Making the Fourth Amendment 'Real' in Grand Jury Proceedings

• Author: Brett Raffish
• Position: J.D. Candidate, Harvard Law School, Class of 2022
• Pages: 529-571

NOTES

Making the Fourth Amendment “Real” in Grand

Jury Proceedings

BRETT RAFFISH*

ABSTRACT

The government is no longer adequately deterred from violating grand jury

witnesses’ Fourth Amendment rights to indict. In United States v. Calandra, the

Supreme Court held that evidence derived from pre-indictment Fourth

Amendment violations could not be suppressed during grand jury proceed-

ings. The Court declined intervention on grounds that suppression would

stymie the grand jury and negligibly thwart future malfeasance, as the gov-

ernment would not violate the Fourth Amendment during proceedings only to

have evidence suppressed at trial. In this Note, I argue that the government is

no longer adequately deterred from violating witnesses’ Fourth Amendment

rights to indict because: (1) nearly all federal criminal convictions involve

plea bargaining, removing trial as a potential deterrent; (2) witnesses’ ability

to remedy pre-indictment Fourth Amendment violations has been significantly

curtailed since Calandra; and (3) institutional barriers, like judges and grand

juries, are unlikely to preclude the use of tainted evidence during proceed-

ings. Thus, absent additional safeguards, pre-indictment Fourth Amendment

protections are considerably hollow.

To “make the Fourth Amendment something real”

1

in the context of grand

jury proceedings, Congress should pass legislation allowing witnesses to

quash-and-suppress grand jury subpoenas derived from unlawfully obtained

evidence and to move to suppress unlawfully obtained evidence pursuant to

pre-Calandra Rule 41(e). This remedy would comport with the Court’s concerns

regarding grand jury autonomy, efficiency, and secrecy. Moreover, the remedy

may thwart future misconduct, insulate the judiciary from wrongdoing, and

bring proceedings back within the Fourth Amendment’s ambit.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531

I. PROTECTING THE LIBERTY OF THE ACCUSED: THE FEDERAL GRAND

JURY AND THE FOURTH AMENDMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534

* J.D. Candidate, Harvard Law School, Class of 2022.

1. United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 361 (1974) (Brennan, J., dissenting).

529

A. Limiting Unchecked Government Power: The Development of

the Grand Jury as an American Institution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534

B. A Coming of Age: The Modern Grand Jury’s Autonomy &

Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537

C. At a Crossroads: The Grand Jury & the Fourth Amendment . . 541

1. The Framers & the Fourth Amendment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541

2. The Exclusionary Rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542

3. Fourth Amendment Violations and the Grand Jury . . . . . 544

II. THE FOURTH AMENDMENT’S HOLLOW PROTECTIONS IN GRAND

JURY PROCEEDINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546

A. Trial: A Relic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546

B. A Lack of Remedies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548

1. Motions to Quash Grand Jury Subpoenas . . . . . . . . . . . . 549

2. Pre-Indictment Return-and-Suppress Motions. . . . . . . . . 550

3. Dismissal Motions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550

4. Pre-Indictment Damages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552

C. The Grand Jury “As An Arm of the Prosecutor”. . . . . . . . . . . 553

D. Working Around the Fourth Amendment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555

III. PROCEDURAL PROPHYLACTICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555

A. The Remedy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556

1. A Congressionally Imposed Remedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556

2. Subpoenas: Quash & Suppress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557

a. What are the potential benefits of a quash and sup-

press remedy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557

b. How should Congress craft this remedy? . . . . . . . 558

3. Pre-indictment Suppression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 562

a. How should Congress craft this remedy? . . . . . . . 562

4. The Aggregate Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563

B. Addressing the Court’s Potential Counterarguments . . . . . . . 564

C. Addressing Other Counterarguments, Alternatives, and

Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567

530 THE GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF LAW & PUBLIC POLICY [Vol. 19:529

1. Deterrence: The Elephant in the Room . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567

2. Imperfect Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567

3. Post-Indictment Remedies that Address Pre-Indictment

Violations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569

4. Letting the Guilty Go Free . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569

5. Branzburg-type Balancing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570

CONCLUSION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571

INTRODUCTION

“The exclusionary rule is needed to make the Fourth Amendment something

real; a guarantee that does not carry with it the exclusion of evidence obtained

by its violation is a chimera.”

2

Is the government adequately deterred from violating the “Fourth Amendment

solely to obtain an indictment[?]”

3

In United States v. Calandra, the Supreme

Court held that evidence derived from pre-indictment Fourth Amendment viola-

tions could not be suppressed during grand jury proceedings.

4

The Calandra

court reasoned that suppression would negligibly thwart future malfeasance

because the government would unlikely violate the Fourth Amendment to indict,

only to have evidence suppressed at trial,

5

and that suppression would stymie the

grand jury’s “role” or its accusatory

6

and protective

7

“functions[.]”

8

In this Note,

2. See id.

3. See id. at 351-52.

4. See id. at 349-53.

5. See id. at 351 (“The incentive to disregard the requirement of the Fourth Amendment solely to

obtain an indictment from a grand jury is substantially negated by the inadmissibility of the illegally

seized evidence in a subsequent criminal prosecution of the search victim.”).

6. See id. at 349 (alluding to the grand jury’s “investigative and accusatorial functions”).

7. See id. at 343 (“[Grand juries are] protector[s] of citizens against arbitrary and oppressive

governmental action.”). In this Note, I refer to grand juries’ ability to guard accused from overzealous

law enforcement as “protective,” which is derivative of the Calandra majority’s “protector” and

“protection” phrasing. See id. Any and all references to this power are derived from the Calandra

majority’s phrasing. Other authors have also commented on grand juries’ protective role, in addition to

the Calandra majority. See, e.g., Douglas P. Currier, Note, The Exercise of Supervisory Powers to

Dismiss a Grand Jury Indictment-A Basis for Curbing Prosecutorial Misconduct, 45 OHIO ST. L.J. 1077,

1078 (1984) (remarking that grand juries were brought to America, in part, to protect citizens from

arbitrary prosecution); Mark Kadish, Behind the Locked Door of an American Grand Jury: Its History,

Its Secrecy, and Its Process, 25 FLA. ST. U. L. REV. 1, 21 (1996) (“[(The grand jury’s] truth-finding

function . . . is intended to protect the individual against unfounded prosecutions.”); Richard P. Gilert,

The Grand Jury—An Indictment, 18 U. BALT. L. F. 4, 5 (1987) (referring to grand juries as a

“protector”); Seymour Glanzer, Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth Annual Judicial Conference of the

District of Columbia Circuit, 67 F.R.D. 513, 538 (1975) (“[The Framers] viewed the grand jury’s

principal and historic function as being a protector of the individual from potential oppressive action by

the prosecutor or the court.”). Some have referred to grand juries’ protective ability as its “buffer” or

2021] THE FOURTH AMENDMENT IN GRAND JURY PROCEEDINGS 531