Malley v. Briggs

475 U.S. 335, 106 S. Ct. 1092, 89 L. Ed. 2d 271, 1986 U.S. LEXIS 29, 54 U.S.L.W. 4243

• Court: Supreme Court of the United States
• Decided: March 5, 1986
• Docket: 84-1586
• Status: Published

Opinions

Justice White

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case presents the question of the degree of immunity accorded a defendant police officer in a damages action under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 when it is alleged that the officer caused the plaintiffs to be unconstitutionally arrested by presenting a judge with a complaint and a supporting affidavit which failed to establish probable cause.

) — I

In December 1980, the Rhode Island State Police were conducting a court-authorized wiretap on the telephone of one Paul Driscoll, an acquaintance of respondents’ daughter. On December 20, the police intercepted a call to Driscoll from an unknown individual who identified himself as “Dr. Shogun.” The police logsheet summarizes the call as follows: “General conversation re. a party they went to last night. . . caller says I can’t believe I was token [sic] in front of Jimmy Briggs — caller states he passed it to Louisa . . . Paul says Nancy was sitting in his lap rolling her thing.” App. 78.

Petitioner Edward Malley (hereafter petitioner) was the Rhode Island state trooper in charge of the investigation of Driscoll. After reviewing the logsheet for December 20, petitioner decided that the call from “Dr. Shogun” was incriminating, because in drug parlance “toking” means smoking marihuana and “rolling her thing” refers to rolling a marihuana cigarette. Petitioner also concluded that another call monitored the same day showed that the party discussed by Driscoll and “Dr. Shogun” took place at respondents’ house. On the basis of these two calls, petitioner drew up felony complaints charging that respondents and Paul Driscoll “did unlawfully conspire to violate the uniform controlled substance act of the State of Rhode Island by having [marihuana] in their possession . . . .” Id., at 74. These complaints were presented to a State District Court Judge in February 1981, after the wiretap of Driscoll’s phone had been terminated. Accompanying the complaints were unsigned warrants for each respondent’s arrest, and supporting affidavits describing the two intercepted calls and petitioner’s interpretation of them. The judge signed warrants for the arrest of respondents and 20 other individuals charged by petitioner as a result of information gathered through the wiretap.

Respondents were arrested at their home shortly before six o’clock on the morning of March 19, 1981. They were taken to a police station, booked, held for several hours, arraigned, and released. Local and statewide newspapers published the fact that respondents, who are prominent members of their community, had been arrested and charged with drug possession. The charges against repondents were subsequently dropped when the grand jury to which the case was presented did not return an indictment.

Respondents brought an action under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 in the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island charging, inter alia, that petitioner, in applying for warrants for their arrest, violated their rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The case was tried to a jury, and at the close of respondents’ evidence, petitioner moved for and was granted a directed verdict.¹ The District Court’s primary justification for directing a verdict was that the act of the judge in issuing the arrest warrants for respondents broke the causal chain between petitioner’s filing of a complaint and respondents’ arrest. The court also stated that an officer who believes that the facts stated in his affidavit are true and who submits them to a neutral magistrate may thereby be entitled to immunity under the “objective reasonableness” standard of Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800 (1982).

The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed, holding that an officer who seeks an arrest warrant by submitting a complaint and supporting affidavit to a judge is not entitled to immunity unless the officer has an objectively reasonable basis for believing that the facts alleged in his affidavit are sufficient to establish probable cause. 748 F. 2d 715 (1984). We granted certiorari in order to review the First Circuit’s application of the “objective reasonableness” standard in this context. 471 U. S. 1124 (1985). We affirm.

II

Petitioner urges reversal on two grounds: first, that in this context, he is absolutely immune from liability for damages; second, that he is at least entitled to qualified immunity in this case. We reject both propositions and address first the absolute immunity issue.

A

Our general approach to questions of immunity under § 1983 is by now well established. Although the statute on its face admits of no immunities, we have read it “in harmony with general principles of tort immunities and defenses rather than in derogation of them.” Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U. S. 409, 418 (1976). Our initial inquiry is whether an official claiming immunity under §1983 can point to a common-law counterpart to the privilege he asserts. Tower v. Glover, 467 U. S. 914 (1984). If “an official was accorded immunity from tort actions at common law when the Civil Rights Act was enacted in 1871, the Court next considers whether §1983’s history or purposes nonetheless counsel against recognizing the same immunity in § 1983 actions.” Id., at 920. Thus, while we look to the common law for guidance, we do not assume that Congress intended to incorporate every common-law immunity into §1983 in unaltered form.

Our cases also make plain that “[f]or executive officers in general, . . . qualified immunity represents the norm.” Harlow, supra, at 807.² Like federal officers, state officers who “seek absolute exemption from personal liability for unconstitutional conduct must bear the burden of showing that public policy requires an exemption of that scope.” Butz v. Economou, 438 U. S. 478, 506 (1978).

B

Although we have previously held that police officers sued under § 1983 for false arrest are qualifiedly immune, Pierson v. Ray, 386 U. S. 547, 557 (1967), petitioner urges that he should be absolutely immune because his function in seeking an arrest warrant was similar to that of a complaining witness. The difficulty with this submission is that complaining witnesses were not absolutely immune at common law. In 1871, the generally accepted rule was that one who procured the issuance of an arrest warrant by submitting a complaint could be held liable if the complaint was made maliciously and without probable cause.³ Given malice and the lack of probable cause, the complainant enjoyed no immunity. The common law thus affords no support for petitioner.

Nor are we moved by petitioner’s argument that policy considerations require absolute immunity for the officer applying for a warrant. As the qualified immunity defense has evolved, it provides ample protection to all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law. At common law, in cases where probable cause to arrest was lacking, a complaining witness’ immunity turned on the issue of malice, which was a jury question.⁴ Under the Harlow standard, on the other hand, an allegation of malice is not sufficient to defeat immunity if the defendant acted in an objectively reasonable manner. The Harlow standard is specifically designed to “avoid excessive disruption of government and permit the resolution of many insubstantial claims on summary judgment,” and we believe it sufficiently serves this goal. Defendants will not be immune if, on an objective basis, it is obvious that no reasonably competent officer would have concluded that a warrant should issue; but if officers of reasonable competence could disagree on this issue, immunity should be recognized.

C

As an alternative ground for claiming absolute immunity, petitioner draws an analogy between an officer requesting a warrant and a prosecutor who asks a grand jury to indict a suspect. Like the prosecutor, petitioner argues, the officer must exercise a discretionary judgment based on the evidence before him, and like the prosecutor, the officer may not exercise his best judgment if the threat of retaliatory lawsuits hangs over him. Thus, petitioner urges us to read § 1983 as giving the officer the same absolute immunity enjoyed by the prosecutor. Cf. Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U. S. 409 (1976).

We reemphasize that our role is to interpret the intent of Congress in enacting § 1983, not to make a freewheeling policy choice, and that we are guided in interpreting Congress’ intent by the common-law tradition. In Imbler, supra, we concluded that at common law “[t]he general rule was, and is, that a prosecutor is absolutely immune from suit for malicious prosecution.” Id., at 437. We do not find a comparable tradition of absolute immunity for one whose complaint causes a warrant to issue. See n. 3, supra. While this observation may seem unresponsive to petitioner’s policy argument, it is, we believe, an important guide to interpreting § 1983. Since the statute on its face does not provide for any immunities, we would be going far to read into it an absolute immunity for conduct which was only accorded qualified immunity in 1871.

Even were we to overlook the fact that petitioner is inviting us to expand what was a qualified immunity at common law into an absolute immunity, we would find his analogy between himself and a prosecutor untenable. We have interpreted § 1983 to give absolute immunity to functions “intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process,” Imbler, supra, at 430 (emphasis added), not from an exaggerated esteem for those who perform these functions, and certainly not from a desire to shield abuses of office, but because any lesser degree of immunity could impair the judicial process itself. Briscoe v. LaHue, 460 U. S. 325, 334-335 (1983). We intend no disrespect to the officer applying for a warrant by observing that his action, while a vital part of the administration of criminal justice, is further removed from the judicial phase of criminal proceedings than the act of a prosecutor in seeking an indictment. Furthermore, petitioner’s analogy, while it has some force, does not take account of the fact that the prosecutor’s act in seeking an indictment is but the first step in the process of seeking a conviction. Exposing the prosecutor to liability for the initial phase of his prosecutorial work could interfere with his exercise of independent judgment at every phase of his work, since the prosecutor might come to see later decisions in terms of their effect on his potential liability. Thus, we shield the prosecutor seeking an indictment because any lesser immunity could impair the performance of a central actor in the judicial process.⁵

In the case of the officer applying for a warrant, it is our judgment that the judicial process will on the whole benefit from a rule of qualified rather than absolute immunity. We do not believe that the Harlow standard, which gives ample room for mistaken judgments, will frequently deter an officer from submitting an affidavit when probable cause to make an arrest is present. True, an officer who knows that objectively unreasonable decisions will be actionable may be motivated to reflect, before submitting a request for a warrant, upon whether he has a reasonable basis for believing that his affidavit establishes probable cause. But such reflection is desirable, because it reduces the likelihood that the officer’s request for a warrant will be premature. Premature requests for warrants are at best a waste of judicial resources; at worst, they lead to premature arrests, which may injure the innocent or, by giving the basis for a suppression motion, benefit the guilty.

Furthermore, it would be incongruous to test police behavior by the “objective reasonableness” standard in a suppression hearing, see United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897 (1984), while exempting police conduct in applying for an arrest or search warrant from any scrutiny whatsoever in a § 1988 damages action.⁶ While we believe the exclusionary rule serves a necessary purpose, it obviously does so at a considerable cost to society as a whole, because it excludes evidence probative of guilt. On the other hand, a damages remedy for an arrest following an objectively unreasonable request for a warrant imposes a cost directly on the officer responsible for the unreasonable request, without the side effect of hampering a criminal prosecution. Also, in the case of the § 1983 action, the likelihood is obviously greater than at the suppression hearing that the remedy is benefiting the victim of police misconduct one would think most deserving of a remedy — the person who in fact has done no wrong, and has been arrested for no reason, or a bad reason. See Owen v. City of Independence, 445 U. S. 622, 653 (1980).

Accordingly, we hold that the same standard of objective reasonableness that we applied in the context of a suppression hearing in Leon, supra, defines the qualified immunity accorded an officer whose request for a warrant allegedly caused an unconstitutional arrest.⁷ Only where the warrant application is so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence unreasonable, Leon, supra, at 923, will the shield of immunity be lost.

I — I f — H HH

We also reject petitioner’s argument that if an officer is entitled to only qualified immunity in cases like this, he is nevertheless shielded from damages liability because the act of applying for a warrant is per se objectively reasonable, provided that the officer believes that the facts alleged in his affidavit are true. Petitioner insists that he is entitled to rely on the judgment of a judicial officer in finding that probable cause exists and hence issuing the warrant. This view of objective reasonableness is at odds with our development of that concept in Harlow and Leon. In Leon, we stated that “our good-faith inquiry is confined to the objectively ascertainable question whether a reasonably well-trained officer would have known that the search was illegal despite the magistrate’s authorization.” 468 U. S., at 922, n. 23. The analogous question in this case is whether a reasonably well-trained officer in petitioner’s position would have known that his affidavit failed to establish probable cause and that he should not have applied for the warrant.⁸ If such was the case, the officer’s application for a warrant was not objectively reasonable, because it created the unnecessary danger of an unlawful arrest. It is true that in an ideal system an unreasonable request for a warrant would be harmless, because no judge would approve it. But ours is not an ideal system, and it is possible that a magistrate, working under docket pressures, will fail to perform as a magistrate should. We find it reasonable to require the officer applying for the warrant to minimize this danger by exercising reasonable professional judgment.⁹

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

1 Respondents’ complaint also named the State of Rhode Island as a defendant. At the close of respondents’ evidence, Rhode Island moved for and was granted a directed verdict on Eleventh Amendment grounds. Respondents have not contested the propriety of the directed verdict for the State.

2 Harlow was a suit against federal, not state, officials, but as we stated in deciding the case, it is “ ‘untenable to draw a distinction for purposes of immunity law between suits brought against state officials under § 1983 and suits brought directly under the Constitution against federal officials.”’ 457 U. S., at 818, n. 30 (quoting Butz v. Economou, 438 U. S. 478, 504 (1978)).

3 See, e. g., Dinsman v. Wilkes, 12 How. 390, 402 (1852); Randall v. Henry, 5 Stew. & P. 367, 378 (Ala. 1834); Bell v. Keepers, 37 Kan. 64, 14 P. 542 (1887); Finn v. Frink, 84 Me. 261, 24 A. 851 (1892); 4 W. Wait, Actions and Defenses 352-356 (1878). The same rule applied in the case of search warrants. See, e. g., Barker v. Stetson, 73 Mass. 53, 54 (1856); Carey v. Sheets, 67 Ind. 375, 378-379 (1879).

4 See 4 Wait, supra, at 345 (‘Whether malice is proved or not is a question of fact for the jury”).

5 The organized bar’s development and enforcement of professional standards for prosecutors also lessen the danger that absolute immunity will become a shield for prosecutorial misconduct. As we observed in Imbler, “a prosecutor stands perhaps unique, among officials whose acts could deprive persons of constitutional rights, in his amenability to professional discipline by an association of his peers. ” 424 U. S., at 429 (footnote omitted). The absence of a comparably well-developed and pervasive mechanism for controlling police misconduct weighs against allowing absolute immunity for the officer.

6 Although the case before us only concerns a damages action for an officer’s part in obtaining an allegedly unconstitutional arrest warrant, the distinction between a search warrant and an arrest warrant would not make a difference in the degree of immunity accorded the officer who applied for the warrant.

7 Petitioner has not pressed the argument that in a case like this the officer should not be liable because the judge’s decision to issue the warrant breaks the causal chain between the application for the warrant and the improvident arrest. It should be clear, however, that the District Court’s “no causation” rationale in this case is inconsistent with our interpretation of § 1983. As we stated in Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167, 187 (1961), § 1983 “should be read against the background of tort liability that makes a man responsible for the natural consequences of his actions.” Since the common law recognized the causal link between the submission of a complaint and an ensuing arrest, we read § 1983 as recognizing the same causal link.

8 The question is not presented to us, nor do we decide, whether petitioner’s conduct in this case was in fact objectively reasonable. That issue must be resolved on remand.

9 Notwithstanding petitioner’s protestations, the rule we adopt in no way “requires the police officer to assume a role even more skilled . . . than the magistrate. ” Brief for Petitioners 33. It is a sound presumption that “the magistrate is more qualified than the police officer to make a probable cause determination,” ibid., and it goes without saying that where a magistrate acts mistakenly in issuing a warrant but -within the range of professional competence of a magistrate, the officer who requested the warrant cannot be held liable. But it is different if no officer of reasonable competence would have requested the warrant, i. e., his request is outside the range of the professional competence expected of an officer. If the magistrate issues the warrant in such a ease, his action is not just a reasonable mistake, but an unacceptable error indicating gross incompetence or neglect of duty. The officer then cannot excuse his own default by pointing to the greater incompetence of the magistrate.