U.S. v. Armstrong

30 F.Supp.2d 901

UNITED STATES of America v. David M. ARMSTRONG, Defendant.

Criminal No. 91-526-A.

United States District Court, E.D. Virginia, Alexandria Division.

December 17, 1998.

Helen F. Fahey, United States Attorney, Thomas M. Hollenhorst, Assistant United States Attorney, Alexandria, VA, for plaintiff.

Michael W. Lieberman, Alexandria, VA, for defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

ELLIS, District Judge.

Is the exclusionary rule applicable in supervised release revocation hearings? This is the troublesome question presented by the petition for revocation of defendant David Armstrong's supervised release based on evidence seized incident to his arrest in the District of Columbia, which evidence was ultimately suppressed in the District of Columbia prosecution stemming from that arrest. A Fourth Circuit decision, United States v. Workman, 585 F.2d 1205 (4th Cir.1978), holds that the exclusionary rule does apply in the similar context of federal probation revocation hearings. Yet, in reaching this conclusion, the Fourth Circuit panel also set forth an approach for analyzing the applicability of the exclusionary rule, which, if followed today, would lead to a different conclusion.

I.

In 1992, Armstrong pled guilty to one of several indicted counts, specifically conspiracy to possess and distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base and five kilograms or more of cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 846. He was sentenced on April 24, 1992, to 210 months in prison and 5 years of supervised release. This sentence was later reduced to 70 months, pursuant to Rule 35, Fed.R.Crim.P.¹

Armstrong was released from custody on January 17, 1997. Thereafter, he was arrested again on April 22, 1998 in the District of Columbia, when following a routine traffic stop, a search of his vehicle resulted in the seizure of a loaded .38 caliber Colt revolver and 36 Ziploc bags containing 3.1 grams of cocaine base. As a result, Armstrong was indicted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, where in pretrial motion practice, he successfully moved to suppress the evidence retrieved during the stop.² Given this, the government dismissed the District of Columbia case on November 5, 1998.

The instant petition was filed May 3, 1998, prior to the ruling on the suppression motion. Resolution of the petition was continued pending the disposition of the District of Columbia prosecution. With the dismissal of that case, this matter is now ripe. At issue here is the application of the exclusionary rule in hearings for revocation of supervised release.³ The application of the exclusionary rule to federal probation revocation hearings was addressed in United States v. Workman, which is relevant circuit precedent applicable to revocation of supervised release hearings.⁴ In Workman, a panel of the Fourth Circuit acknowledged numerous circuit court decisions to the contrary, but held nonetheless that, under Supreme Court precedent, the exclusionary rule applies to probation hearings.

Ordinarily, the existence of Fourth Circuit precedent directly on point would end the analysis. Yet here, the government argues that subsequent Supreme Court opinions, especially Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole v. Scott, 524 U.S. 357, 118 S.Ct. 2014, 141 L.Ed.2d 344 (1998), have so eroded the basis of Workman that it can no longer be regarded as authoritative circuit precedent. This Memorandum Opinion addresses this contention.

II.

In Workman, the Fourth Circuit held that in determining the applicability of the exclusionary rule, lower courts should conduct the balancing test enunciated by the Supreme Court in United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 349, 94 S.Ct. 613, 38 L.Ed.2d 561 (1974), primarily "by comparing revocation hearings with other instances where the Supreme Court has considered the rule's application." See Workman, 585 F.2d at 1210. The Calandra test requires courts to balance the potential injury to the proceeding against the potential benefits of applying the rule. See id. at 1209. Thus, Workman teaches that the balancing process should be guided by comparison of supervised release revocation hearings with the Supreme Court's assessment of the deterrent effects of the exclusionary rule in other contexts. See id. at 1210.⁵ In making this comparison, the Workman court found persuasive that "the Supreme Court has never exempted from the operation of the exclusionary rule any adjudicative proceeding in which the government offers unconstitutionally seized evidence in direct support of a charge that may subject the victim of a search to imprisonment." Id. at 1211.⁶ Significantly, it is doubtful that this statement continues accurately to reflect the current state of Supreme Court jurisprudence.

Since Workman, the Supreme Court has addressed the role of the exclusionary rule in several cases, and limited its applicability, even in the context of criminal proceedings.⁷ Thus, the Supreme Court, subsequent to Workman, has held that the exclusionary rule (i) does not apply in deportation hearings,⁸ (ii) does not apply when a police officer reasonably relied on a search warrant that was later deemed invalid,⁹ and (iii) does not apply when a police officer reasonably relied on a statute later deemed unconstitutional.¹⁰ Indeed, so much had the exclusionary rule landscape changed by 1989, that a district judge in this circuit adopted the memorandum and recommendation of a magistrate judge, which held that the exclusionary rule does not apply to parole revocation proceedings because "developments since 1978 have worked a substantial change in the judicial view of the exclusionary rule." See Pratt v. United States Parole Commission, 717 F.Supp. 382, 385 (E.D.N.C.1989).¹¹

Nor is this the end of the story; the most recent Supreme Court decision on the application of the exclusionary rule in collateral proceedings powerfully confirms the view expressed in Pratt. Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole v. Scott holds that the exclusionary rule does not apply in state parole revocation proceedings, which are closely analogous to the federal probation revocation hearing at issue in Workman. It follows inescapably from Workman's teachings that the Fourth Circuit panel in Workman, under its own analysis, would reach a different result today in light of Scott. Thus, Workman's conclusion that the exclusionary rule applies in probation revocation hearings can no longer be considered authoritative circuit precedent.

A review of the analysis conducted by the Scott court supports this conclusion. In Scott, the Supreme Court began its analysis by emphasizing (i) that the government's use of illegally seized evidence does not itself violate the Constitution, (ii) that the exclusionary rule is "a judicially created means of deterring illegal searches and seizures," and (iii) that the exclusionary rule is only to be applied where the deterrence benefits outweigh the "`substantial social costs.'" See 524 U.S. at ___, 118 S.Ct. at 2019 (quoting United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 907, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984)). Noting that in prior decisions it has "repeatedly declined to extend the exclusionary rule to proceedings other than criminal trials," and has "significantly limited" its application even in criminal trials, the Supreme Court stated that "the rule's `costly toll' upon truth-seeking and law enforcement objectives presents a high obstacle for those urging application of the rule." See id. at 2019-20 & 2020 n. 4 (citing United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727, 734, 100 S.Ct. 2439, 65 L.Ed.2d 468 (1980)).

Examining the application of the exclusionary rule to state parole proceedings in light of these principles, the Supreme Court began by finding that the costs of excluding reliable, probative evidence are particularly high in parole revocation proceedings. See id. at 2020.¹² Further, the "traditionally flexible administrative procedures" of parole revocation are not compatible with the exclusionary rule,¹³ and application of the exclusionary rule would alter the parole process, requiring extensive litigation to determine whether to exclude particular evidence and altering the nonadversarial nature of the administrative processes established by the States. See id. at 2020-21.¹⁴ The Supreme Court also held that the deterrence benefits do not outweigh the costs in this context; the application of the exclusionary rule would have little deterrent effect upon an officer who is unaware of the parolee's status, and the possibility that illegally seized evidence will be suppressed in a trial for the crime at issue as opposed to the original arrest provides adequate deterrence. See id. at 2021-22.¹⁵ The Supreme Court concluded that it has "long been averse to imposing federal requirements upon the parole systems of the States," and thus "[t]he marginal deterrence of unreasonable searches and seizures is insufficient to justify such an intrusion." See id. at 2022.

Scott does not directly address federal supervised release revocation hearings, and indeed referred to federalism concerns that do not arise in the context of federal supervised release hearings. Even so, the Supreme Court's analysis in Scott is applicable to revocation of supervised release hearings. Thus, in the context of revocation of supervised release hearings, as in the context of parole hearings, the "high obstacle" for application of the exclusionary rule is not met. First, the costs at issue here are identical to those found "particularly high" by the Supreme Court in Scott. Like a parolee, a convicted criminal on supervised release is conditionally released precisely because the person's freedom can be conditioned on compliance with certain requirements; application of the exclusionary rule in the supervised release context would hamper the government's ability to ensure that compliance just as significantly in the supervised release context. M...