Tarlton v. Saxbe

Citation507 F.2d 1116,165 U.S.App.D.C. 293
Decision Date22 October 1974
Docket NumberNo. 72-1209,72-1209
PartiesJohn Brent TARLTON, Jr., Appellant, v. William B. SAXBE, Attorney General of the United States, et al.
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (District of Columbia)

Russell H. Carpenter, Jr., Washington, D.C. (appointed by this Court) for appellant.

Lawrence T. Bennett, Asst. U.S. Atty., with whom Harold H. Titus, Jr., U.S. Atty., John A. Terry and James F. Rutherford, Asst. U.S. Attys., were on the brief, for appellees.

Before BAZELON, Chief Judge, and ROBINSON and WILKEY, Circuit judges.

BAZELON, Chief Judge:

John Tarlton, pro se, seeks in this action to expunge certain information from his FBI 'criminal' file. 1 This information consists of several entries of arrests for which no ultimate disposition is indicated and of arrests and convictions which he alleges were perpetrated in violation of his constitutional rights. Tarlton further alleges that this incomplete and inaccurate 2 information has in the past influenced a court in imposing sentence upon him and influenced the United States Board of Parole in denying him parole on May 9, 1970. He alleges that the future dissemination of this information will cause him similar injury. The District Court dismissed Tarlton's complaint for failure to state a cause of action. 3 For the purposes of ruling on this motion to dismiss, we take as admitted the allegations of the complaint. 4 We reverse and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I.

Tarlton's complaint leads us into a particularly sensitive area of law, concerning the developing relationship between values of individual privacy and the record-keeping functions of the executive branch. 5 Recently, in Menard v. Saxbe (II), 6 we held that the FBI must expunge information from its criminal file when the local agency which first reported that information to the FBI later reports information disputing the accuracy of the relevant FBI records. Tarlton's claim poses a question not decided in Menard (II): to what extent, if any, does the FBI have a duty to take reasonable measures to safeguard the accuracy of information in its criminal files which is subject to dissemination Of course, this question is wholly distinct from the question of whether the FBI must guarantee the accuracy of information in its files, and similarly distinct from the question of whether the FBI must resolve conflicting allegations as to the accuracy of its records. As will be developed in more detail in Part III (pp. 1127-1129) below, under present circumstances these latter two questions would not be resolved in Tarlton's favor. Furthermore, we carefully note what is not in issue in this case at all. Tarlton's pro se complaint does not challenge FBI dissemination of complete and constitutionally accurate arrests or convictions; 7 nor does it allege that any information, whether accurate and complete or not, has been disseminated to unauthorized persons. 8

II.

The Congressional authorization for maintenance of criminal records is 28 U.S.C. 534 (1970) which directs 9 the Attorney General, among other things, to 'acquire, collect, classify, and preserve identification, criminal identification, crime, and other records.' We held in Menard (II) that the statute implies a duty on the part of the FBI, to which the Attorney General has delegated the task of criminal record-keeping, to 'take account of responsible information . . . that the 'arrest' record previously submitted did not communicate an information properly retained by the Bureau in its criminal file as an arrest record.' 10

We reaffirm the holding of Menard (II) and set forth at length the various reasons which not only require implication of the duty discussed above from the open texture of 534, but go further, providing the legal basis for a more comprehensive view of the FBI's responsibilities in regard to its criminal files. First, as we stated in Menard (II), 'the FBI's function of maintaining and disseminating criminal identification records and files carries with it as a corollary the responsibility to discharge this function reliably and responsibly and without unnecessary harm to individuals whose rights have been invaded.' 11 This corollary is a necessary implication from the grant of power to maintain and disseminate criminal information. Surely a reliable and responsible performance of the recordkeeping function requires such reasonable care as the FBI is able to afford to avoid injury to innocent citizens through dissemination of inaccurate information. 12

Second, if the FBI has the authority to collect and disseminate inaccurate criminal information about private individuals without making reasonable efforts to safeguard the accuracy of the information, it would in effect have the authority to libel those individuals. 13 However, we cannot, absent the clearest statement of Congressional policy, impute to Congress an intent to authorize the FBI to damage the reputation of innocent individuals in contravention of settled common law principles. 14 Thus we presume that Congress did not intend through 534 to authorize the FBI to disseminate inaccurate criminal information without taking reasonable precautions to prevent inaccuracy.

Third, if the FBI had the authority to defame innocent individuals, we would be faced with the gravest constitutional issues. Dissemination of inaccurate criminal information without the precaution of reasonable efforts to forestall inaccuracy restricts the subject's liberty without any procedural safeguards designed to prevent such inaccuracies. That dissemination of inaccurate arrest or conviction records in fact restricts liberty is established by Menard (I) 15 and other decisions concerning expungement of arrest or conviction records. 16 Indeed, the whole panoply of constitutional requirements, particularly the right to a speedy trial, activated upon arrest or indictment are designed to mitigated the obvious restrictions on liberty due to public accusation of a crime by the promise of an expeditious and complete hearing to determine the merits of the accusation. 17 To permit the FBI to disseminate inaccurate criminal information without the FBI making reasonable efforts to prevent inaccuracy would be tantamount to permission to accuse individuals of criminal conduct without ever providing such individuals an opportunity to disprove that accusation. 18 Exactly these considerations supported the Supreme Court's decision in Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath. 19 In the largest sense, both this constitutional issue and the common law principle forbidding defamation of innocent individuals refer to the value of individual privacy. This value, consistently reaffirmed in recent years, 20 serves to insulate individuals from unjustifiable government interference with their private lives. 21 This value finds its most direct expression in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments; 22 it also is reflected in certain aspects of the First Amendment: government collection and dissemination of inaccurate criminal information without reasonable precautions to ensure accuracy could induce a levelling conformity inconsistent with the diversity of ideas and manners which has traditionally characterized our national life and found legal protection in the First Amendment. 23 Scrupulously avoidingconstitutional issues, 24 we interpret 534 in a manner designed to prevent government dissemination of inaccurate criminal information without reasonable precautions to ensure accuracy.

Fourth, in regard to Tarlton's allegations of unconstitutional arrests or convictions, recognition of a duty on the part of the FBI to make reasonable efforts to maintain constitutionally accurate criminal files is but an exercise of judicial authority to use 'remedial mechanisms to redress or obviate . . . constitutional injuries.' 25 Generally, courts order expungement of arrest or conviction records to remedy constitutional injuries sustained by reason of such arrests or convictions. 26 We followed such a course of action in Sullivan v. Murphy, supra. 27 Furthermore, the FBI as an organ of the national government has a commensurate responsibility to vigilantly support and defend the Constitution and we would not interpret 534 in a manner inconsistent with this responsibility. 28

The four considerations discussed above establish that the FBI is under some duty to prevent dissemination of inaccurate arrest and conviction records. None of these considerations, as framed above, prevent the FBI from disseminating accurate criminal records or, indeed, from disseminating inaccurate records after taking reasonable measures to safeguard accuracy, and thus these considerations do not interfere with legitimate law enforcement objectives. There is, however, as these four considerations establish no legitimate law enforcement objective in disseminating inaccurate criminal records without reasonable precautions to safeguard the records' accuracy. Indeed, the FBI does not here press such a contention. Rather it argues that considerations of federalism and administrative efficiency require that local law enforcement agencies assume the entire burden of safeguarding the accuracy of criminal records. We now turn to a discussion of that issue.

III.

As stated, the four considerations establish the existence of a legally protectable interest for subjects of FBI criminal files. The specific nature of the duty arising from that legally protectable interest cannot, however, be determined by a mechanistic application of the discussion in Part II above. Rather that duty must be accommodated to the particular role the FBI plays in the collection and dissemination of criminal information in the Federal system, the FBI's capacity to take reasonable measures to ensure accuracy and the practicalities of judicial administration and executive efficiency. Since this case reach...

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