Abstract
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, federal agents and prosecutors have sought and obtained the detention of dozens of individuals as so-called "material witnesses." Though charged with no crime, these people have been subjected to secret weeks- or months-long incarcerations. Nearly all have been released after the government was satisfied they had no terrorist ties. Despite the outrage that the government's tactic has engendered, the constitutionality of detaining material witnesses has not been seriously questioned by litigants, courts, or legal commentators. Laboring under the misapprehension that the incarceration of witnesses has long been held constitutional, commentators have been constrained merely to echo the mainstream media's complaint that the Department of Justice is "abusing" the material witness statute. Court challenges to such detentions have likewise been rebuffed on the ground that such detentions have long been held constitutional. This Article examines the federal government's unprecedented and calculated reliance on the material witness statute in its post-September 11th terrorism investigation. Examining the cases cited in support of the idea that prolonged incarceration of witnesses is constitutional, the Article shows how historical practice, Supreme Court precedent, and the Constitution itself have been misread to justify a tactic offensive to the Fourth Amendment. Authorities from the earliest days of the Republic to the present make clear that, rather than supporting the incarceration of witnesses, the practice is at best of dubious constitutionality. The Article concludes that the Executive's reliance on the statute for investigative detentions and the Judiciary's credulous acquiescence in this practice pose a potentially long-term threat to the Fourth Amendment's basic safeguard against unreasonable seizures. I. INTRODUCTION: "THE F.B.I. MESSES UP" On March 11, 2004, terrorists affiliated with the Al Qaida network detonated bombs on four commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, killing 191 people and injuring 2,000 others.1 Hours later, the Spanish National Police (SNP) recovered a fingerprint from a bag of detonators found in a stolen van parked at a station from which three of the bombed trains departed.2 The SNP requested assistance from the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation to identify the owner of the print.3 FBI experts concluded that the print belonged to Brandon Mayfield, a U.S. citizen living in a suburb of Portland, Oregon, and the agency began investigating and surveilling him.4 Weeks later, the federal agents watching Mr. Mayfield, an immigration and family law attorney, still did not believe they had sufficient evidence of wrongdoing to charge him with any crime. The agents, however, feared that he would become aware of their investigation and flee.5 To prevent this, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office sought a "material witness" warrant for Mr. Mayfield's arrest from a federal judge.6 In the affidavit supporting the warrant application, the FBI claimed it had made a "100% positive identification" to fingerprints on file from Mr. Mayfield's eight years of service in the U.S. armed forces.7 Because there was no record that Mr. Mayfield had ever left the country, the FBI alleged in the affidavit that he might have traveled to Spain using false documents.8 Although Spanish officials had expressed grave doubts about the FBI's claimed match, the FBI claimed in the affidavit that "it was believed" that the SNP's doubts had been resolved.9 The affidavit also included a series of other claims to insinuate Mr. Mayfield's alleged links to terrorists, including that Mr. Mayfield was the attorney in a child custody case to a man who later pled guilty to conspiring to help Al-Qaida and the Taliban.10 Based on these representations, Judge Robert Jones issued a sealed warrant for Mr. Mayfield's arrest and the FBI arrested him as a "material witness" on May 6, 2004. …