Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/441/238/
Timestamp: 2018-07-22 22:06:09
Document Index: 760666655

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2510', '§ 2518', '§ 659', '§ 2511', '§ 2510', '§ 2518']

Dalia v. United States :: 441 U.S. 238 (1979) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center
Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 441 › Dalia v. United States
2. Congress has given the courts statutory authority to approve covert entries for the purpose of installing electronic surveillance equipment. Although Title III does not refer explicitly to covert entry, the language,
POWELL, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C.J., and WHITE, BLACKMUN, and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined and in Parts I and II
Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (Title III), 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510-2520, permits courts to authorize electronic surveillance [Footnote 1] by Government officers in specified situations. We took this case by writ of
On March 14, 1973, Justice Department officials applied to the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, seeking authorization under 18 U.S.C. § 2518 to intercept telephone conversations on two telephones in petitioner's business office. After examining the affidavits submitted in support of the Government's request, the District Court authorized the wiretap for a period of 20 days or until the purpose of the interception was achieved, whichever came first. The court found probable cause to believe that petitioner was a member of a conspiracy the purpose of which was to steal goods being shipped in interstate commerce in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 659. Moreover, the court found reason to believe that petitioner's business telephones were being used to further this conspiracy, and that means of investigating the conspiracy
On November 6, 1975, petitioner was indicted in a five-count indictment charging that he had been involved in a
In denying a second time petitioner's motion to suppress the evidence obtained from the bug, the trial court ruled
Title III does not refer explicitly to covert entry. The language, structure, and history of the statute, however, demonstrate that Congress meant to authorize courts -- in certain specified circumstances -- to approve electronic surveillance without limitation on the means necessary to its accomplishment, so long as they are reasonable under the circumstances. Title III provides a comprehensive scheme for the regulation of electronic surveillance, prohibiting all secret interception of communications except as authorized by certain state and federal judges in response to applications from specified federal and state law enforcement officials. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 2511, 2515, and 2518; United States v. United States District Court, 407 U. S. 297, 407 U. S. 301-302 (1972). Although Congress was fully aware of the distinction between bugging and wiretapping, see S.Rep. No. 1097, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 68 (1968), Title III by its terms deals with each form of surveillance in essentially the same manner. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510(1) and (2); n 1, supra. Orders authorizing interceptions of either wire or oral communications may be entered only after the court has made specific determinations concerning the likelihood that the interception will disclose evidence of criminal conduct. See 18 U.S.C. § 2518(3). Moreover, with respect to both wiretapping and bugging, an authorizing court must
It is understandable, therefore, that, by the time Title III
Absent covert entry, however, almost all electronic bugging would be impossible. [Footnote 14] See United States v. Ford, 414 F.Supp. 879, 882 (DC 1976), aff'd, 10 U.S.App.D.C. 1, 553 F.2d 146 (1977); McNamara, The Problem of Surreptitious Entry
Petitioner's final contention is that, if covert entries are to be authorized under Title III, the authorizing court must
explicitly set forth its approval of such entries before the fact. In this case, as is customary, the court's order constituted the sole written authorization of the surveillance of petitioner's office. As it did not state in terms that the surveillance was to include a covert entry, petitioner insists that the entry violated his Fourth Amendment privacy rights. Accord, United States v. Ford, 180 U.S.App.D.C. at 25, 553 F.2d at 170; Application of United States, 563 F.2d 637, 644 (CA4 1977). [Footnote 17]
Petitioner contends, nevertheless, that the April 5 order was insufficient under the Fourth Amendment for its failure to specify that it would be executed by means of a covert
Recognizing that the specificity required by the Fourth Amendment does not generally extend to the means by which warrants are executed, petitioner further argues that warrants for electronic surveillance are unique because often they impinge upon two different Fourth Amendment interests: the surveillance itself interferes only with the right to hold private conversations, whereas the entry subjects the suspect's property to possible damage and personal effects to unauthorized examination. This view of the Warrant Clause parses too finely the interests protected by the Fourth Amendment. Often, in executing a warrant, the police may find it necessary to interfere with privacy rights not explicitly considered by the judge who issued the warrant. For example, police executing an arrest warrant commonly find it necessary to enter
It would extend the Warrant Clause to the extreme to require that, whenever it is reasonably likely that Fourth Amendment rights may be affected in more than one way, the court must set forth precisely the procedures to be followed by the executing officers. Such an interpretation is unnecessary, as we have held -- and the Government concedes -- that the manner in which a warrant is executed is subject to later judicial review as to its reasonableness. See Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U. S. 547, 436 U. S. 559-560 (1978). [Footnote 20] More important, we would promote empty formalism were we to require magistrates to make explicit what unquestionably is implicit in bugging authorizations: [Footnote 21] that a covert entry, with its attendant interference with Fourth Amendment interests, may be necessary for the installation of the surveillance equipment. See United States v. London, 424 F.Supp. 556, 560 (Md. 1976). We conclude, therefore, that the Fourth Amendment does not require that a Title III electronic surveillance order include a
Breaking and entering into private premises for the purpose of planting a bug cannot be characterized as a mere mode of warrant execution to be left to the discretion of the executing officer. See ante at 441 U. S. 257. The practice entails an invasion
"[T]he Fourth Amendment confines an officer executing a search warrant strictly within the bounds set by the warrant," Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388, 403 U. S. 394 n. 7 (1971), in order to assure that those "searches deemed necessary [remain] as limited as possible." Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 403 U. S. 467 (1971). See Stanford v. Texas, 379 U. S. 476, 379 U. S. 485 (1965); Marron v. United States, 275 U. S. 192, 275 U. S. 196 (1927). * As a consequence, a warrant that describes
Page 441 U. S. 261
only the seizure of conversations cannot be read expansively to authorize constitutionally distinct physical invasions of privacy at the discretion of the executing officer. Rather, the Constitution demands that the necessity for home invasion be decided "by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime." Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 333 U. S. 14 (1948).
Nor can I agree that adherence to the strictures of the Warrant and Particularity Clauses of the Fourth Amendment would amount to "empty formalism." See ante at 441 U. S. 258. Since premises may be bugged through means less drastic than home invasion, requiring police to secure prior approval for covert entries may well prevent unnecessary and improper intrusions. In any event, that the present case may not appear particularly abusive cannot justify the Court's crabbed interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. Mr. Justice Bradley's
The perpetrators of these break-ins were agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Their office, however, carries with it no general warrant to trespass on private property. Without legislative or judicial sanction, the conduct of these agents was unquestionably "unreasonable," and therefore prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. [Footnote 2/1] Moreover, that conduct
"Congress, like this Court, has an obligation to obey the mandate of the Fourth Amendment." Marshall v. Barlow's, Inc., 436 U. S. 307, 436 U. S. 334 (STEVENS, J., dissenting). But Congress is better equipped than the Judiciary to make the empirical
But no comparable deference should be given federal intrusions on privacy that are not expressly authorized by Congress. [Footnote 2/6] In my view, a proper respect for Congress' important
"It simply does not make sense" [Footnote 2/13] to conclude that Congress -- having minutely detailed (1) the process that "[t]he Attorney General, or any Assistant Attorney General specially designated by the Attorney General" must follow in authorizing federal police officers to seek an electronic surveillance order, [Footnote 2/14] (2) the limited number of suspected offenses that will justify such an order, [Footnote 2/15] (3) the showing that must be made to "a Federal judge" before he issues the order, [Footnote 2/16] (4) the
standard the judge must apply in approving, and the format he must follow in preparing, the order, [Footnote 2/17] (5) the timeframe of execution and the manner of execution with respect to
minimizing the interception of communications not likely to involve criminal activity, [Footnote 2/18] and even having more recently specified (6) certain "unobtrusive" means by which those
orders might be carried out without the awareness of the suspect [Footnote 2/19] -- was content to leave national police officers with unbounded authority to carry out the resulting orders in any unspecified and obtrusive fashion they chose "subject of course to constitutional limitations." Ante at 441 U. S. 250. [Footnote 2/20]
The meager legislative remarks that are said to demonstrate that Title III's supporters implicitly endorsed breaking and
Read in context, this and like commentary are inconsistent with, rather than an endorsement of, unauthorized break-ins. For although it is, of course, true that surreptitious entry is often "impossible" when it must be accomplished without violating the law, surreptitious entry is by no means impossible (indeed, it is hardly "difficult") if it may be effected by whatever means the police -- unhampered by the provisions of the criminal law -- can bring to their disposal. Despite the Court's understanding of it, I read Senator Tydings' remark as only one of many expressions by Title III's supporters of their belief that authorized electronic surveillance would be "carefully circumscribed," id. at 13203 (Sen. Scott) and "rigidly controlled," id. at 14715 (Sen. Tydings), not only by technology but also by "strict court supervision," id. at 13200 (Sen. Scott), the "strictest guidelines," id. at 16076
Even the opponents of Title III, in parading before Congress the various invasions of privacy that they felt would accompany the passage of the statute, never once referred to breaking and entering private property. E.g., id. at 14710 (Sen. Cooper); id. at 14732 (Sen. Yarborough); id. at 16066 (Rep. Celler). That they omitted such references while decrying far less aggravated invasions is strong evidence that they, at least, never thought about the issue that this case raises. [Footnote 2/25] And since the sponsors of the legislation expressly stated that they had specified "every possible constitutional safeguard for the rights of individual privacy," id. at
Many of those cases, including the two specifically cited by the Court, [Footnote 2/27] held that the police conduct involved was unlawful. Rather than endorsing all of the techniques discussed in those cases, Congress was quite clearly trying to avoid the incidents of unconstitutionality those cases had
It is of greater importance, however, that although Congress was concerned with the "types of surveillance" involved in our prior cases, none of the congressional references to those cases discussed the type of entry made to effectuate the surveillance. Not a word in any of those pre-1968 opinions, save one, described an illegal entry or even implied that such an entry had occurred. Those opinions instead described situations in which a listening device had been surreptitiously placed: against an office wall in order to hear conversations in the next office, Goldman v. United States, 316 U. S. 129; on the person of a federal agent who recorded a conversation in the defendant's laundry, On Lee v. United States, 343 U. S. 747; in a cabaret, Lopez v. United States, 373 U. S. 427; in a law office, Osborn v. United States, 385 U. S. 323; against a spike inserted under a party wall, Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505; on the outside of a public telephone booth, Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347; and inside a private office, Berger v. New York, 388 U. S. 41. It is, of course, true that the conduct in each cited case was surreptitious, but there is a vast difference between detective work that is merely clandestine and work that involves breaking and entering into private property. Before the decisions in Katz and Berger, the former technique was considered to be lawful, warrant or
Because it is not supported by either the text of the statute or the scraps of relevant legislative history, [Footnote 2/33] I fear that the
But surely the presumption should run the other way. Congressional silence should not be construed to authorize the Executive to violate state criminal laws or to encroach upon constitutionally protected privacy interests. Before confronting the serious constitutional issues raised by the Court's reading of Title III, [Footnote 2/34] we should insist upon an unambiguous statement by Congress that this sort of police conduct may be authorized by a court and that a specific showing of necessity, or at least probable cause, must precede such an authorization. Without a legislative mandate that is both explicit and specific, I would presume that this flagrant invasion of the citizen's privacy is prohibited. Cf. United States v. New York Telephone Co., 434 U.S. at 434 U. S. 178-179 (STEVENS, J., dissenting
Oral Argument - January 10, 1979
Oral Argument - January 09, 1979
Opinion Announcement - April 18, 1979