Edwards v. U.S. Dept. of Justice

• Decision Date: 22 December 1994
• Docket Number: No. 93-3941,93-3941
• Citation: 43 F.3d 312
• Parties: Daniel J. EDWARDS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 312

43 F.3d 312

Daniel J. EDWARDS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 93-3941.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued Sept. 14, 1994.

Decided Dec. 22, 1994.

Stephen E. Eberhardt (argued), Chicago, IL, Robert H. Farley, Jr., Naperville, IL, for petitioner-appellant.

James A. Lewis, Asst. U.S. Atty. (argued), Springfield, IL, for U.S. Dept. of Justice.

Michael A. Hurst, Office of the Atty. Gen., Criminal Appeals Div., Chicago, IL, for State of Ill.

Before GODBOLD, ^* WOOD, Jr., and COFFEY, Circuit Judges.

HARLINGTON WOOD, Jr., Circuit Judge.

The plaintiff, Daniel Edwards, seeks to compel the Department of Justice to produce certain "Nightstalker" ¹ surveillance reports allegedly compiled when the Illinois State Police and the FBI were investigating Edwards. Edwards argues the information is vital to his state post-conviction hearing. The district court granted the Department's motion to dismiss the state court show cause order proceeding and to quash the state court subpoenas because the state court did not have jurisdiction to enforce the subpoenas. The district court held the demand for the exempted federal material was contrary to valid agency regulations. Edwards appeals.

I.

Edwards was convicted in state court of the kidnapping and murder of Stephen Small, a prominent local businessman, who owned local Kankakee news media. Mr. Small and his family, his wife and three children ages fourteen, and ten (twins), lived in rural Kankakee, Illinois. On September 2, 1987, at approximately 12:30 a.m., Mr. Small received a telephone call at his home from a man who identified himself as a member of the Kankakee police force. The caller told Mr. Small that his business had been broken into and he was needed at his office immediately. Mr. Small without delay left for his office.

At approximately 3:30 a.m., Mrs. Small received a telephone call from an unidentified male who told her that her husband had been kidnapped and demanded a ransom of $1 million. Mrs. Small also heard the voice of her husband telling her he was handcuffed inside a box buried under a few feet of sand. Mrs. Small then contacted family members and the Kankakee police department. FBI agents were also notified of the kidnapping.

Later that evening around 5:00 p.m., Mrs. Small received a second phone call from the unidentified man who relayed directions for the delivery of the ransom money. The FBI had placed a tracer on the telephone, and traced the call to a telephone booth at a service station in Aroma Park, Kankakee.

In the interim, the FBI was setting up surveillance of the area to which the first ransom call had been traced. At 11:28 p.m. that evening, Mrs. Small received another ransom call from the same man, but from a different telephone booth in Aroma Park. FBI agents arrived at that booth and observed Edwards at the phone booth with his vehicle. The agents recorded the license plate and ran a check. The agents also observed a young, blonde woman with the defendant, who was subsequently determined to be Edwards's girlfriend, Nancy Rish. The agents attempted to follow the defendant in his vehicle, but quickly lost sight of the car.

Around 11:50 p.m. another call was placed to the Small home, but was not recorded. The call had originated from a phone booth in Kankakee. Agents then spotted the defendant's vehicle driving from Kankakee toward Aroma Park. The license plate check revealed that the car belonged to Nancy Rish. This information was passed along to the police and FBI. An officer familiar with Rish told the other officials that Rish was Edwards's girlfriend, and that they lived together at 756 Stanford Drive East, Kankakee. Police officers staked out the Rish house while the Illinois State Police obtained a search warrant. The search warrant was granted on September 4 around 10:35 a.m. Police entered and arrested both Edwards and Rish. After Edwards and Rish were escorted out, the police executed the search warrant, but Mr. Small was not found. Edwards did not reveal where Mr. Small was buried until later that day. The body was found buried in an underground box in a densely wooded area near Edwards's home in Kankakee. Edwards failed to provide an adequate air supply to the coffin-like box Mr. Small was buried in. Edwards was subsequently charged and convicted of the kidnapping and murder of Mr. Stephen Small. ²

Edwards raised numerous issues and appealed his conviction through the state court system. The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the first degree murder conviction and sentence of death. People v. Edwards, 144 Ill.2d 108, 579 N.E.2d 336, 161 Ill.Dec. 788 (1991), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 2278, 119 L.Ed.2d 204 (1992). Edwards then filed a collateral attack on the conviction through a post-conviction proceeding in state court. Edwards's purpose in subpoenaing the federal material was to use the requested information in his post-conviction proceeding for impeachment purposes to try to show he did not make the 11:50 p.m. ransom call to the Smalls' home. The Department provided information pursuant to 28 C.F.R. Secs. 16.21-29, but withheld some material on the grounds it would "disclose investigative techniques and procedures the effectiveness of which would thereby be impaired." 28 C.F.R. Sec. 16.26(b)(5) (1993).

Edwards obtained a state court order to compel the Department officials to show cause why they failed to produce the additional information. The Department then removed the petition to federal court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1442, and moved to quash the state court subpoenas and dismiss the show cause proceeding. The government argued that the procedural method Edwards chose to obtain judicial review of the Department of Justice decision to withhold Nightstalker information was improper because the state court never acquired proper jurisdiction to order a show cause proceeding against the government officials. The government contended that the proper method for judicial review of an agency decision is to file an Administrative Procedure Act [APA] claim following the guidelines set forth in the APA. The parties and the district court therefore agreed to recast the federal proceeding as an APA claim. We review the district court's reviewal of the Department's decision to withhold the Nightstalker information as an APA claim pursuant to the guidelines set forth under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. Sec. 701 et seq.

The district court considered the motions, conducted an APA in camera review of the FBI files and concluded "that the actions of the Bureau in withholding the information that was withheld ... [were] proper." United States v. Edwards, No. 93-2235 (C.D.Ill. Nov. 12, 1993). Therefore, the district court entered judgment in favor of the Department of Justice. For the reasons set forth, we affirm.

II.

The scope of judicial review for a court reviewing an Administrative Procedure Act claim is set forth in 5 U.S.C. Sec. 706. Pursuant to 5 U.S.C. Sec. 706(2)(A), the reviewing court may only reverse the agency's motion to quash if the agency action was "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law." 5 U.S.C. Sec. 706(2)(A). In applying this standard, we focus on "the administrative record already in existence, not some new record made initially in the reviewing court." Camp v. Pitts, 411 U.S. 138, 142, 93 S.Ct. 1241, 1244, 36 L.Ed.2d 106 (1973) (per curiam). "District court review of agency action is generally accorded no particular deference, because the district court, limited to the administrative record, is in no better position to review the agency than the court of appeals." Asarco, Inc. v. United States Environmental Protection Agency, 616 F.2d 1153, 1161 (9th Cir.1980); see also Hanson v. Espy, 8 F.3d 469, 472 (7th Cir.1993). Therefore, we review the Department of Justice decision to deny Edwards's access to the Nightstalker reports de novo in determining whether the agency's action was an abuse of discretion. Although we agree with the holding in Asarco, we nevertheless value the judgments of the district courts in making our own de novo determination.

III.

The proper method for judicial review of an agency decision pursuant to valid agency regulations is through the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. Sec. 701 et seq. Specifically, under Sec. 702, "[a] person suffering legal wrong because of agency action, or adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute, is entitled to judicial review thereof." 5 U.S.C. Sec. 702. Through this Act, persons are able to come into a court of the United States and gain judicial review of an agency's action that adversely affects their interests. It is, however, well established that this section of the Act does not provide an independent basis for subject matter jurisdiction in a federal district court. Califano v. Sanders, 430 U.S. 99, 105-07, 97 S.Ct. 980, 983-85, 51 L.Ed.2d 192 (1977); see also Wikberg v. Reich, 21 F.3d 188, 189 (7th Cir.1994); Bruce v. United States, 621 F.2d 914, 918 (8th Cir.1980). When a case is removed from a state court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1442, the district court's basis for jurisdiction is only derivative of that of the state court. Arizona v. Manypenny, 451 U.S. 232, 242 n. 17, 101 S.Ct. 1657, 1665 n. 17, 68 L.Ed.2d 58 (1981). Therefore, the state court must initially have jurisdiction to review the agency's decision for the district court to similarly acquire such authority on removal.

At the hearing the government clarified this matter and all parties agreed to transform the state court order to show cause into an APA claim that could be properly reviewed following guidelines prescribed by the Administrative Procedure Act. ³ This procedural ruling expedited the hearing so the district court could immediately conduct an in camera review of the...