Payton, Delvin C. v. County of Carroll

CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedJanuary 18, 2007
Docket05-3428
StatusPublished

This text of Payton, Delvin C. v. County of Carroll (Payton, Delvin C. v. County of Carroll) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Payton, Delvin C. v. County of Carroll, (7th Cir. 2007).

Opinion

In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________

No. 05-3428 DELVIN C. PAYTON, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v.

COUNTY OF CARROLL, et al., Defendants-Appellees. ____________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 99 C 8514—Elaine E. Bucklo, Judge. ____________ ARGUED JUNE 7, 2006—DECIDED JANUARY 18, 2007 ____________

Before BAUER, RIPPLE, and WOOD, Circuit Judges. WOOD, Circuit Judge. When a person is arrested in Illinois, he or she is arraigned, and when possible, the court releases the detainee either on bail or on personal recognizance. See Illinois Bond Statute, 725 ILCS 5/110-2 (own recognizance); 5/110-4 (bailable offenses). (In People v. Purcell, 778 N.E.2d 695 (Ill. 2002), the Illinois Supreme Court held unconstitutional the part of this statute that governs bail for capital defendants. Id. at 700. This hold- ing has no effect on the present case.) In addition, Illinois sheriffs are entitled to charge detainees an administrative fee for the privilege of posting a 10 percent bond with the sheriff (rather than, say, the county clerk). 55 ILCS 5/4- 2 No. 05-3428

5001 [¶ 8] (“Fee Act”). The fee is $1, id., unless the county justifies a higher fee through an acceptable cost study, id. at ¶ 39. The present appeal is a sequel to an earlier one we heard, in which a putative class of former arrestees challenged those administrative fees on a variety of constitutional grounds. See Payton v. County of Kane, 308 F.3d 673 (7th Cir. 2002) (Payton I). In our earlier decision, we held (1) that the named plaintiffs had standing to sue the particular counties in which they had been de- tained; (2) that there was no standing bar to the proposed class actions against DuPage and Kane Counties; and (3) that before the court could decide whether the suit could proceed against the other 17 counties plaintiffs had named, it had to resolve the question of class certification. On remand, the district court first dismissed 12 of the 13 counts in the Fourth Amended Complaint, which named as defendants 39 Illinois counties and relevant officials. It preserved only the claim that the Fee Act violates the Equal Protection clauses of the United States and Illinois Constitutions, for the reason that the bond fee is not the same throughout the state. Next, the court found that a statewide class action was not warranted because of lack of typicality. See FED. R. CIV. P. 23(a)(3). Without a statewide class, the court found, the named plaintiffs lacked standing to pursue the remaining claim against the 37 other counties (apart from DuPage and Kane) and their officials. The court accordingly entered judgment under Rule 54(b) permitting all of the case except the claims against DuPage and Kane counties to be appealed immedi- ately. Plaintiffs urge strenuously that the district court’s dismissal of the 12 counts flouted this court’s opinion in Payton I, which they read as a definitive holding that they had stated a claim for purposes of Rule 12(b)(6). They also argue that the court erred in denying the motion for No. 05-3428 3

class certification and in granting summary judgment for the 37 county defendants and associated officials. In our view, however, plaintiffs have read too much into our earlier opinion. We conclude that the district court prop- erly followed our mandate, that it correctly dismissed the 12 counts at issue here, and that it did not abuse its discretion in denying class certification. We therefore affirm.

I With respect to the plaintiffs’ challenge to the district court’s ruling on the motion to dismiss, our review is of course de novo. County of McHenry v. Ins. Co. of the West, 438 F.3d 813, 817 (7th Cir. 2006). Our review of the court’s decision to deny class certification is for abuse of discre- tion. Mace v. Van Ru Credit Corp., 109 F.3d 338, 340 (7th Cir. 1997). As the background facts in this case are uncontested, we proceed immediately to a consideration of the plaintiffs’ arguments on appeal.

A We first take up the 12 counts that were dismissed for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Because there is some duplication of theory among those counts, we have grouped them here into five different categories.

1. Count I: Excessive Bail The Fourth Amended Complaint, which is the one that now governs the case, alleges in Count I that the Fee Act violates both the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive bail and the rule of Art. I, § 9 of the Illinois 4 No. 05-3428

Constitution, which guarantees bail except in cases of serious offenses where a court determines that there is a risk to public safety. The district court rejected the Eighth Amendment argument on the ground that the fee here was a de minimis administrative charge that could not, as a matter of law, be deemed “excessive.” It found that it was immaterial that this fee is paid upon release from custody, rather than upon the return of the deposit following appearance at trial, as in Schlib v. Kuebel, 404 U.S. 357 (1971). The court also pointed out that Illinois arrestees have alternatives to paying the fee. For example, they may pay the clerk rather than the sheriff, in which case the fee does not apply. Illinois judges have the power to adjust bail to compensate for the fee, if this would make a meaningful difference. Moreover, arrestees may seek bail reduction to free up funds to pay the fee. The district court did not address the state constitu- tional argument separately, nor has anyone done so in the briefs before this court. That argument is therefore waived. As the district court recognized, the Supreme Court’s decision in Schlib has some bearing on this case. There, the Court upheld an earlier Illinois bail law that permit- ted the court clerk, upon the conclusion of the trial, to retain as “bail bond costs” 1 percent of the specified bail or 10 percent of the amount actually deposited. Schlib, who had posted $75 to secure bonds of $500 and $250 on two charges, was acquitted at trial on one and convicted on the other. When his bond was returned, the clerk deducted $7.50 for administrative costs. Schlib sued, claiming that the statute permitting this fee violated both the Due Process and the Equal Protection Clauses of the Four- teenth Amendment. The Supreme Court was unpersuaded. It held that the right to be free from a minor administra- tive cost like this was not fundamental and thus that rational basis review applied. From that, it was an easy No. 05-3428 5

step to uphold Illinois’s decision to impose the fee, as well as its decision not to impose a fee in the distinguish- able circumstances of release on personal recognizance and payment of the full amount of the bail. See 404 U.S. at 367-68. The Court noted that it did not have any question about the Eighth Amendment before it. Id. at 364-65. The Eighth Amendment issue came before the Fifth Circuit in the case of Broussard v. Parish of Orleans, 318 F.3d 644 (5th Cir. 2003). For guidance, that court turned first to the Supreme Court’s decision in Stack v. Boyle, 342 U.S. 1 (1951).

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Related

Broussard v. Parish of Orleans
318 F.3d 644 (Fifth Circuit, 2003)
Stack v. Boyle
342 U.S. 1 (Supreme Court, 1952)
Schilb v. Kuebel
404 U.S. 357 (Supreme Court, 1972)
Mathews v. Eldridge
424 U.S. 319 (Supreme Court, 1976)
General Telephone Co. of Southwest v. Falcon
457 U.S. 147 (Supreme Court, 1982)
United States v. Salerno
481 U.S. 739 (Supreme Court, 1987)
Landgraf v. USI Film Products
511 U.S. 244 (Supreme Court, 1994)
Delvin C. Payton v. County of Kane
308 F.3d 673 (Seventh Circuit, 2002)
County of McHenry v. Insurance Company of the West
438 F.3d 813 (Seventh Circuit, 2006)
People Ex Rel. Conn v. Randolph
219 N.E.2d 337 (Illinois Supreme Court, 1966)
People v. Purcell
778 N.E.2d 695 (Illinois Supreme Court, 2002)
McGinley v. Madigan
851 N.E.2d 709 (Appellate Court of Illinois, 2006)
Taylor v. County of Peoria
727 N.E.2d 700 (Appellate Court of Illinois, 2000)
Mace v. Van Ru Credit Corp.
109 F.3d 338 (Seventh Circuit, 1997)
People v. Wilson
453 N.E.2d 949 (Appellate Court of Illinois, 1983)
People v. Rhode
580 N.E.2d 612 (Appellate Court of Illinois, 1991)

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Payton, Delvin C. v. County of Carroll, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/payton-delvin-c-v-county-of-carroll-ca7-2007.