Court Requires Hearings Within 48 Hours of Arrests

A person who is picked up by police without a warrant is entitled to a hearing within 48 hours to assure that the arrest was justified, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

No longer may authorities in California hold arrested people in jail over weekends and holidays simply because the courthouse is closed, the justices said.

The ruling grew out of lawsuits filed in Riverside and San Bernardino counties charging that arrested people had been held in jail for as long as five days--and then released because police had no basis for arresting them in the first place.

Monday’s decision will prompt changes in most California jurisdictions, county attorneys said.

“We will have to have a judicial officer available on weekends, and possibly in the evenings,” said Los Angeles County Deputy County Counsel Dixon M. Holston. “Of course, that means there will be an additional cost for us.”

About 115,000 people are arrested by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies each year, officials said, and business is heaviest on weekends.

The ruling will have no effect in Orange County, however. Under the terms of an earlier court settlement, that county has pledged to give arrested people a hearing within 36 hours of being taken into custody, said Craig McKinnon, a deputy district attorney in Santa Ana.

The hearings can be quite perfunctory. A magistrate or a hearing officer can simply look through the police reports to make sure there is enough evidence to justify the arrest. At these so-called “probable cause” hearings, neither the arrested person nor his attorney need be present.

In Los Angeles County, however, this procedure is usually combined with an “arraignment hearing” attended by the defendant and a lawyer. There, a magistrate decides whether there is enough evidence to send the defendant to trial.

“This could prove to be a mixed blessing for defendants,” Holston said. The county might offer only the perfunctory “probable cause” hearings to defendants over the weekends, he said, rather than a full-blown hearing with lawyers present.

The case, known as County of Riverside vs. McLaughlin, 89-1817, required the justices to define the parameters of the Fourth Amendment’s ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Historically, this right has been protected by requiring that a judge or a neutral magistrate, not a police officer, decide whether the search or seizure is reasonable.

In 1975, the court ruled that Florida officials were violating the Fourth Amendment by holding arrestees for as long as 30 days before taking them before a magistrate. In Gerstein vs. Pugh, the court said arrested people are entitled to a “prompt” hearing.

What does “prompt” mean? Some states, such as New York and Alaska, require that such a hearing take place within 24 hours. Others have allowed as long as a week.

In California, state law says arrested people are due a hearing “within two days,” but that has been interpreted as two working days, thereby excluding weekends and holidays.

Acting on the lawsuits filed against Riverside and San Bernardino counties, U.S. District Judge Richard A. Gadbois in Los Angeles said arrestees must be offered a hearing within 36 hours. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.

On a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court reversed that ruling and set 48 hours as the maximum.

Writing for the court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor called the decision a “practical compromise between the rights of individuals and the realities of law enforcement.”

Because of paperwork, the transporting of prisoners from jails to courthouses and the availability of magistrates, hearings cannot be arranged instantly, she said. Her opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Byron R. White, Anthony M. Kennedy and David Souter.

Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by the three most liberal justices, dissented sharply, saying that 24 hours was ample time to arrange a hearing.