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"date_created": "2026-09-22T14:37:38.669657-07:00",
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"case_name": "United States v. Alexander Treisman",
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"stt_transcript": "My name is Dan Goldberg and I represent Mr. Treisman in this appeal. This court should reverse and remand because the Magistrate Court did not have authority to hold the evidence you are hearing in this matter and this matter pertaining to one significant to Mr. Treisman's involuntary commitment and his rights. I think to understand the error here, we have to start at the most basic level of the law and that's that Magistrate Courts are courts of limited authority, they only have authority to operate under Magistrates Act which is 28 U.S.C. section 636 and when you turn to that statute, it only provides three sources of authority. The first source of authority are things that are enumerated in the statute where Congress specifically said to Magistrate Courts, you can do those things. I think that's important here, the government concedes this hearing was not enumerated and that's page 8 of the brief. The second source of authority is consent, the parties can agree to the Magistrate Court holding a hearing. Here the parties did not agree in a clear and vigorous way and the government doesn't push back on that in its brief. I think this entire case comes down to the Magistrate's authority under the quote additional duties under the catch-all provision of the act and that's section 636B3. Here we contend it does not and we know that it does not because I think the Gomez case says that there's a carefully defined grant of authority by Congress which is an implicit withholding in other contexts and so it would be easy for Magistrate Courts to be on the same footing as Article III judges, district court judges and they could just kind of interchange roles but this court, the Supreme Court, has repeatedly held that's not the case because that's not what Congress wanted. The Gomez case I think is a powerful case for us and it traces the history of the Magistrate's Act and I've learned by reading that case that before the act in the 1960s and prior to that you would have judges deciding cases that weren't lawyers. Obviously that's a problem I think and we need to have minimum standards and here those minimum standards were not met. Why doesn't that provision you just read about assigning such additional duties as they're not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws, why isn't that game over for you? That's a grant of authority and as long as you don't conflict with another statute, another rule or the Constitution, a magistrate judge can do it if referred by a district judge. That's the key language in there. I think the problem is Perez holds, the Supreme Court case holds that it must be comparable in purportance and only things that magistrate courts get to do are subsidiary matters and that's pretrial motions. This is the trial. This is where cross-examination is occurring. This is where expert witnesses are being called. This is everything to Mr. Treisman and his liberty rights and this is important because it's also the time for the judge to actually observe the defendant and see is he incompetent and all these intangibles that you can't get in the transcript and I think that's important because in GONA… I don't think so because I don't think that's where he has the jury trial right and I don't think it's significant as in this context where you need… and this is what the GOMAS case speaks to, that quote, the court must further scrutinize not only the spoken words but also gestures and attitudes of all participants to ensure the jury's impartiality but only words can be preserved for review, no transcript can recapture the atmosphere of the board hour which may persist throughout the trial. So I think that same logic pertains here. Is there a jury trial right here for involuntary commitment? No, I don't think so but I think there's cases like Bean that hold that because an adverse outcome in a commitment hearing results in containment of a person's liberty, procedural due process guarantees certain… you know, guaranteed process. Well the reason why I ask that is because then I think Judge Shepard's question really, really is powerful here which is if you're not holding a jury trial and you're having pretrial motions, it could be dispositive. Are the drugs being suppressed, right? That's ballgame. Magistrate judges can do that and what's different about this case where you don't have a jury trial and the magistrate did do a report and recommendation? I think the difference is that pretrial motions are enumerated and that Congress actually said you can do that and so it falls within that framework. And here it's not disputed by the government. This hearing does not fall in that framework. But doesn't that then require us to read that really broad grant in the magistrate judge's statute narrowly? Right. And I think that's what that holds is that this court's case law says that consent is the key, Torres, because otherwise all magistrate courts are going to be on par with district court judges and it's a slippery slope of where you stop and you don't stop. Now, that's a little, somewhat of an overstatement, don't you think? Is this case really going to divest district judges if it comes out in a way that's not favorable to your side? Is it going to . . . sounds like you're warning against a divestiture of Article III judges of their powers and authority. And I don't want to overstate it. I understand it sounds like maybe a little overstatement here. I don't want to overstate it. I'm just reading, you know, cases like the Torres case where this court said, you know, that consent's the key. And I think the reason . . . and I think in most cases the parties will consent. Well, let me ask you about that, Mr. Goldberg. Was it the responsibility of Mr. Treisman to object to the magistrate judge holding the evidentiary hearing or was it the responsibility of the court to obtain consent of the parties? And how does that impact the standard of review, whether it's plain error review or not? I think it's a good question. I think Mr. Treisman does not have a burden of consent. And I think it's from cases like Gomez that the error can, quote, never be treated as harmless and that I don't need to have a special claim of prejudice. And this court's other case law that has raised this issue sui sponte on appeal. But is it . . . is this plain error review? I don't think so, Your Honor. I think this court's case law . . . again, Harris and Lothridge, we cite those cases in our brief where I don't think it's a waivable issue. And so I don't think normal plain error applies and I don't think we have to meet those special hurdles in this type of case. Even if that was an error, well, in that hypothetical at least, did the magistrate judge really exercise Article III power here? Because I thought the district judge ultimately made the decision. I think there was de novo review. I concede that. But again, it goes back to the thing . . . the quote I just wrote for Gomez is that I don't think that just reading the transcript gets the judge there. To what they need to do is see Mr. Treisman. See how . . . if he testifies, weigh that testimony. And I think there's a lot of case law where this court says we need to defer to findings of fact and . . . Counsel, magistrate judges do that kind of thing all the time, as Judge Strass has indicated. I was a magistrate judge for 13 years. I did that . . . made those kinds of recommended findings all the time to the district judge. And in the practices in the Western District of Arkansas, that was very common. And I gather from the record that also in the Western District of Missouri, this is a way that magistrate judges have been used regularly there. Absolutely, Your Honor. Doesn't that . . . how do you respond to that? Well, I think if the parties consent, it's . . . you know, magistrate courts are great. If there's enumerated things they're doing, like ruling on pre-trial motions, again, that's in their bailiwick. That's what Congress wants magistrate courts to do. But when you start carving out new areas of the law . . . So what would you say the rule is then? Yes, I think the rule . . . What would your preferred rule be? The preferred rule would be that if it's a substantive matter that's not in the statute and the parties haven't consented, don't have jurisdiction. Unless there's other questions, I'd like to reserve the remainder of my time for rebuttal. Thank you. Mr. Nelson, you may proceed when you're ready. Thank you, Your Honor. The sure fact that the appellant does not even allege prejudice is grounds for the court to affirm. The appellant asks the court to send this case back to the district court with no guidance merely to redo what the district court has already done, which is make an independent determination of the record in this matter and state it so explicitly in the order. But if it's jurisdictional, you don't need prejudice? Regarding the structural error, Dr. Ingram? Well, it's not even structural error. If you send something . . . the Supreme Court has held this multiple times. If you send something to a court that's not supposed to have it, right, it's sort of void ab initio. And so you don't need prejudice at that point. You don't have to say, well, but that guy was really good who tried my civil commitment or not good. Sorry for interrupting, Your Honor. I don't think that's the case here. Appellant cites to . . . it was the Henson case where the appellate court said, we don't have jurisdiction here because the magistrate never . . . because the district court never conducted a review of the order. The magistrate judge was the judge that issued a final order. And the magistrate judge didn't have authority in that circumstance. Now, that's not what happened here. Here the magistrate judge issued a report and recommendation, no final order, and then went to the district court. So Appellant is not asking for this court to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. He's asking for a . . . for a remand. I will say our case law on that is not altogether clear. In some of our cases, we seem to say that exceeding the authority of the magistrate judge by sending something is jurisdictional. In other cases, we apply plein air. So I can't . . . I haven't completely figured it out, but there's at least some threat in our case law that suggests it's jurisdictional. And I think perhaps, Your Honor, it does go . . . a lot of this is tied up . . . the structural error piece and the . . . and the merits are somewhat tied up together because the issue is whether or not the magistrate judge . . . well, whether or not the magistrate judge had the authority in this circumstance, Appellant does not cite to any case where the process that was followed here, which is a magistrate court conducting an evidentiary hearing, issuing a report and recommendation, and then the district court reviewing it and adopting or not adopting, that that was structural error or error at all. And . . . Suppose they conducted a jury trial, and then the jury said guilty, and then they wrote a report and recommendation saying, well, the jury found him guilty. I suggest you go ahead and enter a judgment of guilt and sentence him. So that would be too far, but that's under Peretz. And so Peretz draws this distinction between . . . you might call them like super special Article III . . . Article III core functions, and notes that there are certain issues that are . . . the language is that they're of far greater importance than the specific duties that are assigned to magistrates. And in Peretz, it was a felony voir dire. Torres was felony plea. These are all criminal trial rights. That doesn't apply here. This is a civil case to begin with. We've got a much lower standard of proof. As the court has already pointed out, there's no right to a jury in this circumstance. And that also goes to what Section 4245 is at its heart, which is largely a housing statute. These are individuals who have already been adjudicated guilty. They're already in BOP custody, and the determination is only whether or not the Bureau of Prisons can house them, instead of housing them in a general population elsewhere in the country, if we can bring them to a suitable facility for their mental care treatment. And so there's much lower stakes here. Likewise, the Bureau of Prisons has a duty to send a person back to general population if they've recovered. Persons get yearly reviews to determine whether or not they should be sent back. So this is very much an ancillary matter. It falls very appropriately within the purpose of the magistrate judge's statute, which allows for these additional duties, really to reduce the workload of the district court judges. Mr. Nelson, I'd like to revisit my standard of review question. So if consent was needed for the magistrate judge to conduct this evidentiary hearing, was it the responsibility of Mr. Treisman to object, or was it the responsibility of the court to obtain consent? And how does that impact the standard of review? Well, the responsibility of the... Normally, if there's no objection, we're under plain error review. Absolutely, and I agree with that, Your Honor. Here, the district court... I'm not entirely sure how to answer that, because the district court did not... The magistrate judge's statute has a specific... I think it's B1AB, or something like that, that specifically refers to the consent, the allowance for things to be sent to the magistrate judge if the parties consent. And the district court didn't cite that statute here. It cited purely to the additional duties statute, so I'm not sure... The U.S.'s position is that the... Is that appellant had the duty to object if he did not... To object in the first place, and so we're under plain error. So it's a little bit of chicken-or-the-egg question. Absolutely, yes. And one brief point as well. This court has been discussing suppression motions, and the suppression motion is specifically enumerated to the district court, or to the magistrate court. The court in Raddatz, which was not cited to in the U.S.'s brief, but is referred to in Per Raddatz, specifically held that there is no issues for a credibility determination for a magistrate judge to make credibility determinations in a suppression motion, so long as the district court then later on adopts or denies the report and recommendation and issues the final decision. And I think one of the cases that appellant cites to, which is Harris v. Folk, really summarizes the law well here, states that duties that require a final and independent determination of fact by the magistrate judge can't be delegated under 636B6. Now, that's crucial because that's not what happened here. The next line in Harris v. Folk, quote directly, where a magistrate judge serves as a mere intermediary in the performance of adjudicatory functions and is under the constant and direct supervision of an Article III judge, such functions are freely assignable as additional duties. That's what happened here, and for that reason, the United States requests that the court affirm the district court blow. Thank you. All right. All right, Mr. Goldberg, you have just under a minute. Thank you, Your Honor. Three points to make, and I think, Judge, your point about matched courts being very capable courts, I couldn't agree with more. And I think if this court were to rule in Mr. Treason's favor, I don't think it would have a broad impact on the law because I think most parties would consent that if the judge got up at the beginning of the hearing and said, hey, do you consent to my authority, I think routinely they would say yes. And I think the second point I would make is to Judge Strauss' point, and I do think that the lack of authority renders the hearing a nullity. And so I think the court's case law, you know, my opposing counsel talked about the Harris case, and I just think that case is pretty clear, that the failure to reject does not constitute waiver of the right to appeal this issue. There's other cases, Lothridge, the error's not waivable. So I direct this court to those cases during my brief. And then I think the final point I'd make is that this really is a significant liberty interest that my client has here. And what is the wheels in motion right now is my client is involuntarily committed in a hospital against his will. He may be there for the rest of his life. He may be forcibly medicated. All those wheels are in motion right now, and a lot of people would argue that that's a worse fate than being in prison for the rest of your life. And so I don't think this is the type of hearing where we can just say, hey, this is, you know, a minor infringement. It's a civil case. I don't think this court's case law stands for that. Unless there's other questions, I thank you for your time. All right. I think that will stand aside counsel and cases submitted. We appreciate your argument. The court will render a decision as soon as possible."
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