Source: https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/98671/lee-vs-united-states
Timestamp: 2017-09-23 04:08:35
Document Index: 724511657

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 605', '§ 173', '§ 371', '§ 605', '§ 605', '§ 605', '§ 605']

On Lee Vs United States - Citation 98671 - Court Judgment | LegalCrystal
On Lee Vs. United States - Court Judgment
LegalCrystal Citation legalcrystal.com/98671
Case Number 343 U.S. 747
Appellant On Lee
on lee v. united states - 343 u.s. 747 (1952) u.s. supreme court on lee v. united states, 343 u.s. 747 (1952) on lee v. united states no. 543 argued april 24, 1952 decided june 2, 1952 343 u.s. 747 certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the second circuit syllabus while petitioner was at large on bail pending his trial in a federal court on federal narcotics charges, an old acquaintance and former employee, who, unknown to petitioner, was a federal "undercover agent" and had a radio transmitter concealed on his person, entered the customer's room of petitioner's laundry and engaged petitioner in a conversation. self-incriminating statements, made by petitioner during this conversation and a later.....
On Lee v. United States - 343 U.S. 747 (1952)
U.S. Supreme Court On Lee v. United States, 343 U.S. 747 (1952)
1. The conduct of the federal agents did not amount to such a search and seizure as is proscribed by the Fourth Amendment. Pp. 343 U. S. 750 -753.
(a) The undercover agent committed no trespass when he entered petitioner's place of business, and his subsequent conduct did not render the entry a trespass ab initio. Pp. 343 U. S. 751 -753.
(b) The doctrine of trespass ab initio is applicable only as a rule of liability in civil actions, not where the right of the Government to make use of evidence in a criminal prosecution is involved. P. 343 U. S. 752 .
(c) The contentions that the undercover man's entrance was a trespass because consent was obtained by fraud, and that the other agent was a trespasser because, by means of the radio receiver outside the laundry, he overheard what went on inside, must be rejected. Pp. 343 U. S. 752 -753.
(d) Decisions relating to problems raised where tangible property is unlawfully seized are inapposite in the field of mechanical or electronic devices designed to overhear or intercept conversation, at least where access to the listening post was not obtained by illegal methods. P. 343 U. S. 753 .
United States, 277 U. S. 438 , petitioner would not be aided, since his case cannot be treated as one involving wiretapping. Pp. 343 U. S. 753 -754.
2. The facts do not show a violation of § 605 of the Federal Communications Act, since there was no interference with any communications facility that petitioner possessed or was entitled to use, nor was petitioner sending messages to anyone or using a system of communications within the Act. P. 343 U. S. 754 .
3. The evidence should not have been excluded as a means of disciplining law enforcement officers. McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332 , distinguished. Pp. 343 U. S. 754 -758.
Petitioner was convicted in the District Court of federal offenses. The Court of Appeals affirmed. 193 F.2d 306. This Court granted certiorari. 342 U.S. 941. Affirmed, p. 343 U. S. 758 .
Petitioner was convicted on a two-count indictment, one charging the substantive offense of selling a pound of opium in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 173 and 174, the other conspiring to sell the opium in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371. The Court of Appeals sustained the conviction by a divided court. [ Footnote 1 ] We granted certiorari. [ Footnote 2 ]
For reasons left to our imagination, Chin Poy was not called to testify about petitioner's incriminating admissions. Against objection, [ Footnote 3 ] however, agent Lee was allowed
violates both the search and seizure provisions of the Fourth Amendment, [ Footnote 4 ] and § 605 of the Federal Communications Act, 47 U.S.C. § 605, [ Footnote 5 ] and, if not rejected on those grounds, we should pronounce it inadmissible anyway under the judicial power to require fair play in federal law enforcement.
The conduct of Chin Poy and agent Lee did not amount to an unlawful search and seizure such as is proscribed by the Fourth Amendment. In Goldman v. United States, 316 U. S. 129 , we held that the action of federal agents in placing a detectaphone on the outer wall of defendant's hotel room, and thereby overhearing conversations held within the room, did not violate the Fourth Amendment. There, the agents had earlier committed a trespass in order to install a listening device within the room itself. Since the device failed to work, the court expressly reserved decision as to the effect on the search and seizure question of a trespass in that situation. Petitioner in the instant case has seized upon that dictum, apparently on the assumption that the presence of a radio set would automatically bring him within the reservation if he can show a trespass.
If we were to assume that Chin Poy's conduct was unlawful and consider this argument as an original proposition, it is doubtful that the niceties of tort law initiated almost two and a half centuries ago by the case of the Six Carpenters, 8 Coke 146(a), cited by petitioner, are of much aid in determining rights under the Fourth Amendment. But petitioner's argument comes a quarter of a century too late: this contention was decided adversely to him in McGuire v. United States, 273 U. S. 95 , 273 U. S. 98 , 273 U. S. 100 , where Mr. Justice Stone, speaking for a unanimous Court, said of the doctrine of trespass ab initio:
He concluded that the Court would not resort to "a fiction whose origin, history, and purpose do not justify its application where the right of the government to make use of evidence is involved." This was followed in Zap v. United States, 328 U. S. 624 , 328 U. S. 629 .
by force, as in McDonald v. United States, 335 U. S. 451 , by unwilling submission to authority, as in Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10 , or without any express or implied consent, as in Nueslein v. District of Columbia, 73 App.D.C. 85, 115 F.2d 690, would the problem left undecided in the Goldman case be before the Court.
Petitioner relies on cases relating to the more common and clearly distinguishable problems raised where tangible property is unlawfully seized. Such unlawful seizure may violate the Fourth Amendment, even though the entry itself was by subterfuge or fraud, rather than force. United States v. Jeffers, 342 U. S. 48 ; Gouled v. United States, 255 U. S. 298 (the authority of the latter case is sharply limited by Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438 , at 277 U. S. 463 ). But such decisions are inapposite in the field of mechanical or electronic devices designed to overhear or intercept conversation, at least where access to the listening post was not obtained by illegal methods.
Petitioner urges that, if his claim of unlawful search and seizure cannot be sustained on authority, we reconsider the question of Fourth Amendment rights in the field of overheard or intercepted conversations. This apparently is upon the theory that, since there was a radio set involved, he could succeed if he could persuade the Court to overturn the leading case holding wiretapping to be outside the ban of the Fourth Amendment, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438 , and the cases which have followed it. We need not consider this, however, for success in this attempt, which failed in Goldman v. United States, 316 U. S. 129 , would be of no aid to petitioner unless he can show that his situation should be treated as wiretapping. The presence of a radio set is not sufficient to suggest more than the most attenuated analogy to wiretapping. Petitioner was talking confidentially and indiscreetly with one he trusted, and he
Nor do the facts show a violation of § 605 of the Federal Communications Act. Petitioner had no wires, and no wireless. There was no interference with any communications facility which he possessed or was entitled to use. He was not sending messages to anybody, or using a system of communications within the Act. Goldstein v. United States, 316 U. S. 114 .
Finally, petitioner contends that, even though he be overruled in all else, the evidence should be excluded as a means of disciplining law enforcement officers. Cf. McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332 . In McNabb, however, we held that, where defendants had been unlawfully detained in violation of the federal statute requiring prompt arraignment before a commissioner, a confession made during the detention would be excluded as evidence in federal courts even though not inadmissible on the ground of any otherwise involuntary character. But here neither agent nor informer violated any federal law, and violation of state law, even had it been shown here, as it was not, would not render the evidence
obtained inadmissible in federal courts. Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438 , at 277 U. S. 468 .
In order that constitutional or statutory rights may not be undermined, this Court has, on occasion, evolved or adopted from the practice of other courts exclusionary rules of evidence going beyond the requirements of the constitutional or statutory provision. McNabb v. United States, supra; Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383 . In so doing, it has, of course, departed from the common law rule under which otherwise admissible evidence was not rendered inadmissible by the fact that it had been illegally obtained. Such departures from the primary evidentiary criteria of relevancy and trustworthiness must be justified by some strong social policy. In discussing the extension of such rules, and the creation of new ones, it is well to remember the remarks of Mr. Justice Stone in McGuire v. United States, 273 U. S. 95 , at 273 U. S. 99 :
People v. Adams, 176 N.Y. 351, 358, 68 N.E. 636, 638. However, there is a procedure in federal court by which defendant may protect his right in advance of trial to have returned to him evidence unconstitutionally obtained. Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385 . But since we hold here that there was no violation of the Constitution, such a remedy could not be invoked. Exclusion would have to be based on a policy which placed the penalizing of Chin Poy's breach of confidence above ordinary canons of relevancy. For On Lee's statements to Chin Poy were admissions against interest provable against him as an exception to the hearsay rule. The normal manner of proof would be to call Chin Poy and have him relate the conversation. We can only speculate on the reasons why Chin Poy was not called. It seems a not unlikely assumption that the very defects of character and blemishes of record which made On Lee trust him with confidences would make a jury distrust his testimony. Chin Poy was close enough to the underworld to serve as bait, near enough the criminal design so that petitioner would embrace him as a confidante, but too close to it for the Government to vouch for him as a witness. Instead, the Government called agent Lee. We should think a jury probably would find the testimony of agent Lee to have more probative value than the word of Chin Poy.
Funk v. United States, 290 U. S. 371 , 290 U. S. 376 .
MR. JUSTICE BLACK believes that, in exercising its supervisory authority over criminal justice in the federal courts, see McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332 , 318 U. S. 341 , this Court should hold that the District Court should have rejected the evidence here challenged.
Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438 , 277 U. S. 471 , 277 U. S. 474 . The circumstances of the present case show how the rapid advances of science are made available for that police intrusion into our private lives against which the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution was set on guard.
It is noteworthy that, although this Court deemed wiretapping not outlawed by the Constitution, Congress outlawed it legislatively by the Communications Act of 1934, 42 Stat. 1064, 1103, 47 U.S.C. § 605; Nardone v. United States, 302 U. S. 379 ; Nardone v. United States, 308 U. S. 338 . What is perhaps even more noteworthy is its pervasive disregard in practice by those who, as law officers, owe special obedience to law. What is true of the federal Act against wiretapping and its violations is widely true of related state legislation and its disobedience. See Westin, The Wire-Tapping Problem, 52 Col.L.Rev. 165 (1952). Few
The members of this Court who so vigorously urged that wiretapping is within the clear scope of the prohibition of the Fourth Amendment were no sentimentalists about crime or criminals. Mr. Justice Holmes, Mr. Justice Brandeis, Mr. Justice Butler and Chief Justice Stone were no softies. In all matters of social policy, we have to choose, and it was the hardy philosophy of life that his years in the Army of the Potomac taught him that led Mr. Justice Holmes to deem it "a less evil that some criminals should escape than that the Government should play an ignoble part." Olmstead v. United States, supra, at 277 U. S. 470 .
Accordingly I adhere to the views expressed in Goldman v. United States, 316 U. S. 129 , 316 U. S. 136 , that the Olmstead case should be overruled for the reasons set forth
The Court held in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438 , over powerful dissents by Mr. Justice Holmes, Mr. Justice Brandeis, Mr. Justice Butler, and Chief Justice Stone, that wiretapping by federal officials was not a violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Since that time, the issue has been constantly stirred by those dissents and by an increasing use of wiretapping by the police. Fourteen years later, in Goldman v. United States, 316 U. S. 129 , the issue was again presented to the Court. I joined in an opinion of the Court written by Mr. Justice Roberts, which adhered to the Olmstead case, refusing to overrule it. Since that time, various aspects of the problem have appeared again and again in the cases coming before us. I now more fully appreciate the vice of the practices spawned by Olmstead and Goldman. Reflection on them has brought new insight to me. I now feel that I was wrong in the Goldman case. Mr. Justice Brandeis, in his dissent in Olmstead, espoused the cause of privacy -- the right to be let alone. What he wrote is an
"When the Fourth and Fifth Amendments were adopted, 'the form that evil had theretofore taken' had been necessarily simple. Force and violence were then the only means known to man by which a government could directly effect self-incrimination. It could compel the individual to testify -- a compulsion effected, if need be, by torture. It could secure possession of his papers and other articles incident to his private life -- a seizure effected, if need be, by breaking and entry. Protection against such invasion of 'the sanctities of a man's home and the privacies of life' was provided in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments by specific language. Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616 , 116 U. S. 630 . But 'time works changes, brings into existence new conditions and purposes.' Subtler and more far-reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the government. Discovery and invention have made it possible for the government, by means far more effective than stretching upon the rack, to obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet."
277 U. S. 277 U.S. 473, 277 U. S. 478 -479.
I would reverse this judgment. It is important to civil liberties that we pay more than lipservice to the view that this manner of obtaining evidence against people is "dirty business." See Mr. Justice Holmes, dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, supra, p. 277 U. S. 470 .
I agree with the dissenting opinion below that what Lee overheard by means of a radio transmitter surreptitiously introduced and operating, without warrant or consent, within petitioner's premises, should not have been admitted in evidence. The Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures is not limited to the seizure of tangible things. It extends to intangibles, such as spoken words. In applying the exclusionary rule of Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383 , we are primarily concerned with where and how the evidence is seized, rather than what the evidence is. Cf. Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385 ; United States v. Jeffers, 342 U. S. 48 ; Nueslein v. District of Columbia, 73 App.D.C. 85, 115 F.2d 690.
This Court has held generally that, in a federal criminal trial, a federal officer may testify to what he sees or hears take place within a house or room which he has no warrant or permission to enter, provided he sees or hears it outside of those premises. Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438 . Cf. Hester v. United States, 265 U. S. 57 . This holds true even where the officer supplements his hearing with a hearing aid, detectaphone or other device outside the premises. This merely enables him to hear more distinctly, where he is, what reaches him there from wherever it may come. He and his hearing aid pick up the sounds outside of, rather than within, the protected premises. Goldman v. United States, 316 U. S. 129 .
In the instant case, Chin Poy, who was lawfully in petitioner's room, could have testified as to what he, himself, saw or heard there. Yet, if he had been there unlawfully or surreptitiously, without warrant or consent, under conditions amounting to an unreasonable search, he should not be permitted, in this proceeding, to testify even to that. Cf. Gouled v. United States, 255 U. S. 298 ; Nueslein v. District of Columbia, supra. Similarly, if Lee, under like conditions, without warrant and without authority, entered the room with Chin Poy and, while concealed, overheard petitioner's conversation with Chin Poy, Lee's testimony should be excluded. In substance, that is what took place here. Lee's overhearing of petitioner's statements was accomplished through Chin Poy's surreptitious introduction within petitioner's laundry of Lee's concealed radio transmitter which, without petitioner's