Timоthy Hampton, a member of Chicago’s police force, came to the attention of the police in Maywood, Illinois, when he reported to them that someone had robbed his brother Marian Price, and then started frisking locals as if-a Chicago badge carried authority in Maywood as well. May-wood’s officers interrogated some suspects that Hampton and Price identified. While one officer was locking up the building where the robbery supposedly occurred, another noticed Price emerging from a car and attempting to reenter the premises. Suspicions raised by this maneuver — and concerned that there were too many people moving about — this officer noticed that Price had come from a darkened car containing someone else. It was 11 p.m. and the officer could not see inside the car. He asked the car’s other occupant to get out. That turned out to be Hampton, and when the officer рointed his flashlight into the vacated passenger compartment he saw a gun — Hampton was entitled to carry a weapon even off duty — and four packages of cocaine. (There is a dispute about whether the Maywood officer saw the cocaine from outside the car or only after entering it tо retrieve the gun, but the resolution does not matter for current purposes.) Hampton tried to persuade the Maywood police that he had been carrying the drugs as part of his job, but they wanted more than Hampton’s word' — and he was unable to provide more, because he was not an undercover drug officer. Lаter Hampton confessed that the claim of robbery had been manufactured as part of an effort to help Stanley Polk, a drug dealer whose car Hampton had been driving. Polk apparently wanted Maywood’s police to arrest Fernando Casas on the trumped-up charge; Polk’s reason is unclear, though Hampton confessed that he knew that the transaction involved cocaine in some way. His defense at trial was that the drugs were Polk’s and that he had not expected them to be in Polk’s car.
A state court convicted Hampton of possessing cocaine with intent to deliver, he was sentenced to 15 yeаrs’ imprisonment, and the appellate court affirmed, rejecting his contention that the order to get out of the car violated the Constitution’s fourth amendment.
People v. Hampton,
The State of Illinois does not contest the district judge’s conclusion that the Maywood police violated the fourth amendment by directing Hampton to get out of Polk’s car. The appeal instead challenges the “thus” in the passage we have quoted: the district judge’s belief that Hampton is entitled to collateral relief because an improper seizure occurred. What Hampton needs in order to prevail on a collateral attack is not simply a holding that the directive was invalid, but a conclusion that this
error
requires application of the exclusionary rule. And
Stone v. Powell,
[T]he additional contribution, if any, of the consideration of search-and-seizure claims of state prisoners on collateral review is small in relation to the costs. To be sure, each case in which such claim is considered may add marginally to an awareness of the values protected by the Fourth Amendment. There is no reason to believe, however, that the overall educative effеct of the exclusionary rule would be appreciably diminished if search-and-seizure claims could not be raised in federal habeas corpus review of state convictions. Nor is there reason to assume that any specific disincentive already created by the risk of exclusion of evidence at trial or the reversal of convictions on direct review would be enhanced if there were the further risk that a conviction obtained in state court and affirmed on direct review might be overturned in collateral proceedings often occurring years after the incarceration of the defendant. The view that the dеterrence of Fourth Amendment violations would be furthered rests on the dubious assumption that law enforcement authorities would fear that federal habeas review might reveal flaws in a search or seizure that went undetected at trial and on appeal. Even if one rationally could assume that some additional inсremental deterrent effect would be present in isolated cases, the resulting advance of the legitimate goal of farthering Fourth Amendment rights would be outweighed by the acknowledged costs to other values vital to a rational system of criminal justice.
In sum, we conclude that where the State has provided an opportunity for full and fair litigation of a Fourth Amendment claim, a state prisoner may not be granted federal habeas corpus relief on the ground that evidence obtained in an unconstitutional search or seizure was introduced at his trial. In this context the contribution of the exclusionary rule, if any, to the effectuation оf the Fourth Amendment is minimal and the substantial societal-costs of application of the rule persist with special force.
It is therefore not possible to move from a conclusion that seizure of evidence violated the fourth amendment to a holding that a writ of habeas corpus must issue. The exclusionary rule is not enforced on collateral attack. Put otherwise, a person imprisoned following a trial that relies, in part, on unlawfully seized evidence is not “in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a). The
seizure
may have violated the Constitution, but the
cus
*563
tody
does not, because the exclusionary rule is a social device for deterring official wrongdoing, not a personal right of defendants. See also
Reed v. Farley,
What Stone requires is that states provide full and fair hearings so that the exclusionary rule may be enforced with reasonable (though not perfect) accuraсy at trial and on direct appeal. A competent and intellectually honest judicial system is a personal right of the accused, and a system that acts with reasonable accuracy is essential to deterrence. Aware of Stone, the district judge in this case suggested that the appellate court’s error shows thаt Hampton had not received a full and fair opportunity for litigation. That approach, however, nullifies the holding of Stone and leads to collateral relief whenever the search violates the fourth amendment. It cannot be right, for then Stone was itself wrongly decided. Stone resolved two consolidated cases. In one the ninth circuit had held a- pаrticular search unconstitutional because the statute under which it had been conducted was unconstitutional. In the other the eighth circuit had held that the warrant supporting a search was invalid because of deficiencies in the affidavits, and that a warrantless entry was unconstitutional because the police lаcked probable cause. In all of these respects the federal tribunals disagreed with contrary holdings- of the state courts. Stone reversed both the eighth and the ninth circuits, not because the Justices thought that the state courts had handled the fourth amendment issues correctly, but because error on a fourth amendment issue does not support a writ of habeas corpus. So if all that occurred in Hampton’s case is error, then here too there is no justification for federal collateral relief.
Illinois contends that, having reached this conclusion, we should overrule (or at least modify) a series of opinions that have made the existence of error part of the inquiry into full and fair adjudication. See, e.g.,
Terry v. Martin,
(1) he has clearly informed the state court of the factual basis for that claim and has argued that those facts constitute a viоlation of his fourth amendment rights and (2) the state court has carefully and thoroughly analyzed the facts and (3) applied the proper constitutional case law to the facts.
Illinois wonders how the third of these considerations can be appropriate, given the way
Stone
itself handled a claim of error. The state’s concern supposes, however, that
Pierson
required the state to decide the issue
correctly.
But this is not what we meant. What a state has to do is look to the appropriate body of decisional law. Faced with a claim that the police lacked probable cause to make an arrest, a state court could not respond that in Illinois it is proper tо arrest without probable cause. Failure to apply applicable law would show that the accused lacked a full
*564
opportunity to prevail on direct appeal. A court that has made up its mind not to enforce the fourth amendment rarely says so directly, though it may leave clues in its treatment of the merits. It is impossible to see how the problem could be identified without paying
some
attention to how the state court dealt with the merits. But as we said in
Turentine
this must not be confused with a search for error. It takes an “egregious error” (
So was there any reason to suppose that in Hampton’s case the state’s judges had their minds closed and were insensible to arguments based on the facts or the Supreme Court’s decisions? Hampton concedes that he had (аnd used) an unfettered opportunity to develop the facts and present his legal arguments. He concedes that the-state trial and appellate judges fairly summarized the facts. The district judge upbraided the state court for not citing
Brown v. Texas,
At oral argument Hampton’s counsel (not the lawyer who represented him in state court) explained that his predecessor had not cited Brown because it became relevant only in light of a novel approach taken by the state judges. The. court’s rationale, counsel contеnded, was the result of independent research that went wrong, and according to counsel the court’s very act of striking out on its own deprived Hampton of a full and fair opportunity to litigate. This would make a virtue of mechanical jurisprudence: a court that trudged through the briefs would be safe under Stone’s umbrella, but a court that thought the briefs inadequate and tried to think independently would invite federal intervention to correct any error. That can’t be right. As we discussed *565 above, it is the sleepwalking judge, not the diligent one, who deprives the litigant of the personal right to careful, individual consideration.
Any time a judge does independent research there is a risk of error, but judges with some initiative probably err at lower rates than judges who naively believe that the briefs cover everything worth considering. Courts frequently decide cases on lines of reasoning that can’t be found in the briefs. There is no federal entitlement to have a case decided strictly on the basis of precedent cited to the tribunal. See
Elder v. Holloway,
Nothing in the record of this case, or the arguments made to us, suggests that Illinois declines to take seriously (in thе run of cases, or in Hampton’s) its task of enforcing the exclusionary rule on direct appeal. Consequently there is no need to try for some supplemental deterrence by issuing a writ of habeas corpus. As in Stone itself, all we have is a claim of error — and that is not enough to support collateral relief based on the exclusionary rule.