 1914); J. Holt, Magna Carta (Cambridge: 1965).

\6\F. Thompson, Magna Carta--Its Role in the Making of the English Constitution, 1300-1629 (Minneapolis: 1948).

\7\Sir Edward Coke, Institutes of the Laws of England, Part II, 50-51 (London: 1641). For a review of the influence of Magna Carta and Coke on the colonies and the new nation, see, e.g., A. Howard, The Road from Runnymede--Magna Carta and Constitutionalism in America (1968).

The term ``law of the land'' was early the preferred expression in colonial charters and declarations of rights, which gave way to the term ``due process of law,'' although some state constitutions continued to employ both terms. Whichever phraseology was used, the expression seems generally to have occurred in close association with precise safeguards of accused persons, but, as is true of the Fifth Amendment here under consideration, the provision also suggests some limitations on substance because of its association with the guarantee of just compensation upon the taking of private property for public use.\8\

NOTE:

Scope of the Guaranty. -- Standing by itself, the phrase ``due process'' would seem to refer solely and simply to procedure, to process in court, and therefore to be so limited that ``due process of law'' would be what the legislative branch enacted it to be. But that is not the interpretation which has been placed on the term. ``It is manifest that it was not left to the legislative power to enact any process which might be devised. The article is a restraint on the legislative as well as on the executive and judicial powers of the government, and cannot be so construed as to leave congress free to make any process `due process of law' by its mere will.''\9\ All persons within the territory of the United States are entitled to its protection, including corporations,\10\ aliens,\11\ and presumptively citizens seeking readmission to the United States,\12\ but States as such are not so entitled.\13\ It is effective in the District of Columbia\14\ and in territories which are part of the United States,\15\ but it does not apply of its own force to unincorporated territories.\16\ Nor does it reach enemy alien belligerents tried by military tribunals outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.\17\

NOTES:

\10\Sinking Fund Cases, 99 U.S. 700, 719 (1879).

\11\Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228, 238 (1896).

\12\United States v. Ju Toy, 198 U.S. 253, 263 (1905); cf. Quon Quon Poy v. Johnson, 273 U.S. 352 (1927).

\13\South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 323-24 (1966).

\14\Wight v. Davidson, 181 U.S. 371, 384 (1901).

\15\Lovato v. New Mexico, 242 U.S. 199, 201 (1916).

\16\Public Utility Comm'rs v. Ynchausti & Co., 251 U.S. 401, 406 (1920).

\17\Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763 (1950); In re Yamashita, 327 U.S. 1 (1946). Justices Rutledge and Murphy in the latter case argued that the due process clause applies to every human being, including enemy belligerents.

Early in our judicial history, a number of jurists attempted to formulate a theory of natural rights--natural justice, which would limit the power of government, especially with regard to the property rights of persons.\18\ State courts were the arenas in which this struggle was carried out prior to the Civil War. Opposing the ``vested rights'' theory of protection of property were jurists who argued first, that the written constitution was the supreme law of the State and that judicial review could look only to that document in scrutinizing legislation and not to the ``unwritten law'' of ``natural rights,'' and second, that the ``police power'' of government enabled legislatures to regulate the use and holding of property in the public interest, subject only to the specific prohibitions of the written constitution. The ``vested rights'' jurists thus found in the ``law of the land'' and the ``due process'' clauses of the state constitutions a restriction upon the substantive content of legislation, which prohibited, regardless of the matter of procedure, a certain kind or degree of exertion of legislative power altogether.\19\ Thus, Chief Justice Taney was not innovating when in his opinion in the Dred Scott case he pronounced, without elaboration, that one of the reasons the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional was that an act of Congress which deprived ``a citizen of his liberty or property merely because he came himself or brought his property into a particular territory of the United States, and who had committed no offence against the laws, could hardly be dignified with the name of due process of law.''\20\ Following the War, with the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause, substantive due process interpretations were urged on the Supreme Court with regard to state legislation; first resisted, the arguments came in time to be accepted, and they imposed upon both federal and state legislation a firm judicial hand which was not to be removed until the crisis of the 1930's, and which today in non-economic legislation continues to be reasserted.

NOTES:

\19\The full account is related in E. Corwin, Liberty Against Government ch. 3 (1948). The pathbreaking decision of the era was Wynhamer v. The People, 13 N.Y. 378 (1856).

\20\Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 450 (1857).

``It may prevent confusion, and relieve from repetition, if we point out that some of our cases arose under the provisions of the Fifth and others under those of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. While the language of those Amendments is the same, yet as they were engrafted upon the Constitution at different times and in widely different circumstances of our national life, it may be that questions may arise in which different constructions and applications of their provisions may be proper.''\21\ The most obvious difference between the two due process clauses is that the Fifth Amendment clause as it binds the Federal Government coexists with a number of other express provisions in the Bill of Rights guaranteeing fair procedure and non-arbitrary action, such as jury trials, grand jury indictments, and nonexcessive bail and fines, as well as just compensation, whereas the Fourteenth Amendment clause as it binds the States has been held to contain implicitly not only the standards of fairness and justness found within the Fifth Amendment's clause but also to contain many guarantees that are expressly set out in the Bill of Rights. In that sense, the two clauses are not the same thing, but insofar as they do impose such implicit requirements of fair trials, fair hearings, and the like, which exist separately from, though they are informed with, express constitutional guarantees, the interpretation of the two clauses is substantially if not wholly the same. Save for areas in which the particularly national character of the Federal Government requires separate treatment, discussion of the meaning of due process is largely reserved for the section on the Fourteenth Amendment. Finally, it should be noted that some Fourteenth Amendment interpretations have been carried back to broaden interpretations of the Fifth Amendment's due process clause, such as, e.g., the development of equal protection standards as an aspect of Fifth Amendment due process.

NOTE:

In 1855, the Court first attempted to assess its standards for judging what was due process. At issue was the constitutionality of summary proceedings under a distress warrant to levy on the lands of a government debtor. The Court first ascertained that Congress was not free to make any process ``due process.'' ``To what principles, then are we to resort to ascertain whether this process, enacted by congress, is due process? To this the answer must be twofold. We must examine the constitution itself, to see whether this process be in conflict with any of its provisions. If not found to be so, we must look to those settled usages and modes of proceedings existing in the common and statute law of England, before the emigration of our ancestors and which are shown not to have been unsuited to their civil and political condition by having been acted on by them after the settlement of this country.'' A survey of history disclosed that the law in England seemed always to have contained a summary method for recovering debts owned the Crown not unlike the law in question. Thus, ``tested by the common and statute law of England prior to the emigration of our ancestors, and by the laws of many of the States at the time of the adoption of this amendment, the proceedings authorized by the act of 1820 cannot be denied to be due process of law. . . .''\22\

NOTE:

This formal approach to the meaning of due process could obviously have limited both Congress and the state legislatures in the development of procedures unknown to English law. But when California's abandonment of indictment by grand jury was challenged, the Court refused to be limited by the fact that such proceeding was the English practice and that Coke had indicated that it was a proceeding required as ``the law of the land.'' The meaning of the Court in Murray's Lessee was ``that a process of law, which is not otherwise forbidden, must be taken to be due process of law, if it can show the sanction of settled usage both in England and in this country; but it by no means follows that nothing else can be due process of law.'' To hold that only historical, traditional procedures can constitute due process, the Court said, ``would be to deny every quality of the law but its age, and to render it incapable of progress or improvement.''\23\ Therefore, in observing the due process guarantee, it was concluded, the Court must look ``not [to] particular forms of procedures, but [to] the very substance of individual rights to life, liberty, and property.'' The due process clause prescribed ``the limits of those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions. . . . It follows that any legal proceeding enforced by public authority, whether sanctioned by age and custom, or newly devised in the discretion of the legislative power, in furtherance of the general public good, which regards and preserves these principles of liberty and justice, must be held to be due process of law.''\24\

NOTES:

\24\Id. at 531-32, 535, 537. This flexible approach has been the one followed by the Court. E.g., Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U.S. 78 (1908); Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932); Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319 (1937); Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97 (1934).

Generally. -- The phrase ``due process of law'' does not necessarily imply a proceeding in a court or a plenary suit and trial by jury in every case where personal or property rights are involved.\25\ ``In all cases, that kind of procedure is due process of law which is suitable and proper to the nature of the case, and sanctioned by the established customs and usages of the courts.''\26\ What is unfair in one situation may be fair in another.\27\ ``The precise nature of the interest that has been adversely affected, the manner in which this was done, the reasons for doing it, the available alternatives to the procedure that was followed, the protection implicit in the office of the functionary whose conduct is challenged, the balance of hurt complained of and good accomplished--these are some of the considerations that must enter into the judicial judgment.''\28\

NOTES:

\26\Ex parte Wall, 107 U.S. 265, 289 (1883).

\27\Compare Murray's Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 59 U.S. (18 How.) 272 (1856), with Ng Fung Ho v. White, 259 U.S. 276 (1922).

\28\Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Comm. v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 163 (1951) (Justice Frankfurter concurring).

Administrative Proceedings: A Fair Hearing. -- With respect to action taken by administrative agencies, the Court has held that the demands of due process do not require a hearing at the initial stage, or at any particular point in the proceeding, so long as a hearing is held before the final order becomes effective.\29\ In Bowles v. Willingham,\30\ the Court sustained orders fixing maximum rents issued without a hearing at any stage, saying ``where Congress has provided for judicial review after the regulations or orders have been made effective it has done all that due process under the war emergency requires.'' But where, after consideration of charges brought against an employer by a complaining union, the National Labor Relations Board undertook to void an agreement between an employer and another independent union, the latter was entitled to notice and an opportunity to participate in the proceedings.\31\ Although a taxpayer must be afforded a fair opportunity for hearing in connection with the collection of taxes,\32\ collection by distraint of personal property is lawful if the taxpayer is allowed a hearing thereafter.\33\

NOTES:

\30\321 U.S. 503, 521 (1944).

\31\Consolidated Edison Co. v. NLRB, 305 U.S. 197 (1938).

\32\Central of Georgia Ry. v. Wright, 207 U.S. 127 (1907); Lipke v. Lederer, 259 U.S. 557 (1922).

\33\Phillips v. Commissioner, 283 U.S. 589 (1931). Cf. Springer v. United States, 102 U.S. 586, 593 (1881); Passavant v. United States, 148 U.S. 214 (1893). The collection of taxes is, however, very nearly a wholly unique area. See Perez v. Ledesma, 401 U.S. 82, 127 n.17 (1971) (Justice Brennan concurring in part and dissenting in part). On the limitations on private prejudgment collection, see Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp., 395 U.S. 337 (1969).

When the Constitution requires a hearing it requires a fair one, held before a tribunal which meets currently prevailing standards of impartiality.\34\ A party must be given an opportunity not only to present evidence, but also to know the claims of the opposing party and to meet them. Those who are brought into contest with the Government in a quasi-judicial proceeding aimed at control of their activities are entitled to be fairly advised of what the Government proposes and to be heard upon the proposal before the final command is issued.\35\ But a variance between the charges and findings will not invalidate administrative proceedings where the record shows that at no time during the hearing was there any misunderstanding as to the basis of the complaint.\36\ The mere admission of evidence which would be inadmissible in judicial proceedings does not vitiate the order of an administrative agency.\37\ A provision that such a body shall not be controlled by rules of evidence does not, however, justify orders without a foundation in evidence having rational probative force. Hearsay may be received in an administrative hearing and may constitute by itself substantial evidence in support of an agency determination, provided that there are present factors which assure the underlying reliability and probative value of the evidence and, at least in the case at hand, where the claimant before the agency had the opportunity to subpoena the witnesses and cross-examine them with regard to the evidence.\38\ While the Court has recognized that in some circumstances a ``fair hearing'' implies a right to oral argument,\39\ it has refused to lay down a general rule that would cover all cases.\40\

NOTES:

\35\Margan v. United States, 304 U.S. 1, 18-19 (1938). The Court has experienced some difficulty with application of this principle to administrative hearings and subsequent review in selective service cases. Compare Gonzales v. United States, 348 U.S. 407 (1955) (conscientious objector contesting his classification before appeals board must be furnished copy of recommendation submitted by Department of Justice; only by being appraised of the arguments and conclusions upon which recommendations were based would he be enabled to present his case effectively), with United States v. Nugent, 346 U.S. 1 (1953) (in auxiliary hearing which culminated in Justice Department's report and recommendation, it is sufficient that registrant be provided with resume of adverse evidence in FBI report because the ``imperative needs of mobilization and national vigilance'' mandate a minimum of ``litigious interruption''), and Gonzales v. United States, 364 U.S. 59 (1960) (five-to-four decision finding no due process violation when petitioner (1) at departmental proceedings was not permitted to rebut statements attributed to him by his local board, because the statements were in his file and he had opportunity to rebut both before hearing officer and appeal board, nor (2) at trial was denied access to hearing officer's notes and report, because he failed to show any need and did have Department recommendations).

\36\NLRB v. Mackay Radio & Tel. Co., 304 U.S. 333, 349-50 (1938).

\37\Western Chem. Co. v. United States, 271 U.S. 268 (1926). See also United States v. Abilene & So. Ry., 265 U.S. 274, 288 (1924).

\38\Richardson v. Perales, 402 U.S. 389 (1971).

\39\Londoner v. Denver, 210 U.S. 373 (1908).

\40\FCC v. WJR, 337 U.S. 265, 274-77 (1949). See also Inland Empire Council v. Millis, 325 U.S. 697, 710 (1945). See Administrative Procedure Act, 60 Stat. 237 (1946), 5 U.S.C Sec. Sec. 1001-1011. Cf. Link v. Wabash R.R., 370 U.S. 626, 637, 646 (1962), wherein the majority rejected Justice Black's dissenting thesis that the dismissal with prejudice of a damage suit without notice to the client and grounded upon the dilatory tactics of his attorney, and the latter's failure to appear at a pre-trial conference, amounted to a taking of property without due process of law.

In the light of the historically unquestioned power of a commanding officer summarily to exclude civilians from the area of his command, and applicable Navy regulations which confirm this authority, together with a stipulation in the contract between a restaurant concessionaire and the Naval Gun Factory forbidding employment on the premises of any person not meeting security requirements, due process was not denied by the summary exclusion on security grounds of the concessionaire's cook, without hearing or advice as to the basis for the exclusion. The Fifth Amendment does not require a trial-type hearing in every conceivable case of governmental impairment of private interest.\41\ Since the Civil Rights Commission acts solely as an investigative and fact-finding agency and makes no adjudications, the Court, in Hannah v. Larche,\42\ upheld supplementary rules of procedure adopted by the Commission, independently of statutory authorization, under which state electoral officials and others accused of discrimination and summoned to appear at its hearings, are not apprised of the identity of their accusers, and witnesses, including the former, are not accorded a right to confront and cross-examine witnesses or accusers testifying at such hearings. Such procedural rights, the Court maintained, have not been granted by grand juries, congressional committees, or administrative agencies conducting purely fact-finding investigations in no way determining private rights.

NOTES:

\42\363 U.S. 420, 493, 499 (1960). Justices Douglas and Black dissented on the ground that when the Commission summons a person accused of violating a federal election law with a view to ascertaining whether the accusation may be sustained, it acts in lieu of a grand jury or a committing magistrate, and therefore should be obligated to afford witnesses the procedural protection herein denied. Congress subsequently amended the law to require that any person who is defamed, degraded, or incriminated by evidence or testimony presented to the Commission be afforded the opportunity to appear and be heard in executive session, with a reasonable number of additional witnesses requested by him, before the Commission can make public such evidence or testimony. Further, any such person, before the evidence or testimony is released, must be afforded an opportunity to appear publicly to state his side and to file verified statements with the Commission which it must release with any report or other document containing defaming, degrading, or incriminating evidence or testimony. Pub. L. No. 91-521, Sec. 4, 84 Stat. 1357 (1970), 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1975a(e). Cf. Jenkins v. McKeithen, 395 U.S. 411 (1969).

Aliens: Entry and Deportation. -- To aliens who have never been naturalized or acquired any domicile or residence in the United States, the decision of an executive or administrative officer, acting within powers expressly conferred by Congress, with regard to whether or not they shall be permitted to enter the country, is due process of law.\43\ Since the status of a resident alien returning from abroad is equivalent to that of an entering alien, his exclusion by the Attorney General without a hearing, on the basis of secret, undisclosed information, also is deemed consistent with due process.\44\ The complete authority of Congress in the matter of admission of aliens justifies delegation of power to executive officers to enforce the exclusion of aliens afflicted with contagious diseases by imposing upon the owner of the vessel bringing any such alien into the country a money penalty, collectible before and as a condition of the grant of clearance.\45\ If the person seeking admission claims American citizenship, the decision of the Secretary of Labor may be made final, but it must be made after a fair hearing, however summary, and must find adequate support in the evidence. A decision based upon a record from which relevant and probative evidence has been omitted is not a fair hearing.\46\ Where the statute made the decision of an immigration inspector final unless an appeal was taken to the Secretary of the Treasury, a person who failed to take such an appeal did not, by an allegation of citizenship, acquire a right to a judicial hearing on habeas corpus.\47\

NOTES:

\44\Shaughnessy v. United States ex rel. Mezel, 345 U.S. 206 (1953). The long continued detention on Ellis Island of a non-deportable alien does not change his status or give rise to any right of judicial review. In dissent, Justices Black and Douglas maintained that the protracted confinement on Ellis Island without a hearing could not be reconciled with due process. Also dissenting, Justices Frankfurter and Jackson contended that when indefinite commitment on Ellis Island becomes the means of enforcing exclusion, due process requires that a hearing precede such deprivation of liberty.       Cf. Kwong Hai Chew v. Colding, 344 U.S. 590, 596 (1953), wherein the Court, after acknowledging that resident aliens held for deportation are entitled to procedural due process, ruled that as a matter of law the Attorney General must accord notice of the charges and a hearing to a resident alien seaman who is sought to be ``expelled'' upon his return from a voyage overseas. The Knauff case was distinguished on the ground that the seaman's status was not that of an entrant, but rather that of a resident alien. And see Leng May Ma v. Barber, 357 U.S. 185 (1958).

\45\Oceanic Navig. Co. v. Stranahan, 214 U.S. 320 (1909).

\46\Kwock Jan Fat v. White, 253 U.S. 454, 457 (1920). See also Chin Yow v. United States, 208 U.S. 8 (1908).

\47\United States v. Sing Tuck, 194 U.S. 161 (1904). See also Quon Quon Poy v. Johnson, 273 U.S. 352, 358 (1927).

Deportation proceedings are not criminal prosecutions within the meaning of the Bill of Rights.\48\ The authority to deport is drawn from the power of Congress to regulate the entrance of aliens and impose conditions upon their continued liberty to reside within the United States. Findings of fact reached by executive officers after a fair, though summary deportation hearing may be made conclusive.\49\ In Wong Yang Sung v. McGrath,\50\ however, the Court intimated that a hearing before a tribunal which did not meet the standards of impartiality embodied in the Administrative Procedure Act\51\ might not satisfy the requirements of due process of law. To avoid such constitutional doubts, the Court construed the law to disqualify immigration inspectors as presiding officers in deportation proceedings. Except in time of war, deportation without a fair hearing or on charges unsupported by any evidence is a denial of due process which may be corrected on habeas corpus.\52\ In contrast with the decision in United States v. Ju Toy\53\ that a person seeking entrance to the United States was not entitled to a judicial hearing on his claim of citizenship, a person arrested and held for deportation is entitled to a day in court if he denies that he is an alien.\54\ A closely divided Court has ruled that in time of war the deportation of an enemy alien may be ordered summarily by executive action; due process of law does not require the courts to determine the sufficiency of any hearing which is gratuitously afforded to the alien.\55\

NOTES:

\49\Zakonaite v. Wolf, 226 U.S. 272 (1912). See Jay v. Boyd, 351 U.S. 345 (1956), wherein the Court emphasized that suspension of deportation is not a matter of right, but of grace, like probation or parole, and accordingly an alien is not entitled to a hearing which contemplates full disclosure of the considerations, specifically, information of a confidential nature pertaining to national security, which induced administrative officers to deny suspension. In four dissenting opinions, Chief Justice Warren, together with Justices Black, Frankfurter, and Douglas, found irreconcilable with a fair hearing and due process the delegation by the Attorney General of his discretion to an inferior officer and the vesting of the latter with power to deny a suspension on the basis of undisclosed evidence which may amount to no more than uncorroborated hearsay.

\50\339 U.S. 33 (1950). See also Kimm v. Rosenberg, 363 U.S. 405, 408, 410, 415 (1960), wherein the Court ruled that when, at a hearing on his petition for suspension of a deportation order, an alien invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to questions as to Communist Party membership, and contended that the burden of proving such affiliation was on the Government, it was incumbent on the alien to supply the information inasmuch as the Government had no statutory discretion to suspend deportation of a Communist. Justices Douglas, Black, Brennan, and Chief Justice Warren dissented on the ground that exercise of the privilege is a neutral act, supporting neither innocence nor guilt and may not be utilized as evidence of dubious character. Justice Brennan also thought the Government was requiring the alien to prove non-membership when no one had intimated that he was a Communist.

\51\5 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 551 et seq.

\52\Vajtauer v. Commissioner of Immigration, 273 U.S. 103, 106 (1927). See also Mahler v. Eby, 264 U.S. 32, 41 (1924). Although in Heikkila v. Barber, 345 U.S. 229 (1953), the Court held that a deportation order under the Immigration Act of 1917 might be challenged only by habeas corpus, in Shaughnessy v. Pedreiro, 349 U.S. 48 (1955), it established that, under the Immigration Act of 1952, 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1101, the validity of a deportation order also may be contested in an action for declaratory judgment and injunctive relief. Also, a collateral challenge must be permitted to the use of a deportation proceeding as an element of a criminal offense where effective judicial review of the deportation order has been denied. United States v. Mendoza-Lopez, 481 U.S. 828 (1987).

\53\198 U.S. 253 (1905).

\54\Ng Fung Ho v. White, 259 U.S. 276, 281 (1922).

\55\Ludecke v. Watkins, 335 U.S. 160 (1948). Three of the four dissenting Justices, Douglas, Murphy, and Rutledge, argued that even an enemy alien could not be deported without a fair hearing.

Judicial Review of Administrative Proceedings. -- To the extent that constitutional rights are involved, due process of law imports a judicial review of the action of administrative or executive officers. This proposition is undisputed so far as questions of law are concerned, but the extent to which the courts should and will go in reviewing determinations of fact has been a highly controversial issue. In St. Joseph Stock Yards Co. v. United States,\56\ the Court held that upon review of an order of the Secretary of Agriculture establishing maximum rates for services rendered by a stockyard company, due process required that the court exercise its independent judgment upon the facts to determine whether the rates were confiscatory.\57\ Subsequent cases sustaining rate orders of the Federal Power Commission have not dealt explicitly with this point.\58\ The Court has said simply that a person assailing such an order ``carries the heavy burden of making a convincing showing that it is invalid because it is unjust and unreasonable in its consequences.''\59\

NOTES:

\57\Id. at 51-54. Justices Brandeis, Stone, and Cardozo, while concurring in the result, took exception to this proposition.

\58\FPC v. Natural Gas Pipeline Co., 315 U.S. 575, 586 (1942); FPC v. Hope Gas Co., 320 U.S. 591 (1944).

\59\FPC v. Hope Gas Co., 320 U.S. 591, 602 (1944).

There has been a division of opinion in the Supreme Court with regard to what extent, if at all, proceedings before military tribunals should be reviewed by the courts for the purpose of determining compliance with the due process clause. In In re Yamashita,\60\ the majority denied a petition for certiorari and petitions for writs of habeas corpus to review the conviction of a Japanese war criminal by a military commission sitting in the Philippine Islands. It held that since the military commission, in admitting evidence to which objection was made, had not violated any act of Congress, a treaty, or a military command defining its authority, its ruling on evidence and on the mode of conducting the proceedings were not reviewable by the courts. Again, in Johnson v. Eisentrager,\61\ the Court overruled a lower court decision, which in reliance upon the dissenting opinion in the Yamashita case, had held that the due process clause required that the legality of the conviction of enemy alien belligerents by military tribunals should be tested by the writ of habeas corpus.

NOTES:

\61\339 U.S. 763 (1950). Justices Douglas, Black, and Burton dissented.

Without dissent, the Court, in Hiatt v. Brown,\62\ reversed the judgment of a lower court which had discharged a prisoner serving a sentence imposed by a court-martial because of errors whereby the prisoner had been deprived of due process of law. The Court held that the court below had erred in extending its review, for the purpose of determining compliance with the due process clause, to such matters as the propositions of law set forth in the staff judge advocate's report, the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain conviction, the adequacy of the pre-trial investigation, and the competence of the law member and defense counsel. In summary, Justice Clark wrote: ``In this case the court-martial had jurisdiction of the person accused and the offense charged, and acted within its lawful powers. The correction of any errors it may have committed is for the military authorities which are alone authorized to review its decision.''\63\ Similarly, in Burns v. Wilson,\64\ the Court denied a petition for the writ to review a conviction by a military tribunal on the Island of Guam wherein the petitioners asserted that their imprisonment resulted from proceedings violative of their basic constitutional rights. Four Justices, with whom Justice Minton concurred, maintained that judicial review is limited to determining whether the military tribunal, or court-martial, had given fair consideration to each of petitioners' allegations, and does not embrace an opportunity ``to prove de novo'' what petitioners had ``failed to prove in the military courts.'' According to Justice Minton, however, if the military court had jurisdiction, its action is not reviewable.

NOTES:

\63\Id. at 111.

\64\346 U.S. 137, 140-41, 146, 147, 148, 150, 153 (1953).

Justice Harlan, dissenting in Poe v. Ullman,\65\ observed that one view of due process, ``ably and insistently argued . . . , sought to limit the provision to a guarantee of procedural fairness.'' But, he continued, due process ``in the consistent view of this Court has ever been a broader concept . . . . Were due process merely a procedural safeguard it would fail to reach those situations where the deprivation of life, liberty or property was accomplished by legislation which by operating in the future could, given even the fairest possible procedure in application to individuals, nevertheless destroy the enjoyment of all three. . . . Thus the guaranties of due process, though having their roots in Magna Carta's `per legem terrae' and considered as procedural safeguards `against executive usurpation and tyranny,' have in this country `become bulwarks also against arbitrary legislation.'''

NOTE:

Discrimination. -- ``Unlike the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifth contains no equal protection clause and it provides no guaranty against discriminatory legislation by Congress.''\66\ At other times, however, the Court assumed that ``discrimination, if gross enough, is equivalent to confiscation and subject under the Fifth Amendment to challenge and annulment.''\67\ The theory that was to prevail seems first to have been enunciated by Chief Justice Taft, who observed that the due process and equal protection clauses are ``associated'' and that ``[i]t may be that they overlap, that a violation of one may involve at times the violation of the other, but the spheres of the protection they offer are not coterminous. . . . [Due process] tends to secure equality of law in the sense that it makes a required minimum of protection for every one's right of life, liberty and property, which the Congress or the legislature may not withhold. Our whole system of law is predicated on the general, fundamental principle of equality of application of the law.''\68\ Thus, in Bolling v. Sharpe,\69\ a companion case to Brown v. Board of Education,\70\ the Court held that segregation of pupils in the public schools of the District of Columbia violated the due process clause. ``The Fifth Amendment, which is applicable in the District of Columbia, does not contain an equal protection clause as does the Fourteenth Amendment which applies only to the states. But the concepts of equal protection and due process, both stemming from our American ideal of fairness, are not mutually exclusive. The `equal protection of the laws' is a more explicit safeguard of prohibited unfairness than `due process of law,' and, therefore, we do not imply that the two are always interchangeable phrases. But, as this Court has recognized, discrimination may be so unjustifiable as to be violative of due process.

NOTES:

\67\Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U.S. 548, 585 (1937). See also Currin v. Wallace, 306 U.S. 1, 13-14 (1939).

\68\Truax v. Corrigan, 257 U.S. 312, 331 (1921). See also Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, 100 (1943).

\69\347 U.S. 497, 499-500 (1954).

\70\347 U.S. 483 (1954). With respect to race discrimination, the Court had earlier utilized its supervisory authority over the lower federal courts and its power to construe statutes to reach results it might have based on the equal protection clause if the cases had come from the States. E.g., Hurd v. Hodge, 334 U.S. 24 (1948); Steele v. Louisville & Nashville R.R., 323 U.S. 192 (1944); Railroad Trainmen v. Howard, 343 U.S. 768 (1952). See also Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., 328 U.S. 217 (1946).

``Although the Court has not assumed to define `liberty' with any great precision, that term is not confined to mere freedom from bodily restraint. Liberty under law extends to the full range of conduct which the individual is free to pursue, and it cannot be restricted except for a proper governmental objective. Segregation in public education is not reasonably related to any proper governmental objective and thus it imposes on Negro children of the District of Columbia a burden that constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of their liberty in violation of the Due Process Clause.

``In view of our decision that the Constitution prohibits the states from maintaining racially segregated public schools, it would be unthinkable that the same Constitution would impose a lesser duty on the Federal Government.''

``Equal protection analysis in the Fifth Amendment area,'' the Court has said, ``is the same as that under the Fourteenth Amendment.''\71\ So saying, the court has applied much of its Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence to strike down sex classifications in federal legislation,\72\ reached classifications with an adverse impact upon illegitimates,\73\ and invalidated some welfare assistance provisions with some interesting exceptions.\74\ However, almost all legislation involves some degree of classification among particular categories of persons, things, or events, and, just as the equal protection clause itself does not outlaw ``reasonable'' classifications, neither is the due process clause any more intolerant of the great variety of social and economic legislation typically containing what must be arbitrary line-drawing.\75\ Thus, for example, the Court has sustained a law imposing greater punishment for an offense involving rights of property of the United States than for a like offense involving the rights of property of a private person.\76\ A veterans' law which extended certain educational benefits to all veterans who had served ``on active duty'' and thereby excluded conscientious objectors from eligibility was held to be sustainable, it being rational for Congress to have determined that the disruption caused by military service was qualitatively and quantitatively different from that caused by alternative service, and for Congress to have so provided to make military service more attractive.\77\

NOTES:

\72\Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677 (1973); Califano v. Goldfarb, 430 U.S. 199 (1977). But see Rostker v. Goldberg, 453 U.S. 57 (1981); Califano v. Jobst, 434 U.S. 47 (1977).

\73\Compare Jiminez v. Weinberger, 417 U.S. 628 (1974) with Mathews v. Lucas, 427 U.S. 495 (1976).

\74\Department of Agriculture v. Murry, 413 U.S. 508 (1973). See also Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U.S. 528 (1973).

\75\Richardson v. Belcher, 404 U.S. 78, 81 (1971); Lyng v. Castillo, 477 U.S. 635 (1986) (Food Stamp Act limitation of benefits to households of related persons who prepare meals together). With respect to courts and criminal legislation, see Hurtado v. United States, 410 U.S. 578 (1973); Marshall v. United States, 414 U.S. 417 (1974); United States v. MacCollom, 426 U.S. 317 (1976).

\76\Hill v. United States ex rel. Weiner, 300 U.S. 105, 109 (1937). See also District of Columbia v. Brooke, 214 U.S. 138 (1909); Panama R.R. v. Johnson, 264 U.S. 375 (1924); Detroit Bank v. United States, 317 U.S. 329 (1943).

\77\Johnson v. Robison, 415 U.S. 361 (1974). See also Schlesinger v. Ballard, 419 U.S. 498 (1975) (military law that classified men more adversely than women deemed rational because it had the effect of compensating for prior discrimination against women). Wayte v. United States, 470 U.S. 598 (1985) (selective prosecution of persons who turned themselves in or were reported by others as having failed to register for the draft does not deny equal protection, there being no showing that these men were selected for prosecution because of their protest activities).

``The federal sovereign, like the States, must govern impartially. . . . [B]ut . . . there may be overriding national interests which justify selective federal legislation that would be unacceptable for an individual State.''\78\ The paramount federal power over immigration and naturalization is the principal example, although there are undoubtedly others, of the national government being able to classify upon some grounds--alienage, naturally, but also other suspect and quasi-suspect categories as well--that would result in invalidation were a state to enact them. The instances may be relatively few, but they do exist.

NOTE:

Congressional Police Measures. -- Numerous regulations of a police nature, imposed under powers specifically granted to the Federal Government, have been sustained over objections based on the due process clause. Congress may require the owner of a vessel entering United States ports, and on which alien seamen are afflicted with specified diseases, to bear the expense of hospitalizing such persons.\79\ It may prohibit the transportation in interstate commerce of filled milk\80\ or the importation of convict-made goods into any State where their receipt, possession, or sale is a violation of local law.\81\ It may require employers to bargain collectively with representatives of their employees chosen in a manner prescribed by law, to reinstate employees discharged in violation of law, and to permit use of a company-owned hall for union meetings.\82\ Subject to First Amendment considerations, Congress may regulate the postal service to deny its facilities to persons who would use them for purposes contrary to public policy.\83\

NOTES:

\80\United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144 (1938); Carolene Products Co. v. United States, 323 U.S. 18 (1944).

\81\Kentucky Whip & Collar Co. v. Illinois Cent. R.R., 299 U.S. 334 (1937).

\82\E.g., Virginian Ry. v. System Federation No. 40, 300 U.S. 515 (1937); NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1 (1937); Railway Employees' Dep't v. Hanson, 351 U.S. 225 (1956); NLRB v. Stowe Spinning Co., 336 U.S. 226 (1949); NLRB v. Mackay Radio & Tel. Co., 304 U.S. 333 (1938).

\83\Ex parte Jackson, 96 U.S. 727 (1878); Rowan v. Post Office Dep't, 397 U.S. 728 (1970).

Congressional Regulation of Public Utilities. -- Inasmuch as Congress, in giving federal agencies jurisdiction over various public utilities, usually has prescribed standards substantially identical with those by which the Supreme Court has tested the validity of state action, the review of agency orders seldom has turned on constitutional issues. In two cases, however, maximum rates prescribed by the Secretary of Agriculture for stockyard companies were sustained only after detailed consideration of numerous items excluded from the rate base or from operating expenses, apparently on the assumption that error with respect to any such item would render the rates confiscatory and void.\84\ A few years later, in FPC v. Hope Gas Co.,\85\ the Court adopted an entirely different approach. It took the position that the validity of the Commission's order depended upon whether the impact or total effect of the order is just and reasonable, rather than upon the method of computing the rate base. Rates which enable a company to operate successfully, to maintain its financial integrity, to attract capital, and to compensate its investors for the risks assumed cannot be condemned as unjust and unreasonable even though they might produce only a meager return in a rate base computed by the ``present fair value'' method.

NOTES:

\85\320 U.S. 591 (1944). The result of this case had been foreshadowed by the opinion of Justice Stone in FPC v. Natural Gas Pipeline Co., 315 U.S. 575, 586 (1942), to the effect that the Commission was not bound to the use of any single formula or combination of formulas in determining rates.

Orders prescribing the form and contents of accounts kept by public utility companies,\86\ and statutes requiring a private carrier to furnish the Interstate Commerce Commission with information for valuing its property\87\ have been sustained against the objection that they were arbitrary and invalid. An order of the Secretary of Commerce directed to a single common carrier by water requiring it to file a summary of its books and records pertaining to its rates was also held not to violate the Fifth Amendment.\88\

NOTES:

\87\Valvoline Oil Co. v. United States, 308 U.S. 141 (1939); Champlin Rfg. Co. v. United States, 329 U.S. 29 (1946).

\88\Isbrandtsen-Moller Co. v. United States, 300 U.S. 146 (1937).

Congressional Regulation of Railroads. -- Legislation or administrative orders pertaining to railroads have been challenged repeatedly under the due process clause but seldom with success. Orders of the Interstate Commerce Commission establishing through routes and joint rates have been sustained,\89\ as has its division of joint rates to give a weaker group of carriers a greater share of such rates where the proportion allotted to the stronger group was adequate to avoid confiscation.\90\ The recapture of one half of the earnings of railroads in excess of a fair net operating income, such recaptured earnings to be available as a revolving fund for loans to weaker roads, was held valid on the ground that any carrier earning an excess held it as trustee.\91\ An order enjoining certain steam railroads from discriminating against an electric railroad by denying it reciprocal switching privileges did not violate the Fifth Amendment even through its practical effect was to admit the electric road to a part of the business being adequately handled by the steam roads.\92\ Similarly, the fact that a rule concerning the allotment of coal cars operated to restrict the use of private cars did not amount to a taking of property.\93\ Railroad companies were not denied due process of law by a statute forbidding them to transport in interstate commerce commodities which have been manufactured, mined or produced by them.\94\ An order approving a lease of one railroad by another, upon condition that displaced employees of the lessor should receive partial compensation for the loss suffered by reason of the lease\95\ is consonant with due process of law. A law prohibiting the issuance of free passes was held constitutional even as applied to abolish rights created by a prior agreement whereby the carrier bound itself to issue such passes annually for life, in settlement of a claim for personal injuries.\96\ A non-arbitrary Interstate Commerce Commission order establishing a non-compensatory rate for carriage of certain commodities does not violate the due process or just compensation clauses as long as the public interest thereby is served and the rates as a whole yield just compensation.\97\

NOTES:

\90\New England Divisions Case, 261 U.S. 184 (1923).

\91\Dayton-Goose Creek Ry. v. United States, 263 U.S. 456, 481, 483 (1924).

\92\Chicago, I. & L. Ry. v. United States, 270 U.S. 287 (1926). Cf. Seaboard Air Line Ry. v. United States, 254 U.S. 57 (1920).

\93\Assigned Car Cases, 274 U.S. 564, 575 (1927).

\94\United States v. Delaware & Hudson Co., 213 U.S. 366, 405, 411, 415 (1909).

\95\United States v. Lowden, 308 U.S. 225 (1939).

\96\Louisville & Nashville R.R. v. Mottley, 219 U.S. 467 (1911).

\97\B. & O. R.R. v. United States, 345 U.S. 146 (1953).

Occasionally, however, regulatory action has been held invalid under the due process clause. An order issued by the Interstate Commerce Commission relieving short line railroads from the obligation to pay the usual fixed sum per day rental for cars used on foreign roads for a space of two days was held to be arbitrary and invalid.\98\ A retirement act which made eligible for pensions all persons who had been in the service of any railroad within one year prior to the adoption of the law, counted past unconnected service of an employee toward the requirement for a pension without any contribution therefor, and treated all carriers as a single employer and pooled their assets, without regard to their individual obligations, was held unconstitutional.\99\

NOTES:

\99\Railroad Retirement Bd. v. Alton R.R., 295 U.S. 330 (1935). But cf. Usery v. Turner Elkhorn Mining Co., 428 U.S. 1, 19 (1976).

Taxation. -- In laying taxes, the Federal Government is less narrowly restricted by the Fifth Amendment than are the States by the Fourteenth. The Federal Government may tax property belonging to its citizens, even if such property is never situated within the jurisdiction of the United States,\100\ and it may tax the income of a citizen resident abroad, which is derived from property located at his residence.\101\ The difference is explained by the fact that protection of the Federal Government follows the citizen wherever he goes, whereas the benefits of state government accrue only to persons and property within the State's borders. The Supreme Court has said that, in the absence of an equal protection clause, ``a claim of unreasonable classification or inequality in the incidence or application of a tax raises no question under the Fifth Amendment. . . .''\102\ It has sustained, over charges of unfair differentiation between persons, a graduated income tax,\103\ a higher tax on oleomargarine than on butter,\104\ an excise tax on ``puts'' but not on ``call,''\105\ a tax on the income of business operated by corporations but not on similar enterprises carried on by individuals,\106\ an income tax on foreign corporations, based on their income from sources within the United States, while domestic corporations are taxed on income from all sources,\107\ a tax on foreign-built but not upon domestic yachts,\108\ a tax on employers of eight or more persons, with exemptions for agricultural labor and domestic service,\109\ a gift tax law embodying a plan of graduations and exemptions under which donors of the same amount might be liable for different sums,\110\ an Alaska statute imposing license taxes only on nonresident fisherman,\111\ an act which taxed the manufacture of oil and fertilizer from herring at a higher rate than similar processing of other fish or fish offal,\112\ an excess profits tax which defined ``invested capital'' with reference to the original cost of the property rather than to its present value,\113\ an undistributed profits tax in the computation of which special credits were allowed to certain taxpayers,\114\ an estate tax upon the estate of a deceased spouse in respect of the moiety of the surviving spouse where the effect of the dissolution of the community is to enhance the value of the survivor's moiety,\115\ and a tax on nonprofit mutual insurers although such insurers organized before a certain date were exempt inasmuch as a continuing exemption for all insurers would have led to their multiplication to the detriment of other federal programs.\116\

NOTES:

\101\Cook v. Tait, 265 U.S. 47 (1924).

\102\Helvering v. Lerner Stores Co., 314 U.S. 463, 468 (1941). But see supra, pp.1356-59.

\103\Brushaber v. Union Pac. R.R., 240 U.S. 1, 24 (1916).

\104\McCray v. United States, 195 U.S. 27, 61 (1904).

\105\Treat v. White, 181 U.S. 264 (1901).

\106\Flint v. Stone Tracy Co., 220 U.S. 107 (1911).

\107\National Paper Co. v. Bowers, 266 U.S. 373 (1924).

\108\Billings v. United States, 232 U.S. 261, 282 (1914).

\109\Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U.S. 548 (1937); Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937).

\110\Bromley v. McCaughn, 280 U.S. 124 (1929).

\111\Haavik v. Alaska Packers' Ass'n, 263 U.S. 510 (1924).

\112\Alaska Fish Co. v. Smith, 255 U.S. 44 (1921).

\113\LaBelle Iron Works v. United States, 256 U.S. 377 (1921).

\114\Helvering v. Northwest Steel Mills, 311 U.S. 46 (1940).

\115\Fernandez v. Wiener, 326 U.S. 340 (1945); cf. Coolidge v. Long, 282 U.S. 582 (1931).

\116\United States v. Maryland Savings-Share Ins. Corp., 400 U.S. 4 (1970).

Retroactive Taxes. -- It has been customary from the beginning for Congress to give some retroactive effect to its tax laws, usually making them effective from the beginning of the tax year or from the date of introduction of the bill that became the law.\117\ Application of an income tax statute to the entire calendar year in which enactment took place has never, barring some peculiar circumstance, been deemed to deny due process.\118\ ``Taxation is neither a penalty imposed on the taxpayer nor a liability which he assumes by contract. It is but a way of apportioning the cost of government among those who in some measure are privileged to enjoy its benefits and must bear its burdens. Since no citizen enjoys immunity from that burden, its retroactive imposition does not necessarily infringe due process, and to challenge the present tax it is not enough to point out that the taxable event, the receipt of income, antedated the statute.''\119\ A special income tax on profits realized by the sale of silver, retroactive for 35 days, which was approximately the period during which the silver purchase bill was before Congress, was held valid.\120\ An income tax law, made retroactive to the beginning of the calendar year in which it was adopted, was found constitutional as applied to the gain from the sale, shortly before its enactment, of property received as a gift during the year.\121\ Retroactive assessment of penalties for fraud or negligence,\122\ or of an additional tax on the income of a corporation used to avoid a surtax on its shareholder,\123\ does not deprive the taxpayer of property without due process of law.

NOTES:

\118\Stockdale v. Insurance Companies, 87 U.S. (20 Wall.) 323, 331, 332 (1874); Brushaber v. Union Pac. R.R., 240 U.S. 1, 20 (1916); Cooper v. United States, 280 U.S. 409, 411 (1930); Milliken v. United States, 283 U.S. 15, 21 (1931); Reinecke v. Smith, 289 U.S. 172, 175 (1933); United States v. Hudson, 299 U.S. 498, 500-01 (1937); Welch v. Henry, 305 U.S. 134, 146, 148-50 (1938); Fernandez v. Wiener, 326 U.S. 340, 355 (1945); United States v. Darusmont, 449 U.S. 292, 297 (1981).

\119\Welch v. Henry, 305 U.S. 134, 146-47 (1938).

\120\United States v. Hudson, 299 U.S. 498 (1937). See also Stockdale v. Insurance Companies, 87 U.S. (20 Wall.) 323, 331, 341 (1874); Brushaber v. Union Pac. R.R., 240 U.S. 1, 20 (1916); Lynch v. Hornby, 247 U.S. 339, 343 (1918).

\121\Cooper v. United States, 280 U.S. 409 (1930); see also Reinecke v. Smith, 289 U.S. 172 (1933).

\122\Helvering v. Mitchell, 303 U.S. 391 (1938).

\123\Helvering v. National Grocery Co., 304 U.S. 282 (1938).

An additional excise tax imposed upon property still held for sale, after one excise tax had been paid by a previous owner, does not violate the due process clause.\124\ Similarly upheld were a transfer tax measured in part by the value of property held jointly by a husband and wife, including that which comes to the joint tenancy as a gift from the decedent spouse\125\ and the inclusion in the gross income of the settlor of income accruing to a revocable trust during any period when the settlor had power to revoke or modify it.\126\

NOTES:

\125\Tyler v. United States, 281 U.S. 497 (1930); United States v. Jacobs, 306 U.S. 363 (1939).

\126\Reinecke v. Smith, 289 U.S. 172 (1933).

However, the Court has treated differently gift taxes imposed retroactively upon gifts that were made and completely vested before the enactment of the taxing statute,\127\ at least in part on the basis that such imposition unfairly treats a taxpayer who could have altered his behavior to avoid the tax if it could have been anticipated by him at the time the transaction was effected. Also, a conclusive presumption that gifts made within two years of death were made in contemplation of death was condemned as arbitrary and capricious, even with respect to subsequent transfers.\128\

NOTES:

\128\Heiner v. Donnan, 285 U.S. 312 (1932).

Deprivation of Property: Retroactive Legislation. -- Federal regulation of future action, based upon rights previously acquired by the person regulated, is not prohibited by the Constitution. So long as the Constitution authorizes the subsequently enacted legislation, the fact that its provisions limit or interfere with previously acquired rights does not ordinarily condemn it. The imposition upon coal mine operators, and ultimately coal consumers, of the liability of compensating former employees, who had terminated work in the industry before passage of the law, for black lung disabilities contracted in the course of their work, was sustained by the Court as a rational measure to spread the costs of the employees' disabilities to those who had profited from the fruits of their labor.\129\ Legislation readjusting rights and burdens is not unlawful solely because it upsets otherwise settled expectations, but it must take account of the realities previously existing, i.e., that the danger may not have been known or appreciated, or that actions might have been taken in reliance upon the current state of the law; therefore, legislation imposing liability on the basis of deterrence or of blameworthiness might not have passed muster. The Court has applied Turner Elkhorn in upholding retroactive application of pension plan termination provisions to cover the period of congressional consideration, declaring that the test for retroactive application of legislation adjusting economic burdens is merely whether ``the retroactive application . . . is itself justified by a rational legislative purpose.''\130\

NOTES:

\130\Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. v. R.A. Gray & Co., 467 U.S. 717, 730 (1984). Accord, United States v. Sperry Corp., 493 U.S. 52, 65 (1989) (upholding imposition of user fee on claimants paid by Iran- United States Claims Tribunal prior to enactment of fee statute).

Rent regulations were sustained as applied to prevent execution of a judgment of eviction rendered by a state court before the enabling legislation was passed.\131\ For the reason that ``those who do business in the regulated field cannot object if the legislative scheme is buttressed by subsequent amendments to achieve the legislative end,'' no vested right to use housing, built with the aid of FHA mortgage insurance for transient purposes, was acquired by one obtaining insurance under an earlier section of the National Housing Act, which, though silent in this regard, was contemporaneously construed as barring rental to transients, and was later modified by an amendment which expressly excluded such use.\132\ An order by an Area Rent Director reducing an unapproved rental and requiring the landlord to refund the excess previously collected, was held, with one dissenting vote, not to be the type of retroactivity which is condemned by law.\133\ The application of a statute providing for tobacco marketing quotas, to a crop planted prior to its enactment, was held not to deprive the producers of property without due process of law since it operated, not upon production, but upon the marketing of the product after the act was passed.\134\

NOTES:

\132\FHA v. The Darlington, Inc., 358 U.S. 84, 89-91, 92-93 (1958). Dissenting, Justices Harlan, Frankfurter, and Whittaker maintained that under the due process clause the United States, in its contractual relations, is bound by the same rules as private individuals unless the action taken falls within the general federal regulatory power.

\133\Woods v. Stone, 333 U.S. 472 (1948).

\134\Mulford v. Smith, 307 U.S. 38 (1939). An increase in the penalty for production of wheat in excess of quota was valid as applied retroactively to wheat already planted, where Congress concurrently authorized a substantial increase in the amount of the loan that might be made to cooperating farmers upon stored ``farm marketing excess wheat.'' Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942).

In the exercise of its comprehensive powers over revenue, finance, and currency, Congress may make Treasury notes legal tender in payment of debts previously contracted\135\ and may invalidate provisions in private contracts calling for payment in gold coin,\136\ but rights against the United States arising out of contract are more strongly protected by the due process clause. Hence, a law purporting to abrogate a clause in government bonds calling for payment in gold coin was invalid,\137\ and a statute abrogating contracts of war risk insurance was held unconstitutional as applied to outstanding policies.\138\

NOTES:

\136\Norman v. Baltimore & Ohio R.R., 294 U.S. 240 (1935).

\137\Perry v. United States, 294 U.S. 330 (1935).

\138\Lynch v. United States, 292 U.S. 571 (1934). See also De La Rama S.S. Co. v. United States, 344 U.S. 386 (1953). Notice that these kinds of cases are precisely the ones that would be condemned under the contract clause, even under the relaxed scrutiny now employed, if the action were taken by a State. E.g., United States Trust Co. v. New Jersey, 431 U.S. 1 (1977). ``Less searching standards'' are imposed by the Due Process Clauses than by the Contract Clause. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. v. R.A. Gray & Co., 467 U.S. 717, 733 (1984). Also, statutory reservation of the right to amend an agreement can defuse most such constitutional issues. Bowen v. Public Agencies Opposed to Social Security Entrapment, 477 U.S. 41 (1986) (amendment of Social Security Act to prevent termination by state when termination notice already filed).

The due process clause has been successfully invoked to defeat retroactive invasion or destruction of property rights in a few cases. A revocation by the Secretary of the Interior of previous approval of plats and papers showing that a railroad was entitled to land under a grant was held void as an attempt to deprive the company of its property without due process of law.\139\ The exception of the period of federal control from the time limit set by law upon claims against carriers for damages caused by misrouting of goods, was read as prospective only because the limitation was an integral part of the liability, not merely a matter of remedy, and would violate the Fifth Amendment if retroactive.\140\

NOTES:

\140\Danzer Co. v. Gulf R.R., 268 U.S. 633 (1925).

Bankruptcy Legislation. -- In acting pursuant to its power to enact uniform bankruptcy legislation, Congress has regularly authorized retrospective impairment of contractual obligations,\141\ but the due process clause (by itself or infused with takings principles) constitutes a limitation upon Congress' power to deprive persons of more secure forms of property, such as the rights secured creditors have to obtain repayment of a debt. The Court had long followed a rule of construction favoring prospective-only application of bankruptcy laws, absent a clear showing of congressional intent,\142\ but it was not until 1935 that the Court actually held unconstitutional a retrospective law. Struck down by the Court was the Frazier-Lemke Act, which by its terms applied only retrospectively, and which authorized a court to stay proceedings for the foreclosure of a mortgage for five years, the debtor to remain in possession at a reasonable rental, with the option of purchasing the property at its appraised value at the end of the stay. The Act offended the Fifth Amendment, the Court held, because it deprived the creditor of substantial property rights acquired prior to the passage of the act.\143\ However, a modified law, under which the stay was subject to termination by the court and which continued the right of the creditor to have the property sold to pay the debt, was sustained.\144\

NOTES:

\142\Holt v. Henley, 232 U.S. 637, 639-40 (1914). See also Auffm'ordt v. Rasin, 102 U.S. 620, 622 (1881).

\143\Louisville Joint Stock Land Bank v. Radford, 295 U.S. 555 (1935).

\144\Wright v. Vinton Branch, 300 U.S. 440 (1937). The relatively small modifications that the Court accepted as making the difference in validity, and the fact that subsequently the Court interpreted the statute so as to make smaller the modifications, John Hancock Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Bartels, 308 U.S. 180, 184 & n.3 (1939); Wright v. Union Central Ins. Co., 311 U.S. 273, 278-79 (1940), has created differences of opinion with respect to whether Radford remains sound law. Cf. Helvering v. Griffiths, 318 U.S. 371, 400-01 & n.52 (1943) (suggesting Radford might not have survived Vinton Branch).

Without violation of the due process clause, the sale of collateral under the terms of a contract may be enjoined, if such sale would hinder the preparation or consummation of a proposed railroad reorganization, provided the injunction does no more than delay the enforcement of the contract.\145\ A provision that claims resulting from rejection of an unexpired lease should be treated as on a parity with provable debts, but limited to an amount equal to three years rent, was held not to amount to a taking of property without due process of law, since it provided a new and more certain remedy for a limited amount, in lieu of an existing remedy inefficient and uncertain in result.\146\ A right of redemption allowed by state law upon foreclosure of a mortgage was unavailing to defeat a plan for reorganization of a debtor corporation where the trial court found that the claims of junior lienholders had no value.\147\

NOTES:

\146\Kuchner v. Irving Trust Co., 299 U.S. 445 (1937).

\147\In re 620 Church Street Corp., 299 U.S. 24 (1936). In the context of Congress' plan to save major railroad systems, see Regional Rail Reorganization Act Cases, 419 U.S. 102 (1974).

Right to Sue the Government. -- A right to sue the Government on a contract is a privilege, not a property right protected by the Constitution.\148\ The right to sue for recovery of taxes paid may be conditioned upon an appeal to the Commissioner and his refusal to refund.\149\ There was no denial of due process when Congress took away the right to sue for recovery of taxes, where the claim for recovery was without substantial equity, having arisen from the mistake of administrative officials in allowing the statute of limitations to run before collecting a tax.\150\ The denial to taxpayers of the right to sue for refund of processing and floor stock taxes collected under a law subsequently held unconstitutional, and the substitution of a new administrative procedure for the recovery of such sums, was held valid.\151\ Congress may cut off the right to recover taxes illegally collected by ratifying the imposition and collection thereof, where it could lawfully have authorized such exactions prior to their collection.\152\

NOTES:

\149\Dodge v. Osborn, 240 U.S. 118 (1916).

\150\Graham & Foster v. Goodcell, 282 U.S. 409 (1931).

\151\Anniston Mfg. Co. v. Davis, 301 U.S. 337 (1937).

\152\United States v. Heinszen & Co., 206 U.S. 370, 386 (1907).

Congressional Power to Abolish Common Law Judicial Actions. -- Similarly, it is clearly settled that ``[a] person has no property, no vested interest, in any rule of the common law.''\153\ It follows, therefore, that Congress in its discretion may abolish common law actions, replacing them with other judicial actions or with administrative remedies at its discretion. There is slight intimation in some of the cases that if Congress does abolish a common law action it must either duplicate the recovery or provide a reasonable substitute remedy.\154\ Such a holding seems only remotely likely,\155\ but some difficulties may be experienced with respect to legislation that retrospectively affects rights to sue, such as shortening or lengthening statutes of limitation, and the like, although these have typically risen in state contexts. In one interesting decision, the Court did sustain an award of additional compensation under the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act, made pursuant to a private act of Congress passed after expiration of the period for review of the original award, directing the Commission to review the case and issue a new order, the challenge being made by the employer and insurer.\156\

NOTES:

\154\The intimation stems from New York Central R.R. v. White, 243 U.S. 188 (1917) (a state case, involving the constitutionality of a workmen's compensation law). While denying any person's vested interest in the continuation of any particular right to sue, id. at 198, the Court did seem twice to suggest that abolition without a reasonable substitute would raise due process problems. Id. at 201. In Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Envtl. Study Group, 438 U.S. 59, 87-92 (1978), it noticed the contention but passed it by because the law at issue was a reasonable substitute.

\155\It is more likely with respect to congressional provision of a statutory substitute for a cause of action arising directly out of a constitutional guarantee. E.g., Carlson v. Green, 446 U.S. 14, 18-23 (1980).

\156\Paramino Co. v. Marshall, 309 U.S. 370 (1940).

Deprivation of Liberty: Economic Legislation. -- The proscription of deprivation of liberty without due process, insofar as substantive due process was involved, was long restricted to invocation against legislation deemed to abridge liberty of contract.\157\ The two leading cases invalidating federal legislation, however, have both been overruled, as the Court adopted a very restrained standard of review of economic legislation.\158\ The Court's ``hands-off'' policy with regard to reviewing economic legislation is quite pronounced.\159\

NOTES:

\158\Adair v. United States, 208 U.S. 161 (1908), overruled in substance by Phelps Dodge Corp. v. NLRB, 313 U.S. 177 (1941); Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U.S. 525 (1923), overruled by West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379 (1937).

\159\E.g., United States Railroad Retirement Board v. Fritz, 449 U.S. 166 (1981); Schweiker v. Wilson, 450 U.S. 221 (1981).

``The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution says `nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.' This is a tacit recognition of a preexisting power to take private property for public use, rather than a grant of new power.''\160\ Eminent domain ``appertains to every independent government. It requires no constitutional recognition; it is an attribute of sovereignty.''\161\ In the early years of the nation the federal power of eminent domain lay dormant,\162\ and it was not until 1876 that its existence was recognized by the Supreme Court. In Kohl v. United States\163\ any doubts were laid to rest, as the Court affirmed that the power was as necessary to the existence of the National Government as it was to the existence of any State. The federal power of eminent domain is, of course, limited by the grants of power in the Constitution, so that property may only be taken for the effectuation of a granted power,\164\ but once this is conceded the ambit of national powers is so wide- ranging that vast numbers of objects may be effected.\165\ This prerogative of the National Government can neither be enlarged nor diminished by a State.\166\ Whenever lands in a State are needed for a public purpose, Congress may authorize that they be taken, either by proceedings in the courts of the State, with its consent, or by proceedings in the courts of the United States, with or without any consent or concurrent act of the State.\167\

NOTES:

\161\Boom Co. v. Patterson, 98 U.S. 403, 406 (1879).

\162\Prior to this time, the Federal Government pursued condemnation proceedings in state courts and commonly relied on state law. Kohl v. United States, 91 U.S. 367, 373 (1876); United States v. Jones, 109 U.S. 513 (1883). The first general statutory authority for proceedings in federal courts was not enacted until 1888. Act of Aug. 1, 1888, ch. 728, 25 Stat. 357. See 1 Nichols' The Law of Eminent Domain Sec. 1.24 (J. Sackman, 3d rev. ed. 1973).

\163\91 U.S. 367 (1876).

\164\United States v. Gettysburg Electric Ry., 160 U.S. 668, 679 (1896).

\165\E.g., California v. Central Pacific Railroad, 127 U.S. 1, 39 (1888) (highways); Luxton v. North River Bridge Co., 153 U.S. 525 (1894) (interstate bridges); Cherokee Nation v. Southern Kansas Ry., 135 U.S. 641 (1890) (railroads); Albert Hanson Lumber Co. v. United States 261 U.S. 581 (1923) (canal); Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U.S. 288 (1936) (hydroelectric power). ``Once the object is within the authority of Congress, the right to realize it through the exercise of eminent domain is clear. For the power of eminent domain is merely the means to the end.'' Berman v. Parker, 348 U.S. 26, 33 (1954).

\166\Kohl v. United States, 91 U.S. 367 374 (1876).

\167\Chappell v. United States, 160 U.S. 499, 510 (1896). The fact that land included in a federal reservoir project is owned by a state, or that its taking may impair the state's tax revenue, or that the reservoir will obliterate part of the state's boundary and interfere with the state's own project for water development and conservation, constitutes no barrier to the condemnation of the land by the United States. Oklahoma ex rel. Phillips v. Guy F. Atkinson Co., 313 U.S. 508 (1941). So too, land held in trust and used by a city for public purposes may be condemned. United States v. Carmack, 329 U.S. 230 (1946).

``Prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment,'' the power of eminent domain of state governments ``was unrestrained by any federal authority.''\168\ The just compensation provision of the Fifth Amendment did not apply to the States,\169\ and at first the contention that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment afforded property owners the same measure of protection against the States as the Fifth Amendment did against the Federal Government was rejected.\170\ However, within a decade the Court rejected the opposing argument that the amount of compensation to be awarded in a state eminent domain case is solely a matter of local law. On the contrary, the Court ruled, although a state ``legislature may prescribe a form of procedure to be observed in the taking of private property for public use, . . . it is not due process of law if provision be not made for compensation. . . . The mere form of the proceeding instituted against the owner . . . cannot convert the process used into due process of law, if the necessary result be to deprive him of his property without compensation.''\171\ While the guarantees of just compensation flow from two different sources, the standards used by the Court in dealing with the issues appear to be identical, and both federal and state cases will be dealt with herein without expressly continuing to recognize the two different bases for the rulings.

NOTES:

\169\Barron v. Baltimore, 32 U.S. (7 Pet.) 243 (1833).

\170\Davidson v. City of New Orleans, 96 U.S. 97 (1878). The Court attached most weight to the fact that both due process and just compensation were guaranteed in the Fifth Amendment while only due process was contained in the Fourteenth, and refused to equate the missing term with the present one.

\171\Chicago B. & Q. R.R. v. City of Chicago, 166 U.S. 226, 233, 236-37 (1897). See also Sweet v. Rechel, 159 U.S. 380, 398 (1895).

It should be borne in mind that while the power of eminent domain, though it is inherent in organized governments, may only be exercised through legislation or through legislative delegation, usually to another governmental body, the power may be delegated as well to private corporations, such as public utilities, railroad and bridge companies, when they are promoting a valid public purpose. Such delegation has long been approved.\172\

NOTE:

Explicit in the just compensation clause is the requirement that the taking of private property be for a public use; the Court has long accepted the principle that one is deprived of his property in violation of this guarantee if a State takes the property for any reason other than a public use.\173\ The question whether a particular intended use is a public use is clearly a judicial one,\174\ but the Court has always insisted on a high degree of judicial deference to the legislative determination. ``The role of the judiciary in determining whether that power is being exercised for a public purpose is an extremely narrow one.''\175\ When it is state action being challenged under the Fourteenth Amendment, there is the additional factor of the Court's willingness to defer to the highest court of the State in resolving such an issue.\176\ As early as 1908, the Court was obligated to admit that notwithstanding its retention of the power of judicial review, ``no case is recalled where this Court has condemned as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment a taking upheld by the State court as a taking for public uses. . . .''\177\ However, in a 1946 case involving federal eminent domain power, the Court cast considerable doubt upon the power of courts to review the issue of public use. ``We think that it is the function of Congress to decide what type of taking is for a public use and that the agency authorized to do the taking may do so to the full extent of its statutory authority.''\178\ There is some suggestion that ``the scope of the judicial power to determine what is a `public use''' may be different as between Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment cases, with greater power in the latter type of cases than in the former,\179\ but it may well be that the case simply stands for the necessity for great judicial restraint.\180\ Once it is admitted or determined that the taking is for a public use and is within the granted authority, the necessity or expediency of the particular taking is exclusively in the legislature or the body to which the legislature has delegated the decision, and is not subject to judicial review.\181\

NOTES:

\174\``It is well established that in considering the application of the Fourteenth Amendment to cases of expropriation of private property, the question what is a public use is a judicial one.'' City of Cincinnati v. Vester, 281 U.S. 439, 444 (1930).

\175\Berman v. Parker, 348 U.S. 26, 32 (1954) (federal eminent domain power in District of Columbia).

\176\Green v. Frazier, 253 U.S. 283, 240 (1920); City of Cincinnati v. Vester, 281 U.S. 439, 446 (1930). And see Hawaii Housing Auth. v. Midkiff, 467 U.S. 229 (1984) (appeals court erred in applying more stringent standard to action of state legislature).

\177\Hairston v. Danville & Western Ry., 208 U.S. 598, 607 (1908). An act of condemnation was voided as not for a public use in Missouri Pacific Ry. v. Nebraska, 164 U.S. 403 (1896), but the Court read the state court opinion as acknowledging this fact, thus not bringing it within the literal content of this statement.

\178\United States ex rel. TVA v. Welch, 327 U.S. 546, 551-52 (1946). Justices Reed and Frankfurter and Chief Justice Stone disagreed with this view. Id. at 555, 557 (concurring).

\179\Id. at 552.

\180\Id. So it seems to have been considered in Berman v. Parker, 348 U.S. 26, 32 (1954).

\181\Rindge Co. v. Los Angeles County, 262 U.S. 700, 709 (1923); Bragg v. Weaver, 251 U.S. 57, 58 (1919); Berman v. Parker, 358 U.S. 26, 33 (1954). ``When the legislature's purpose is legitimate and its means are not irrational, our cases make clear that empirical debates over the wisdom of takings . . . are not to be carried out in federal courts. Hawaii Housing Auth. v. Midkiff, 467 U.S. 229, 242-43 (1984).

At an earlier time, the factor of judicial review would have been vastly more important than it is now, inasmuch as the prevailing judicial view was that the term ``public use'' was synonymous with ``use by the public'' and that if there was no duty upon the taker to permit the public as of right to use or enjoy the property taken, the taking was invalid. But this view was rejected some time ago.\182\ The modern conception of public use equates it with the police power in the furtherance of the public interest. No definition of the reach or limits of the power is possible, the Court has said, because such ``definition is essentially the product of legislative determinations addressed to the purposes of government, purposes neither abstractly nor historically capable of complete definition. . . . Public safety, public health, morality, peace and quiet, law and order--these are some of the . . . traditional application[s] of the police power. . . .'' Effectuation of these matters being within the authority of the legislature, the power to achieve them through the exercise of eminent domain is established. ``For the power of eminent domain is merely the means to the end.''\183\ Traditionally, eminent domain has been utilized to facilitate transportation, the supplying of water, and the like,\184\ but the use of the power to establish public parks, to preserve places of historic interest, and to promote beautification has substantial precedent.\185\

NOTES:

\183\Berman v. Parker, 348 U.S. 26, 32, 33 (1954).

\184\E.g., Kohl v. United States, 91 U.S. 367 (1876) (public buildings); Chicago M. & S.P. Ry. v. City of Minneapolis, 232 U.S. 430 (1914) (canal): Long Island Water Supply Co. v. Brooklyn, 166 U.S. 685 (1897) (condemnation of privately owned water supply system formerly furnishing water to municipality under contract); Mt. Vernon-Woodberry Cotton Duck Co. v. Alabama Interstate Power Co., 240 U.S. 30 (1916) (land, water, and water rights condemned for production of electric power by public utility); Dohany v. Rogers, 281 U.S. 362 (1930) (land taken for purpose of exchange with a railroad company for a portion of its right-of-way required for widening a highway); Delaware, L. & W.R.R. v. Morristown, 276 U.S. 182 (1928) (establishment by a municipality of a public hack stand upon driveway maintained by railroad upon its own terminal grounds to afford ingress and egress to its patrons); Clark v. Nash, 198 U.S. 361 (1905) (right-of-way across neighbor's land to enlarge irrigation ditch for water without which land would remain valueless); Strickley v. Highland Boy Mining Co., 200 U.S. 527 (1906) (right of way across a placer mining claim for aerial bucket line). In Missouri Pacific Ry. v. Nebraska, 164 U.S. 403 (1896), however, the Court held that it was an invalid use when a State attempted to compel, on payment of compensation, a railroad, which had permitted the erection of two grain elevators by private citizens on its right-of-way, to grant upon like terms a location to another group of farmers to erect a third grain elevator for their own benefit.

\185\E.g., Shoemaker v. United States, 147 U.S. 282 (1893) (establishment of public park in District of Columbia); Rindge Co. v. Los Angeles County, 262 U.S. 700 (1923) (scenic highway); Brown v. United States, 263 U.S. 78 (1923) (condemnation of property near town flooded by establishment of reservoir in order to locate a new townsite, even though there might be some surplus lots to be sold); United States v. Gettysburg Electric Ry., 160 U.S. 668 (1896), and Roe v. Kansas ex rel. Smith, 278 U.S. 191 (1929) (historic sites). When time is deemed to be of the essence, Congress takes land directly by statute, authorizing procedures by which owners of appropriated land may obtain just compensation. See, e.g., Pub. L. No. 90-545, Sec. 3, 82 Stat. 931 (1968), 16 U.S.C. Sec. 79(c) (taking land for creation of Redwood National Park); Pub. L. No. 93-444, 88 Stat. 1304 (1974) (taking lands for addition to Piscataway Park, Maryland); Pub. L. No. 100-647, Sec. 10002 (1988) (taking lands for addition to Mannassas National Battlefield Park).

The Supreme Court has approved generally the widespread use of the power of eminent domain by federal and state governments in conjunction with private companies to facilitate urban renewal, destruction of slums, erection of low-cost housing in place of deteriorated housing, and the promotion of aesthetic values as well as economic ones. In Berman v. Parker,\186\ a unanimous Court observed: ``The concept of the public welfare is broad and inclusive. The values it represents are spiritual as well as physical, aesthetic as well as monetary. It is within the power of the legislature to determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well-balanced as well as carefully patrolled.'' For ``public use,'' then, it may well be that ``public interest'' or ``public welfare'' is the more correct phrase. Berman was applied in Hawaii Housing Auth. v. Midkiff,\187\ upholding the Hawaii Land Reform Act as a ``rational'' effort to ``correct deficiencies in the market determined by the state legislature to be attributable to land oligopoly.'' Direct transfer of land from lessors to lessees was permissible, the Court held, there being no requirement ``that government possess and use property at some point during a taking.''\188\ ``The `public use' requirement is . . . coterminous with the scope of a sovereign's police powers,'' the Court concluded.\189\

NOTES:

\187\467 U.S. 229, 243 (1984).

\188\467 U.S. at 243.

\189\467 U.S. at 240. See also Ruckelshaus v. Monsanto Co., 467 U.S. 986, 1014 (1984) (required data disclosure by pesticide registrants, primarily for benefit of later registrants, has a ``conceivable public character'').

``When . . . [the] power [of eminent domain] is exercised it can only be done by giving the party whose property is taken or whose use and enjoyment of such property is interfered with, full and adequate compensation, not excessive or exorbitant, but just compensation.''\190\ The Fifth Amendment's guarantee ``that private property shall not be taken for a public use without just compensation was designed to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole.''\191\

NOTES:

\191\Armstrong v. United States, 364 U.S. 40, 49 (1960). ``The political ethics reflected in the Fifth Amendment reject confiscation as a measure of justice.'' United States v. Cors, 337 U.S. 325, 332 (1949). There is no constitutional prohibition against confiscation of enemy property, but aliens not so denominated are entitled to the protection of this clause. Compare United States v. Chemical Foundation, 272 U.S. 1 (1926) and Stoehr v. Wallace, 255 U.S. 239 (1921), with Silesian- American Corp. v. Clark, 332 U.S. 469 (1947), Russian Fleet v. United States, 282 U.S. 481 (1931), and Guessefeldt v. McGrath, 342 U.S. 308 (1952).

The just compensation required by the Constitution is that which constitutes ``a full and perfect equivalent for the property taken.''\192\ Originally the Court required that the equivalent be in money, not in kind,\193\ but more recently has cast some doubt on this assertion.\194\ Just compensation is measured ``by reference to the uses for which the property is suitable, having regard to the existing business and wants of the community, or such as may be reasonably expected in the immediate future,'. . . [but] `mere possible or imaginary uses or the speculative schemes of its proprietor, are to be excluded.'''\195\ The general standard thus is the market value of the property, i.e., what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller.\196\ If fair market value does not exist or cannot be calculated, resort must be had to other data which will yield a fair compensation.\197\ However, the Court is resistent to alternative standards, having repudiated reliance on the cost of substitute facilities.\198\ Just compensation is especially difficult to compute in wartime, when enormous disruptions in supply and governmentally imposed price ceilings totally skew market conditions. Holding that the reasons which underlie the rule of market value when a free market exists apply as well where value is measured by a government-fixed ceiling price, the Court permitted owners of cured pork and black pepper to recover only the ceiling price for the commodities, despite findings by the Court of Claims that the replacement cost of the meat exceeded its ceiling price and that the pepper had a ``retention value'' in excess of that price.\199\ By a five-to-four decision, the Court ruled that the Government was not obliged to pay the present market value of a tug when the value had been greatly enhanced as a consequence of the Government's wartime needs.\200\

NOTES:

\193\Van Horne's Lessee v. Dorrance, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 304, 315 (C.C. Pa. 1795); United States v. Miller, 317 U.S. 369, 373 (1943). \194\Regional Rail Reorganization Act Cases, 419 U.S. 102, 150- 51 (1974).

\195\Chicago B. & Q. R.R. v. Chicago, 166 U.S. 226, 250 (1897); McGovern v. City of New York, 229 U.S. 363, 372 (1913). See also Boom Co. v. Patterson, 98 U.S. 403 (1879); McCandless v. United States, 298 U.S. 342 (1936).

\196\United States v. Miller, 317 U.S. 369, 374 (1943); United States ex rel. TVA v. Powelson, 319 U.S. 266, 275 (1943). See also United States v. New River Collieries Co., 262 U.S. 341 (1923); Olson v. United States, 292 U.S. 264 (1934); Kimball Laundry Co. v. United States, 338 U.S. 1 (1949). Exclusion of the value of improvements made by the Government under a lease was held constitutional. Old Dominion Land Co. v. United States, 269 U.S. 55 (1925).

\197\United States v. Miller, 317 U.S. 369, 374 (1943).

\198\United States v. 564.54 Acres of Land, 441 U.S. 506 (1979) (condemnation of church-run camp; United States v. 50 Acres of Land, 469 U.S. 24 (1984) (condemnation of city-owned landfill). In both cases the Court determined that market value was ascertainable.

\199\United States v. Felin & Co., 334 U.S. 624 (1948); United States v. Commodities Trading Corp., 339 U.S. 121 (1950). And see Vogelstein & Co. v. United States, 262 U.S. 337 (1923).

\200\United States v. Cors, 337 U.S. 325 (1949). And see United States v. Toronto Navigation Co., 338 U.S. 396 (1949).

Illustrative of the difficulties in applying the fair market standard of just compensation are two cases decided by five-to-four votes, one in which compensation was awarded and one in which it was denied. Held entitled to compensation for the value of improvements on leased property for the life of the improvements and not simply for the remainder of the term of the lease was a company that, while its lease had no renewal option, had occupied the land for nearly 50 years and had every expectancy of continued occupancy under a new lease. Just compensation, the Court said, required taking into account the possibility that the lease would be renewed, inasmuch as a willing buyer and a willing seller would certainly have placed a value on the possibility.\201\ However, when the Federal Government condemned privately owned grazing land of a rancher who had leased adjacent federally owned grazing land, it was held that the compensation owed need not include the value attributable to the proximity to the federal land. The result would have been different if the adjacent grazing land had been privately owned, but the general rule is that government need not pay for value that it itself creates.\202\

NOTES:

Interest. -- Ordinarily, property is taken under a condemnation suit upon the payment of the money award by the condemner, and no interest accrues.\203\ If, however, the property is taken in fact before payment is made, just compensation includes an increment which, to avoid use of the term ``interest,'' the Court has called ``an amount sufficient to produce the full equivalent of that value paid contemporaneously with the taking.''\204\ If the owner and the Government enter into a contract which stipulates the purchase price for lands to be taken, with no provision for interest, the Fifth Amendment is inapplicable and the landowner cannot recover interest even though payment of the purchase price is delayed.\205\ Where property of a citizen has been mistakenly seized by the Government and it is converted into money which is invested, the owner is entitled in recovering compensation to an allowance for the use of his property.\206\

NOTES:

\204\United States v. Klamath Indians, 304 U.S. 119, 123 (1938); Jacobs v. United States, 290 U.S. 13, 17 (1933); Kirby Forest Industries v. United States, 467 U.S. 1 (1984) (substantial delay between valuation and payment necessitates procedure for modifying award to reflect value at time of payment).

\205\Albrecht v. United States, 329 U.S. 599 (1947).

\206\Henkels v. Sutherland, 271 U.S. 298 (1926); see also Phelps v. United States, 274 U.S. 341 (1927).

Rights for Which Compensation Must Be Made. -- If real property is condemned the market value of that property must be paid to the owner. But there are many kinds of property and many uses of property which cause problems in computing just compensation. It is not only the full fee simple interest in land that is compensable ``property,'' but also such lesser interests as easements\207\ and leaseholds.\208\ If only a portion of a tract is taken, the owner's compensation includes any element of value arising out of the relation of the part taken to the entire tract.\209\ On the other hand, if the taking has in fact benefited the owner, the benefit may be set off against the value of the land condemned,\210\ although any supposed benefit which the owner may receive in common with all from the public use to which the property is appropriated may not be set off.\211\ When certain lands were condemned for park purposes, with resulting benefits set off against the value of the property taken, the subsequent erection of a fire station on the property instead was held not to have deprived the owner of any part of his just compensation.\212\

NOTES:

\208\United States v. General Motors, 323 U.S. 373 (1945).

\209\Bauman v. Ross, 167 U.S. 548 (1897); Sharp v. United States, 191 U.S. 341, 351-52, 354 (1903). Where the taking of a strip of land across a farm closed a private right-of-way, an allowance was properly made for the value of the easement. United States v. Welch, 217 U.S. 333 (1910).

\210\Bauman v. Ross, 167 U.S. 548 (1897).

\211\Monongahela Navigation Co. v. United States, 148 U.S. 312, 326 (1893).

\212\Reichelderfer v. Quinn, 287 U.S. 315, 318 (1932).

Interests in intangible as well as tangible property are subject to protection under the Taking Clause. Thus compensation must be paid for the taking of contract rights,\213\ patent rights,\214\ and trade secrets.\215\ So too, the franchise of a private corporation is property which cannot be taken for public use without compensation. Upon condemnation of a lock and dam belonging to a navigation company, the Government was required to pay for the franchise to take tolls as well as for the tangible property.\216\ The frustration of a private contract by the requisitioning of the entire output of a steel manufacturer is not a taking for which compensation is required,\217\ but government requisitioning from a power company of all the electric power which could be produced by use of the water diverted through its intake canal, thereby cutting off the supply of a lessee which had a right, amounting to a corporeal hereditament under state law, to draw a portion of that water, entitles the lessee to compensation for the rights taken.\218\ When, upon default of a ship- builder, the Government, pursuant to contract with him, took title to uncompleted boats, the material men, whose liens under state laws had attached when they supplied the shipbuilder, had a compensable interest equal to whatever value these liens had when the Government ``took'' or destroyed them in perfecting its title.\219\ As a general matter, there is no property interest in the continuation of a rule of law.\220\ And, even though state participation in the social security system was originally voluntary, a state had no property interest in its right to withdraw from the program when Congress had expressly reserved the right to amend the law and the agreement with the state.\221\ Similarly, there is no right to the continuation of governmental welfare benefits.\222\

NOTES:

\214\James v. Campbell, 104 U.S. 356, 358 (1882). See also Hollister v. Benedict Mfg. Co., 113 U.S. 59, 67 (1885).

\215\Ruckelshaus v. Monsanto Co., 467 U.S. 986 (1984). \216\Monongahela Navigation Co. v. United States, 148 U.S. 312, 345 (1983).

\217\Omnia Commercial Co. v. United States, 261 U.S. 502 (1923).

\218\International Paper Co. v. United States, 282 U.S. 399 (1931).

\219\Armstrong v. United States, 364 U.S. 40, 50 (1960).

\220\Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Envtl. Study Group, 438 U.S. 59, 88 n.32 (1978).

\221\Bowen v. Public Agencies Opposed to Social Security Entrapment, 477 U.S. 41 (1986).

\222\``Congress is not, by virtue of having instituted a social welfare program, bound to continue it at all, much less at the same benefit level.'' Bowen v. Gilliard, 483 U.S. 587, 604 (1987).

Consequential Damages. -- The Fifth Amendment requires compensation for the taking of ``property,'' hence does not require payment for losses or expenses incurred by property owners or tenants incidental to or as a consequence of the taking of real property, if they are not reflected in the market value of the property taken.\223\ ``Whatever of property the citizen has the Government may take. When it takes the property, that is, the fee, the lease, whatever, he may own, terminating altogether his interest, under the established law it must pay him for what is taken, not more; and he must stand whatever indirect or remote injuries are properly comprehended within the meaning of `consequential damage' as that conception has been defined in such cases. Even so the consequences often are harsh. For these whatever remedy may exist lies with Congress.''\224\ An exception to the general principle has been established by the Court where only a temporary occupancy is assumed; then the taking body must pay the value which a hypothetical long-term tenant in possession would require when leasing to a temporary occupier requiring his removal, including in the market value of the interest the reasonable cost of moving out the personal property stored in the premises, the cost of storage of goods against their sale, and the cost of returning the property to the premises.\225\ Another exception to the general rule occurs with a partial taking, in which the government takes less than the entire parcel of land and leaves the owner with a portion of what he had before; in such a case compensation includes any diminished value of the remaining portion (``severance damages'') as well as the value of the taken portion.\226\

NOTES:

\224\United States v. General Motors Corp., 323 U.S. 373, 382 (1945).

\225\United States v. General Motors Corp., 323 U.S. 373 (1945). In Kimball Laundry Co. v. United States, 338 U.S. 1 (1949), the Government seized the tenant's plant for the duration of the war, which turned out to be less than the full duration of the lease, and, having no other means of serving its customers, the laundry suspended business for the period of military occupancy; the Court narrowly held that the Government must compensate for the loss in value of the business attributable to the destruction of its ``trade routes,'' that is, for the loss of customers built up over the years and for the continued hold of the laundry upon their patronage. See also United States v. Pewee Coal Co., 341 U.S. 114 (1951) (in temporary seizure, Government must compensate for losses attributable to increased wage payments by the Government).

\226\United States v. Miller, 317 U.S. 369, 375-76 (1943). ``On the other hand,'' the Court added, ``if the taking has in fact benefitted the remainder, the benefit may be set off against the value of the land taken.'' Id.

Enforcement of Right to Compensation. -- The nature and character of the tribunal to determine compensation is in the discretion of the legislature, and may be a regular court, a special legislative court, a commission, or an administrative body.\227\ Proceedings to condemn land for the benefit of the United States are brought in the federal district court for the district in which the land is located.\228\ The estimate of just compensation is not required to be made by a jury but may be made by a judge or entrusted to a commission or other body.\229\ Federal courts may appoint a commission in condemnation actions to resolve the compensation issue.\230\ If a body other than a court is designated to determine just compensation, its decision must be subject to judicial review,\231\ although the scope of review may be limited by the legislature.\232\ When the judgment of a state court with regard to the amount of compensation is questioned, the Court's review is restricted. ``All that is essential is that in some appropriate way, before some properly constituted tribunal, inquiry shall be made as to the amount of compensation, and when this has been provided there is that due process of law which is required by the Federal Constitution.''\233\ ``[T]here must be something more than an ordinary honest mistake of law in the proceedings for compensation before a party can make out that the State has deprived him of his property unconstitutionally.''\234\ Unless, by its rulings of law, the state court prevented a complainant from obtaining substantially any compensation, its findings as to the amount of damages will not be overturned on appeal, even though as a consequence of error therein the property owner received less than he was entitled to.\235\

NOTES:

\228\28 U.S.C. Sec. 1403. On the other hand, inverse condemnation actions (claims that the United States has taken property without compensation) are governed by the Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1491(a)(1), which vests the Court of Federal Claims (formerly the Claims Court) with jurisdiction over claims against the United States ``founded . . . upon the Constitution.'' See Presault v. ICC, 494 U.S. 1 (1990).

\229\Bauman v. Ross, 167 U.S. 548 (1897). Even when a jury is provided to determine the amount of compensation, it is the rule at least in federal court that the trial judge is to instruct the jury with regard to the criteria and this includes determination of ``all issues'' other than the precise issue of the amount of compensation, so that the judge decides those matters relating to what is computed in making the calculation. United States v. Reynolds, 397 U.S. 14 (1970).

\230\Rule 71A(h), Fed. R. Civ. P. These commissions have the same powers as a court-appointed master.

\231\Monongahela Navigation Co. v. United States, 148 U.S. 312, 327 (1893).

\232\Long Island Water Supply Co. v. Brooklyn, 166 U.S. 685 (1897). In federal courts, reports of Rule 71A commissions are to be accepted by the court unless ``clearly erroneous.'' Fed. R. Civ. P. 53(e)(2).

\233\Backus v. Fort Street Union Depot Co., 169 U.S. 557, 569, (1898).

\234\McGovern v. City of New York, 229 U.S. 363, 370-71 (1913).

\235\Id. at 371. And see Provo Bench Canal Co. v. Tanner, 239 U.S. 323 (1915); Appleby v. City of Buffalo, 221 U.S. 524 (1911).

The issue whether one's property has been ``taken'' with the consequent requirement of just compensation can hardly arise when government institutes condemnation proceedings directed to it. Where, however, physical damage results to property because of government action, or where regulatory action limits activity on the property or otherwise deprives it of value, whether there has been a taking in the Fifth Amendment sense becomes critical.

Government Activity Not Directed at the Property. -- The older cases proceeded on the basis that the requirement of just compensation for property taken for public use referred only to ``direct appropriation, and not to consequential injuries resulting from the exercise of lawful power.''\236\ Accordingly, a variety of consequential injuries were held not to constitute takings: damage to abutting property resulting from the authorization of a railroad to erect tracts, sheds, and fences over a street;\237\ similar deprivations, lessening the circulation of light and air and impairing access to premises, resulting from the erection of an elevated viaduct over a street, or resulting from the changing of a grade in the street.\238\ Nor was government held liable for the extra expense which the property owner must obligate in order to ward off the consequence of the governmental action, such as the expenses incurred by a railroad in planking an area condemned for a crossing, constructing gates, and posting gatemen,\239\ or by a landowner in raising the height of the dikes around his land to prevent their partial flooding consequent to private construction of a dam under public licensing.\240\

NOTES:

\237\Meyer v. City of Richmond, 172 U.S. 82 (1898).

\238\Sauer v. City of New York, 206 U.S. 536 (1907). But see the litigation in the state courts cited by Justice Cardozo in Roberts v. City of New York, 295 U.S. 264, 278-82 (1935).

\239\Chicago, B. & Q. R.R. v. City of Chicago, 166 U.S. 226 (1897).

\240\Manigault v. Springs, 199 U.S. 473 (1905).

But the Court also decided long ago that land can be ``taken'' in the constitutional sense by physical invasion or occupation by the government, as occurs when government floods land.\241\ A later formulation was that ``[p]roperty is taken in the constitutional sense when inroads are made upon an owner's use of it to an extent that, as between private parties, a servitude has been acquired either by agreement or in course of time.''\242\ It was thus held that the government had imposed a servitude for which it must compensate the owner on land adjoining its fort when it repeatedly fired the guns at the fort across the land and had established a fire control service there.\243\ In two major cases, the Court held that the lessees or operators of airports were required to compensate the owners of adjacent land when the noise, glare, and fear of injury occasioned by the low altitude overflights during takeoffs and landings made the land unfit for the use to which the owners had applied it.\244\ Eventually, the term ``inverse condemnation'' came to be used to refer to such cases where the government has not instituted formal condemnation proceedings, but instead the property owner has sued for just compensation, claiming that governmental action or regulation has ``taken'' his property.\245\

NOTES:

\242\United States v. Dickinson, 331 U.S. 745, 748 (1947).

\243\Portsmouth Harbor Land & Hotel Co. v. United States, 260 U.S. 327 (1922). Cf. Portsmouth Harbor Land & Hotel Co. v. United States, 250 U.S. 1 (1919); Peabody v. United States, 231 U.S. 530 (1913).

\244\United States v. Causby, 328 U.S. 256 (1946); Griggs v. Allegheny County, 369 U.S. 84 (1962). A corporation chartered by Congress to construct a tunnel and operate railway trains therein was held liable for damages in a suit by one whose property was so injured by smoke and gas forced from the tunnel as to amount to a taking. Richards v. Washington Terminal Co., 233 U.S. 546 (1914).

\245\``The phrase `inverse condemnation' generally describes a cause of action against a government defendant in which a landowner may recover just compensation for a `taking' of his property under the Fifth Amendment, even though formal condemnation proceedings in exercise of the sovereign's power of eminent domain have not been instituted by the government entity.'' San Diego Gas & Electric Co. v. City of San Diego, 450 U.S. 621, 638 n.2 (1981) (Justice Brennan dissenting). See also United States v. Clarke, 445 U.S. 253, 257 (1980); Agins v. City of Tiburon, 447 U.S. 255, 258 n.2 (1980).

Navigable Waters. -- The repeated holdings that riparian ownership is subject to the power of Congress to regulate commerce constitute an important reservation to the developing law of liability in the taking area. When damage results consequentially from an improvement to a river's navigable capacity, or from an improvement on a nonnavigable river designed to affect navigability elsewhere, it is generally not a taking of property but merely an exercise of a servitude to which the property is always subject.\246\ This exception does not apply to lands above the ordinary high-water mark of a stream,\247\ hence is inapplicable to the damage the Government may do to such ``fast lands'' by causing overflows, by erosion, and otherwise, consequent on erection of dams or other improvements.\248\ And, when previously nonnavigable waters are made navigable by private investment, government may not, without paying compensation, simply assert a navigation servitude and direct the property owners to afford public access.\249\

NOTES:

\247\United States v. Virginia Elec. & Power Co., 365 U.S. 624, 628 (1961).

\248\United States v. Lynah, 188 U.S. 445 (1903); United States v. Cress, 243 U.S. 316 (1917); Jacobs v. United States, 290 U.S. 13 (1933); United States v. Dickinson, 331 U.S. 745 (1947); United States v. Kansas City Ins. Co., 339 U.S. 799 (1950); United States v. Virginia Electric & Power Co., 365 U.S. 624 (1961).

\249\Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U.S. 164 (1979); Vaughn v. Vermillion Corp., 444 U.S. 206 (1979).

Regulatory Takings. -- While it is established that government may take private property, with compensation, to promote the public interest, that interest also may be served by regulation of property use pursuant to the police power, and for years there was broad dicta that no one may claim damages due to a police regulation designed to secure the common welfare, especially in the area of health and safety regulations.\250\ ``The distinguishing characteristic between eminent domain and the police power is that the former involves the taking of property because of its need for the public use while the latter involves the regulation of such property to prevent the use thereof in a manner that is detrimental to the public interest.''\251\ But regulation may deprive an owner of most or all beneficial use of his property and may destroy the values of the property for the purposes to which it is suited.\252\ The older cases flatly denied the possibility of compensation for this diminution of property values,\253\ but the Court in 1922 established as a general principle that ``if regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking.''\254\

NOTES:

\251\1 Nichols' The Law of Eminent Domain Sec. 1.42 (J. Sackman, 3d rev. ed. 1973).

\252\E.g., Hadacheck v. Sebastian, 239 U.S. 394 (1915) (ordinance upheld restricting owner of brick factory from continuing his use after residential growth surrounding factory made use noxious, even though value of property was reduced by more than 90%); Miller v. Schoene, 276 U.S. 272 (1928) (no compensation due owner's loss of red cedar trees ordered destroyed because they were infected with rust that threatened contamination of neighboring apple orchards: preferment of public interest in saving cash crop to property interest in ornamental trees was rational).

\253\Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623, 668-69 (1887) (ban on manufacture of liquor greatly devalued plaintiff's plant and machinery; no taking possible simply because of legislation deeming a use injurious to public health and welfare).

\254\Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393, 415 (1922). See also Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 112 S. Ct. 2886, 2895 (1992) (a regulation that deprives a property owner of all beneficial use of his property requires compensation, unless the owner's proposed use is one prohibited by background principles of property or nuisance law existing at the time the property was acquired).

In the Mahon case, Justice Holmes for the Court, over Justice Brandeis' vigorous dissent, held unconstitutional a state statute prohibiting subsurface mining in regions where it presented a danger of subsidence for homeowners. The homeowners had purchased by deeds which reserved to the coal companies ownership of subsurface mining rights and which held the companies harmless for damage caused by subsurface mining operations. The statute thus gave the homeowners more than they had been able to obtain through contracting, and at the same time deprived the coal companies of the entire value of their subsurface estates. The Court observed that ``[f]or practical purposes, the right to coal consists in the right to mine,'' and that the statute, by making it ``commercially impracticable to mine certain coal,'' had essentially ``the same effect for constitutional purposes as appropriating or destroying it.''\255\ The regulation, therefore, in precluding the companies from exercising any mining rights whatever, went ``too far.''\256\ However, when presented 65 years later with a very similar restriction on coal mining, the Court upheld it in Keystone Bituminous Coal Ass'n v. DeBenedictis.\257\ Unlike its precursor, the Court explained, the newer law ``does not merely involve a balancing of the private economic interests of coal companies against the private interests of the surface owners.''\258\ Instead, the state had identified ``important public interests'' (e.g., conservation, protection of water supplies, preservation of land values for taxation) and had broadened the law to apply regardless of whether the surface and mineral estates were in separate ownership. A second factor distinguishing Keystone from Mahon, the Court explained, was the absence of proof that the new subsidence law made it ``commercially impracticable'' for the coal companies to continue mining.\259\ The Court rejected efforts to define separate segments of property for taking purposes--either the coal in place under protected structures, or the ``support estate'' recognized under Pennsylvania law.\260\ Economic impact is measured by reference to the property as a whole; consideration of the coal placed off limits to mining as merely part of a larger estate and not as a separate estate undermined the commercial impracticability argument.

NOTES:

\256\Id. at 415. In dissent, Justice Brandeis argued that a restriction imposed to abridge the owner's exercise of his rights in order to prohibit a noxious use or to protect the public health and safety simply could not be a taking, because the owner retained his interest and his possession. Id. at 416.

\257\480 U.S. 470 (1987). The decision was 5-4. Justice Stevens' opinion of the Court was joined by Justices Brennan, White, Marshall, and Blackmun; Chief Justice Rehnquist's dissent was joined by Justices Powell, O'Connor, and Scalia.

\258\480 U.S. at 485.

\259\Id. at 495-96.

\260\Id. at 498-502. How to define the property interest to be measured for diminution in value or economic impact remains largely unresolved. Recent dictum suggests that the answer to segmentation ``may lie in how the owner's reasonable expectations have been shaped by the State's law of property--i.e., whether and to what degree the State's law has accorded legal recognition and protection to the particular interest in land. . . .'' Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 112 S. Ct. 2886, 2894 n.7 (1992). Application of this test could have led to invalidation in Keystone, inasmuch as Pennsylvania law recognized a support estate allegedly totally eliminated by the mining restriction.

The Court had been early concerned with the imposition upon one or a few individuals of the costs of furthering the public interest.\261\ But it was with respect to zoning that the Court first experienced some difficulty in this regard. The Court's first zoning case involved a real estate company's challenge to a comprehensive municipal zoning ordinance, alleging that the ordinance prevented development of its land for industrial purposes and thereby reduced its value from $10,000 an acre to $2,500 an acre.\262\ Acknowledging that zoning was of recent origin, the Court observed that it must find its justification in the police power and be evaluated by the constitutional standards applied to exercises of the police power. After considering traditional nuisance law, the Court determined that the public interest was served by segregation of incompatible land uses and the ordinance was thus valid on its face; whether its application to diminish property values in any particular case was also valid would depend, the Court said, upon a finding that it was not ``clearly arbitrary and unreasonable, having no substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare.''\263\ A few years later the Court, again relying on due process rather than taking law, did invalidate the application of a zoning ordinance to a tract of land, finding that the tract would be rendered nearly worthless and that to exempt the tract would impair no substantial municipal interest.\264\ But then the Court withdrew from the land-use scene for about 50 years, leaving the States and their municipalities mostly free to develop increasingly more comprehensive zoning techniques.\265\

NOTES:

\262\Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365 (1926).

\263\Id. at 395. See also Zahn v. Board of Public Works, 274 U.S. 325 (1927).

\264\Nectow v. City of Cambridge, 277 U.S. 183 (1928).

\265\But see Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, 416 U.S. 1 (1974) (considering and sustaining single-family zoning as applied to group of college students sharing a house), and Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1977) (considering and voiding single-family zoning so strictly construed as to bar a grandmother from living with two grandchildren of different children). Some due process cases were also considered. Eubank v. City of Richmond, 226 U.S. 137 (1912); Washington ex rel. Seattle Trust Co. v. Roberge, 278 U.S. 116 (1928); City of Eastlake v. Forest City Enterprises, 426 U.S. 668 (1976).

As governmental regulation of property has expanded over the years--in terms of zoning and land use controls, environmental regulations, and the like--the Court never developed, as it admitted, a ``set formula to determine where regulation ends and taking begins.''\266\ Rather, as one commentator remarked, its decisions constitute a ``crazy quilt pattern'' of judgments.\267\ Nonetheless, the Court has now formulated general principles that guide many of its decisions in the area.

NOTES:

\267\Dunham, Griggs v. Allegheny County in Perspective: Thirty Years of Supreme Court Expropriation Law, 1962 Sup. Ct. Rev. 63. For an effort to ground taking jurisprudence in its philosophical precepts, see Michelman, Property, Utility, and Fairness: Comments on the Ethical Foundations of `Just Compensation' Law, 80 Harv. L. Rev. 1165 (1967). A comprehensive analysis of the law in context is Developments in the Law- Zoning, 91 Harv. L. Rev. 1427 (1978).

In Penn Central Transportation Co. v. City of New York,\268\ the Court, while cautioning that regulatory takings cases require ``essentially ad hoc, factual inquiries,'' nonetheless laid out general guidance for determining whether a regulatory taking has occurred. ``The economic impact of the regulation on the claimant and, particularly, the extent to which the regulation has interfered with reasonable investment-backed expectations are . . . relevant considerations. So too, is the character of the governmental action. A `taking' may more readily be found when the interference with property can be characterized as a physical invasion by government than when interference arises from some public program adjusting the benefits and burdens of economic life to promote the common good.''\269\

NOTES:

\269\Id. at 124 (citations omitted).

At issue in Penn Central was the City's landmarks preservation law, as applied to deny approval to construct a 53-story office building atop Grand Central Terminal. The Court upheld the landmarks law against Penn Central's takings claim through application of the principles set forth above. The economic impact on Penn Central was considered: the Company could still make a ``reasonable return'' on its investment by continuing to use the facility as a rail terminal with office rentals and concessions, and the City specifically permitted owners of landmark sites to transfer to other sites the right to develop those sites beyond the otherwise permissible zoning restrictions, a valuable right which mitigated the burden otherwise to be suffered by the owner. As for the character of the governmental regulation, the Court found the landmarks law to be an economic regulation rather than a governmental appropriation of property, the preservation of historic sites being a permissible goal and one which served the public interest.\270\

NOTE:

Justice Holmes began his analysis in Mahon with the observation that ``[g]overnment hardly could go on if to some extent values incident to property could not be diminished without paying for every . . . change in the general law,''\271\ and Penn Central's economic impact standard also leaves ample room for recognition of this principle. Thus, the Court can easily hold that a mere permit requirement does not amount to a taking,\272\ nor does a simple recordation requirement.\273\ The tests become more useful, however, when compliance with regulation becomes more onerous.

NOTES:

\272\United States v. Riverside Bayview Homes, 474 U.S. 121 (1985) (requirement that permit be obtained for filling privately-owned wetlands is not a taking, although permit denial resulting in prevention of economically viable use of land may be).

\273\Texaco v. Short, 454 U.S. 516 (1982) (state statute deeming mineral claims lapsed upon failure of putative owners to take prescribed steps is not a taking); United States v. Locke, 471 U.S. 84 (1984) (reasonable regulation of recordation of mining claim is not a taking).

Several times the Court has relied on the concept of ``distinct (or ``reasonable'') investment-backed expectations'' first introduced in Penn Central. In Ruckelshaus v. Monsanto Co.,\274\ the Court used the concept to determine whether a taking had resulted from the government's disclosure of trade secret information submitted with applications for pesticide registrations. Disclosure of data that had been submitted from 1972 to 1978, a period when the statute guaranteed confidentiality and thus ``formed the basis of a reasonable investment-backed expectation,'' would have destroyed the property value of the trade secret and constituted a taking.\275\ Following 1978 amendments setting forth conditions of data disclosure, however, applicants voluntarily submitting data in exchange for the economic benefits of registration had no reasonable expectation of additional protections of confidentiality.\276\ Relying less heavily on the concept but rejecting an assertion that reasonable investment backed-expectations had been upset, the Court in Connolly v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.\277\ upheld retroactive imposition of liability for pension plan withdrawal on the basis that employers had at least constructive notice that Congress might buttress the legislative scheme to accomplish its legislative aim that employees receive promised benefits. On the other hand, a federal ban on the sale of artifacts made from eagle feathers was sustained as applied to the existing inventory of a commercial dealer in such artifacts, the Court not directly addressing the ban's obvious interference with investment-backed expectations.\278\ The Court merely noted that the ban served a substantial public purpose in protecting the eagle from extinction, that the owner still had viable economic uses for his holdings, such as displaying them in a museum and charging admission, and that he still had the value of possession.\279\

NOTES:

\275\467 U.S. at 1011.

\276\467 U.S. at 1006-07. Similarly, disclosure of data submitted before the confidentiality guarantee was placed in the law did not frustrate reasonable expectations, the Trade Secrets Act merely protecting against ``unauthorized'' disclosure. Id. at 1008-10.

\277\ 475 U.S. 211 (1986). In addition, see Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U.S. 164, 179 (1979) (involving frustration of ``expectancies'' developed through improvements to private land and governmental approval of permits), and PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74, 84 (1980) (characterizing and distinguishing Kaiser Aetna as involving interference with ``reasonable investment backed expectations'').

\278\Andrus v. Allard, 444 U.S. 51 (1979).

\279\Similarly, the Court in Goldblatt had pointed out that the record contained no indication that the mining prohibition would reduce the value of the property in question. 369 U.S. at 594. Contrast Hodel v. Irving, 481 U.S. 704 (1987), where the Court found insufficient justification for a complete abrogation of the right to pass on to heirs interests in certain fractionated property. Note as well the differing views expressed in Irving as to whether that case limits Andrus v. Allard to its facts. Id. at 718 (Justice Brennan concurring, 719 (Justice Scalia concurring). And see the suggestion in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 112 S. Ct. 2886, 2899-900 (1992), that Allard may rest on a distinction between permissible regulation of personal property, on the one hand, and real property, on the other.

In the course of its opinion in Penn Central the Court rejected the principle that no compensation is required when regulation bans a noxious or harmful effect of land use.\280\ The principle, it had been contended, followed from several earlier cases, including Goldblatt v. Town of Hempstead.\281\ In that case, after the town had expanded around an excavation used by a company for mining sand and gravel, the town enacted an ordinance that in effect terminated further mining at the site. Declaring that no compensation was owed, the Court stated that ``[a] prohibition simply upon the use of property for purposes that are declared, by valid legislation, to be injurious to the health, morals, or safety of the community, cannot, in any just sense, be deemed a taking or an appropriation of property for the public benefit. Such legislation does not disturb the owner in the control or use of his property for lawful purposes, nor restrict his right to dispose of it, but is only a declaration by the State that its use by any one, for certain forbidden purposes, is prejudicial to the public interests.''\282\ In Penn Central, however, the Court denied that there was any such test and that prior cases had turned on the concept. ``These cases are better understood as resting not on any supposed `noxious' quality of the prohibited uses but rather on the ground that the restrictions were reasonably related to the implementation of a policy--not unlike historic preservation--expected to produce a widespread public benefit and applicable to all similarly situated property.''\283\ More recently, in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council,\284\ the Court explained ``noxious use'' analysis as merely an early characterization of police power measures that do not require compensation. ``[N]oxious use logic cannot serve as a touchstone to distinguish regulatory `takings'--which require compensation--from regulatory deprivations that do not require compensation.''\285\

NOTES:

\281\369 U.S. 590 (1962). Hadacheck v. Sebastian, 239 U.S. 394 (1915), and, perhaps, Miller v. Schoene, 276 U.S. 272 (1928), also fall under this heading, although Schoene may also be assigned to the public peril line of cases.

\282\Id. at 593 (quoting Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623, 668-69 (1887). The Court posited a two-part test. First, the interests of the public required the interference, and, second, the means were reasonably necessary for the accomplishment of the purpose and were not unduly oppressive of the individual. Id. at 595. The test was derived from Lawton v. Steele, 152 U.S. 133, 137 (1894) (holding that state officers properly destroyed fish nets that were banned by state law in order to preserve certain fisheries from extinction).

\283\438 U.S. at 133-34 n.30.

\284\112 S. Ct. 2886 (1992).

\285\Id. at 2899. The Penn Central majority also rejected the dissent's contention, 438 U.S. at 147-50, that regulation of property use constitutes a taking unless it spreads its distribution of benefits and burdens broadly so that each person burdened has at the same time the enjoyment of the benefit of the restraint upon his neighbors. The Court deemed it immaterial that the landmarks law has a more severe impact on some landowners than on others: ``Legislation designed to promote the general welfare commonly burdens some more than others.'' Id. at 133-34.

Penn Central is not the only guide to when a regulatory taking has occurred; other criteria have emerged from other cases before and after Penn Central. The Court has long recognized a per se takings rule for physical invasions: when government permanently\286\ occupies or authorizes someone else to occupy property, the action constitutes a taking and compensation must be paid regardless of the public interests served by the occupation or the extent of damage to the parcel as a whole.\287\ The modern case dealt with a law that required landlords to permit a cable television company to install its cable facilities upon their buildings; although the equipment occupied only about 1 1/2 cubic feet of space on the exterior of each building and had only de minimis economic impact, a divided Court held that the regulation authorized a permanent physical occupation of the property and thus constituted a taking.\288\

NOTES:

\287\The rule emerged from cases involving flooding of lands and erection of poles for telegraph lines, e.g., Pumpelly v. Green Bay Co., 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 166 (1872); City of St. Louis v. Western Union Telegraph Co., 148 U.S. 92 (1893); Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Pennsylvania R.R., 195 U.S. 540 (1904).

\288\Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U.S. 419 (1982). Loretto was distinguished in FCC v. Florida Power Corp., 480 U.S. 245 (1987); regulation of the rates that utilities may charge cable companies for pole attachments does not constitute a taking in the absence of any requirement that utilities allow attachment and acquiesce in physical occupation of their property. See also Yee v. City of Escondido, 112 S. Ct. 1522 (1992) (no physical occupation was occasioned by regulations in effect preventing mobile home park owners from setting rents or determining who their tenants would be; owners could still determine whether their land would be used for a trailer park and could evict tenants in order to change the use of their land).

A second per se taking rule is of more recent vintage. Land use controls constitute takings, the Court stated in Agins v. City of Tiburon, if they do not ``substantially advance legitimate governmental interests,''\289\ or if they deny a property owner ``economically viable use of his land.''\290\ This second Agins criterion creates a categorical rule: ``when the owner of real property has been called upon to sacrifice all economically beneficial uses in the name of the common good, that is, to leave his property economically idle, he has suffered a taking.''\291\ The only exceptions, the Court explained in Lucas, are for those restrictions that come with the property as title encumbrances or other legally enforceable limitations. Regulations ``so severe'' as to prohibit all economically beneficial use of land ``cannot be newly legislated or decreed (without compensation), but must inhere in the title itself, in the restrictions that background principles of the State's law of property and nuisance already place upon land ownership. A law or decree with such an effect must, in other words, do no more than duplicate the result that could have been achieved in the courts-- by adjacent land owners (or other uniquely affected persons) under the State's law of private nuisance, or by the State under its complementary power to abate [public] nuisances . . . , or otherwise.''\292\ Thus, while there is no broad ``noxious use'' exception separating police power regulations from takings, there is a much narrower exception based on the law of nuisance and related principles.

NOTES:

\290\447 U.S. 255, 260 (1980).

\291\Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 112 S. Ct. 2886, 2895 (1992). The Agins/Lucas total deprivation rule does not create an all-or-nothing situation, since ``the landowner whose deprivation is one step short of complete'' may still be able to recover through application of the Penn Central economic impact and ``distinct [or reasonable] investment-backed expectations'' criteria. Id. at 2895 n.8 (1992).

\292\Id. at 2900. The emphasis on title suggests that the timing of governmental regulation in relation to title transfer may be important. But there are apparently limits to how far this principle may be carried. In Nollan v. California Coastal Comm'n, 483 U.S. 825 (1987), in which Justice Scalia also authored the Court's opinion, the Court rejected the suggestion that title was encumbered by an easement imposed by a regulation that antedated property transfer. ``So long as the Commission could not have deprived the prior owners of the [beach access] easement without compensating them, the prior owners must be understood to have transferred their full property rights in conveying the lot.'' Id. at 834 n.2.

The ``or otherwise'' reference, the Court explained in Lucas,\293\ was principally directed to cases holding that in times of great public peril, such as war, spreading municipal fires, and the like, property may be taken and destroyed without necessitating compensation. Thus, in United States v. Caltex,\294\ the owners of property destroyed by retreating United States armies in Manila during World War II were held not entitled to compensation, and in United States v. Central Eureka Mining Co.,\295\ the Court held that a federal order suspending the operations of a nonessential gold mine for the duration of the war in order to redistribute the miners, unaccompanied by governmental possession and use or a forced sale of the facility, was not a taking entitling the owner to compensation for loss of profits. Finally, the Court held that when federal troops occupied several buildings during a riot in order to dislodge rioters and looters who had already invaded the buildings, the action was taken as much for the owners' benefit as for the general public benefit and the owners must bear the costs of the damage inflicted on the buildings subsequent to the occupation.\296\

NOTES:

\294\344 U.S. 149 (1952). In dissent, Justices Black and Douglas advocated the applicability of a test formulated by Justice Brandeis in Nashville, C. & St. L. Ry. v. Walters, 294 U.S. 405, 429 (1935), a regulation case, to the effect that ``when particular individuals are singled out to bear the cost of advancing the public convenience, that imposition must bear some reasonable relation to the evils to be eradicated or the advantages to be secured.''

\295\357 U.S. 155 (1958). In dissent, Justice Harlan argued for the test stated above. Id. at 179. See supra, n.6.

\296\National Bd. of YMCA v. United States, 395 U.S. 85 (1969). ``An undertaking by the Government to reduce the menace from flood damages which were inevitable but for the Government's work does not constitute the Government a taker of all lands not fully and wholly protected. When undertaking to safeguard a large area from existing flood hazards, the Government does not owe compensation under the Fifth Amendment to every landowner which it fails to or cannot protect.'' United States v. Sponenbarger, 308 U.S. 256, 265 (1939).

The first prong of the Agins test,\297\ focusing on whether land use controls ``substantially advance legitimate governmental interests,'' was applied in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission.\298\ There the Court held that extraction of a public access easement across a strip of beach as a condition for a permit to enlarge a beachfront home did not ``substantially advance'' the state's legitimate interest in preserving public view of the beach from the street in front of the lot. The easement instead was designed to allow the public to walk back and forth along the beach between two public beaches. ``[U]nless the permit condition serves the same governmental purpose as the development ban,'' the Court concluded, ``the building restriction is not a valid regulation of land use but `an out-and-out plan of extortion.'''\299\ The future importance of Nollan will depend in large measure on how broadly its principles are applied. Unlimited application of a substantial advancement test could herald decreased deference to legislative judgments as to appropriate regulation of property, and a resurrection of substantive due process analysis.\300\ Confined to its holding, however, Nollan may be relatively unexceptional. The Court's frame of reference was that requiring a property owner to convey outright a public easement across his property would ordinarily and undeniably constitute a taking; the question posed was ``whether requiring [the easement] to be conveyed as a condition for issuing a land use permit alters the outcome.''\301\ However, for many conditions attached to permits (e.g., building code requirements relating to safety, quality of materials, or soundness of construction) the starting point is different: these conditions do not stand alone. And, even where Nollan issues apparently could be raised (as, e.g., with respect to requirements that subdivision developers dedicate land for recreation needs generated by their developments), it may often be possible to establish that the condition ``substantially advances'' the same legitimate governmental purpose served by the permit requirement.\302\ Important to Nollan's application will be how narrowly or how broadly a reviewing court is willing to construe the public interests underlying the regulation of property.\303\

NOTES:

\298\483 U.S. 825 (1987).

\299\Id. at 837.

\300\Dissenting Justice Brennan argued that the Court was requiring ``a degree of exactitude that is inconsistent with our standard for reviewing the rationality of a state's exercise of its police power for the welfare of its citizens.'' 483 U.S. at 842-43. Justice Scalia's opinion for the Court denied that the standards ``are the same as those applied to due process or equal protection claims,'' indicating further that ``a broad range of governmental purposes and regulations satisfies these requirements.'' Id. at 834 n.3, 834-35. For analysis, see N. Lawrence, Means, Motives, and Takings: The Nexus Test of Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, 12 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 231 (1988). Note as well that Lucas also manifests decreased deference to legislative judgments; destruction of all beneficial use of property cannot be justified through legislative findings of necessity, but only by reference to background principles of property law.

\301\Id. at 834.

\302\Justice Scalia, author of the Court's opinion in Nollan, amplified his views in a concurring and dissenting opinion in Pennell v. City of San Jose, 485 U.S. 1 (1988), explaining that ``common zoning regulations requiring subdividers to observe lot-size and set-back restrictions, and to dedicate certain areas to public streets, are in accord with [constitutional requirements] because the proposed property use would otherwise be the cause of'' the social evil (e.g., congestion) that the regulation seeks to remedy. By contrast, the Justice asserted, a rent control restriction pegged to individual tenant hardship lacks such cause-and-effect relationship and is in reality an attempt to impose on a few individuals public burdens that ``should be borne by the public as a whole.'' 485 U.S. at 20, 22.

\303\Compare Pioneer Trust and Savings Bank v. Village of Mount Prospect, 22 Ill.2d 375, 176 N.E.2d 799 (1961) (required dedication of land for school and playground is invalid as resulting from the total development of the community, rather than being specifically and uniquely attributable to the developer's activity) with Associated Home Builders v. City of Walnut Creek, 94 Cal. Rptr. 630, 484 P.2d 606, 610 (1971) (exaction can be justified on the basis of ``general public need for recreational facilities caused by present and future subdivisions''). The Nollan Court cited the Mount Prospect case approvingly, while contrasting the California rule. 483 U.S. at 839.

Following the Penn Central decision, the Court grappled with the issue of the appropriate remedy property owners should pursue in objecting to land use regulations.\304\ The remedy question arises because there are two possible constitutional objections to be made to regulations that go ``too far'' in reducing the value of property or which do not substantially advance a legitimate governmental interest. The regulation may be invalidated as a denial of due process, or may be deemed a taking requiring compensation, at least for the period in which the regulation was in effect. The Court finally resolved the issue in First English Evangelical Lutheran Church v. County of Los Angeles, holding that, when land use regulation is held to be a taking, compensation is due for the period of implementation prior to the holding.\305\ The Court recognized that, even though government may elect in such circumstances to discontinue regulation and thereby avoid compensation for a permanent property deprivation, ``no subsequent action by the government can relieve it of the duty to provide compensation for the period during which the taking was effective.''\306\

NOTES:

\305\482 U.S. 304 (1987). The decision was 6-3, Chief Justice Rehnquist's opinion of the Court being joined by Justices Brennan, White, Marshall, Powell, and Scalia, and Justice Stevens' dissent being joined in part by Justices Blackmun and O'Connor. The position the Court adopted had been advocated by Justice Brennan in a dissenting opinion in San Diego Gas & Elec. Co. v. City of San Diego, 450 U.S. 621, 636 (1981) (dissenting from Court's holding that state court decision was not ``final judgment'' under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1257).

\306\482 U.S. at 321.

The process of describing general criteria to guide resolution of regulatory taking claims, begun in Penn Central, has reduced to some extent the ad hoc character of takings law. It is nonetheless true that not all cases fit neatly into the categories delimited to date, and that still other cases that might be so categorized are explained in different terms by the Court. The overriding objective, the Court frequently reminds us, is to vitalize the Fifth Amendment's protection against government ``forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole.''\307\ Thus a taking may be found if the effect of regulation is enrichment of the government itself rather than adjustment of the benefits and burdens of economic life in promotion of the public good.\308\ Similarly, the Court looks askance at governmental efforts to secure public benefits at a landowner's expense--``government actions that may be characterized as acquisitions of resources to permit or facilitate uniquely public functions.''\309\

NOTES:

\308\Webb's Fabulous Pharmacies v. Beckwith, 449 U.S. 155 (1980) (government retained the interest derived from funds it required to be deposited with the clerk of the county court as a precondition to certain suits; the interest earned was not reasonably related to the costs of using the courts, since a separate statute required payment for the clerk's services). By contrast, a charge for governmental services ``not so clearly excessive as to belie [its] purported character as [a] user fee'' does not qualify as a taking. United States v. Sperry Corp., 493 U.S. 52, 62 (1989).

\309\Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104, 128 (1978). In addition to the cases cited there, see also Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U.S. 164, 180 (1979) (viewed as governmental effort to turn private pond into ``public aquatic park''); Nollan v. California Coastal Comm'n, 483 U.S. 825 (1987) (``extortion'' of beachfront easement for public as permit condition unrelated to purpose of permit).

On the other side of the coin, the nature as well as the extent of property interests affected by governmental regulation sometimes takes on importance. The Court emphasizes that the taking of one ``strand'' or ``stick'' in the ``bundle'' of property rights does not necessarily constitute a taking as long as the property as a whole retains economic viability,\310\ but some strands are more important than others. The right to exclude others from one's land is so basic to ownership that extinguishment of this right ordinarily constitutes a taking.\311\ Similarly valued is the right to pass on property to one's heirs.\312\

NOTES:

\311\Nollan v. California Coastal Comm'n, 483 U.S. 825, 831-32 (1987) (physical occupation occurs with public easement that eliminates right to exclude others); Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U.S. 164 (1979) (imposition of navigation servitude requiring public access to a privately-owned pond was a taking under the circumstances; owner's commercially valuable right to exclude others was taken, and requirement amounted to ``an actual physical invasion''). But see PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74, 84 (1980) (requiring shopping center to permit individuals to exercise free expression rights on property onto which public had been invited was not destructive of right to exclude others or ``so essential to the use or economic value of [the] property'' as to constitute a taking).

\312\Hodel v. Irving, 481 U.S. 704 (1987) (complete abrogation of the right to pass on to heirs fractionated interests in lands constitutes a taking).

Even though takings were found or assumed in the recent decisions in First English, Nollan, and Lucas, considerable obstacles remain for future litigants challenging regulatory restrictions on land use. As suggested above, regulatory takings will most likely remain difficult to establish in spite of Nollan. The Lucas fact situation, in which governmental regulation rendered property ``valueless,'' may prove to be relatively rare (although how the ``segmentation'' issue\313\ is handled may prove pivotal in this regard). And even if a taking can be established, the Court cautioned in First English that its holding was limited ``to the facts presented [a taking was assumed] and [did] not deal with the quite different questions that would arise in the case of normal delays in obtaining building permits, changes in zoning ordinances, variances, and the like.''\314\ Failure to incur such delays can result in dismissal of an as-applied taking claim on ripeness grounds. In Williamson County Regional Planning Comm'n v. Hamilton Bank,\315\ for example, the landowner had failed to seek a variance following a planning commission's rejection of a subdivision plat, and had failed to pursue state inverse condemnation procedures. Similarly, in MacDonald, Sommer & Frates v. County of Yolo,\316\ the landowner had failed to obtain a ``final and authoritative determination of the type and intensity of development legally permitted on the . . . property.'' As the Court explained, ``[a] court cannot determine whether a regulation has gone `too far' unless it knows how far the regulation goes.''\317\ The landowner had been denied approval for one subdivision plan calling for intense development, but that one denial had not foreclosed ``the possibility that some deveopment [would] be permitted.''\318\ So too, a challenge to a municipal rent control ordinance was considered ``premature'' in the absence of evidence that a tenant hardship provision had in fact ever been applied to reduce what would otherwise be considered to be a reasonable rent increase.\319\ Facial challenges present the same difficulties--without pursuing administrative remedies, a claimant often lacks evidence that a statute's effect is to deny all economically viable uses of property.\320\

NOTES:

\314\482 U.S. at 321.

\315\473 U.S. 172 (1985).

\316\477 U.S. 340 (1986).

\317\Id. at 348.

\318\Id. at 352.

\319\Pennell v. City of San Jose, 485 U.S. 1 (1988).

\320\See, e.g., Hodel v. Virginia Surface Mining & Reclamation Ass'n, 452 U.S. 264, 295-97 (1981) (facial challenge to surface mining law rejected); United States v. Riverside Bayview Homes, 474 U.S. 121, 127 (1985) (mere permit requirement does not itself take property).

The foregoing commentary and annotations were originally published in a document sponsored by the United States Senate on the United States Government Printing Office website.