Posted by Orin Kerr:
*Engleman v. Murray* and Extraterritorial Enforcement of Arrest Warrants:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_11_16-2008_11_22.shtml#1227040967
The Eighth Circuit decided a very interesting Fourth Amendment case
yesterday involving extraterritorial warrants: [1]Engleman v. Murray.
The case end up creating some interesting tensions in Fourth Amendment
law, so I thought I would blog a bit about it.
First, the facts. Engleman made a 911 call to report a prowler, and
he gives the address of the home where he is calling as "24512 Van
Fleet Road, Siloam Springs, Arkansas." The call was routed to the
Arkansas local police, who learn in the course of the call that there
is an Arkansas warrant out for Engleman's arrest. The police ended up
going to the home and searching for Engleman to execute the Arkansas
warrant. In the home, though, the officers were told that the home is
actually inside Oklahoma, not Arkansas. Indeed, believe it or not, it
turns out that while the mailbox of the home is in Arkansas -- and
thus the mailing address of the home is in Arkansas -- the
Oklahoma/Arkansas line cuts through the property and the home itself
is actually located in Oklahoma. (What is this, a law school exam?)
The police arrested Engleman under the Arkansas warrant, and Engleman
then sued the police for violating his Fourth Amendment rights by
carrying out the Arkansas warrant in Oklahoma.
In a divided opinion by Judge Gruender, joined by Judge Beam, the
Eighth Circuit concluded that under the originalist framework
articulated by the Supreme Court in [2]Virginia v. Moore, the Arkansas
warrant was invalid in Oklahoma. Under the English common law,
warrants had no force outside their territory:
At the time the Bill of Rights was adopted, a warrant issued in one
English county was not valid in another county unless a justice of
the peace in that county �backed� the warrant. See William
Blackstone, 4 Commentaries *292. �[W]hen a warrant is received by
the officer he is bound to execute it, so far as the jurisdiction
of the magistrate and himself extends.� Id. at *291; see Blatcher
v. Kemp, (1782) 126 Eng. Rep. 10, 10 n.a (Maidstone Assizes) (�No
constable can act under a warrant, out of his district . . . .�); R
v. Chandler, (1700) 91 Eng. Rep. 1264, 1265 (K.B.) (�[W]here a
precept or warrant is directed to men by the name of their office,
it is confined to the districts in which they are officers.�).
Under a historical understanding of the Fourth Amendment, the
jurisdiction of the issuing judge and the executing officer is
limited, and a warrant is not valid if an officer acts outside of
that limited jurisdiction. See Lawson v. Buzines, 3 Del. (3 Harr.)
416, 416 (Sup. Ct. 1842) (concluding that �a constable of the city
. . . has no authority out of the city limits� to execute an arrest
warrant issued in that county); Copeland v. Isley, 19 N.C. (2 Dev.
& Bat.) 505, 505 (1837) (�[A]n officer must proceed to arrest at
some place actually in his own county . . . .�).
The court then concluded that qualified immunity nonetheless applied
because under the circumstances, the officers could reasonably believe
that they were in Arkansas, not Oklahoma, and therefore had authority
to carry out the warrant. (Confusingly, at the end of the opinion the
court says that because the officers reasonably believed that they
were in Arkansas, they reasonably relied on the warrant and did not
violate the Fourth Amendment but that qualified immunity applied
because the right was not clearly established -- more on this in a
moment.) Judge Bye dissented, arguing that the officers should have
known they had no authority to do what they did.
A few thoughts and reactions to the case. First, it's fascinating
that the court here, and a few other courts recently, are construing
Virginia v. Moore as requiring an originalist analysis of the
reasonableness of a search or seizure. Lower courts usually ignore
methodological advice like that, and instead engage in either reliance
on precedent or the balancing approach to reasonableness. Is Moore
going to signal a more widespread reliance on originalism in Fourth
Amendment law in the lower courts? Time will tell, but it might.
To read the rest of this post, click here.
Second, the majority was somewhat confused in its doctrinal boxes.
First it says that the Fourth Amendment doesn't allow it but qualified
immunity applied; later, at the end, it says that the Fourth Amendment
wasn't violated and that qualified immunity would apply even if it
did. I think the court is just confusing categories at the end of the
opinion: I believe the court should have said that the Fourth
Amendment was violated by the arrest by a state actor without a valid
(territorial) warrant, but that qualified immunity applies either on
the ground of a reasonable mistake of fact -- the officers thought
they were in Arkansas -- or on the ground of a reasonable mistake of
law -- there was no law clearly indicating that extraterritorial
warrants had no force -- or both. See generally [3]Groh v. Ramirez
(Kennedy, J., disenting) (discussing the difference between mistakes
of fact and mistakes of law in qualified immunity analysis).
Third, there is a lot of law on extraterritorial arrests that the
court doesn't address, presumably because none of the parties raised
it. My understanding has been that the usual rule is that an officer
who leaves his own jurisdiction has the rights to arrest of a private
citizen, so courts normally look to the "citizen's arrest" law of the
extraterritorial jurisdiction to see if the arrest was permitted. See
generally State v. Stevens, 620 A.2d 789, 295 n.19 (Conn. 1993)
(citing cases).
If that's right, then the court should have (or at least could have)
looked at the case by considering whether a citizen's arrest would
have been permitted in equivalent circumstances. Or at least it would
have been helpful for the court to square its cases with those or to
explain that it thought that Moore required a new path. I suspect this
didn't come up because the parties didn't address it, but it's worth
noting that there's an additional step here: The fact that the warrant
has no force outside the state doesn't necessarily mean that the
officers violated the Fourth Amendment in arresting Engleman. (The
court does talk about "reasonable reliance" on the warrant, which
might suggest some sort of Leon good faith inquiry, but that's only
relevant in the suppression context and in any event it's identical to
the qualified immunity standard, see Groh v. Ramirez.)
Finally, in the end I think the court had it right: the Fourth
Amendment law here is really pretty murky, and it sounds like there
was a legitimate claim of reasonable mistake of fact. In my view,
either the reasonable mistake of fact or reasonable mistake of law (or
a combination) should be enough to satisfy the qualified immunity
standard in this case.
Thanks to [4]FourthAmendment.com for the link.
References
Visible links
1. http://www.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/08/11/072060P.pdf
2. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/06-1082.ZO.html
3.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=02-811#dissent1
4. http://www.fourthamendment.com/blog/
Hidden links:
5. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/volokh/posts/1227040967.html
6. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/volokh/posts/1227040967.html
_______________________________________________
Volokh mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.powerblogs.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
