00-6567 Dusenbery v. U.S.

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The Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause entitles individuals whose property interests are at stake to “notice and an opportunity to be heard.” United States v. James Daniel Good Real Property, 510 U.S. 43, 48. The straightforward reasonableness under the circumstances test of Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U.S. 306, 313, not the balancing test approach of Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 335, supplies the appropriate analytical framework for the due process analysis. This Court has never viewed Mathews as announcing an all-embracing test for deciding due process claims, but has regularly turned to Mullane when confronted with questions regarding the adequacy of the method used to give notice. In Mullane, notice by publication was constitutionally defective as to known persons whose whereabouts were also known, because it was not “reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances, to apprise interested parties of the pendency of the action and afford them an opportunity to present their objections.” 339 U.S., at 314, 319. The FBI’s notice, sent by certified mail to a prison with procedures for delivering mail to the inmate, was so calculated. Contrary to petitioner’s argument, Mennonite Bd. of Missions v. Adams, 462 U.S. 791, 796-797, says that a State must attempt to provide actual notice, not that it must provide actual notice. And none of this Court’s cases cited by either party have required actual notice in proceedings such as this. Instead, the Government has been allowed to defend the “reasonableness and hence the constitutional validity of any chosen method … on the ground that it is in itself reasonably certain to inform those affected.” Mullane, supra, at 315. The Due Process Clause does not require heroic efforts by the Government to assure the notice’s delivery, nor does it require the Government to substitute petitioner’s proposed procedures that would have required verification of receipt for those in place at the FCI while he was there. Even if the current procedures improve delivery to some degree, this Court has never held that improvements in the reliability of new procedures necessarily demonstrate the infirmity of those that were replaced.

Local Effect: The issue has not previously been considered by the Seventh Circuit.

Rehnquist, C.J.; Ginsburg, J., dissenting.

Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, 223 F.3d 422, affirmed.