Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/552/1156/169469/
Timestamp: 2019-08-18 15:24:07
Document Index: 512519053

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2518', '§ 2518', '§ 2518', '§ 2518', '§ 2518', '§ 2518', '§ 2518', '§ 2518', '§ 2518', '§ 2518', '§ 2518', '§ 2518', '§ 2518', '§ 2518', '§ 2518', '§ 2518', '§ 515', '§ 515', '§ 2518']

United States of America, Plaintiff-appellee, v. Martin Sklaroff, Reuben Goldstein, and Pearl Leppo, A/k/aearl Leppo, Defendants-appellants, 552 F.2d 1156 (5th Cir. 1977) :: Justia
Justia › US Law › Case Law › Federal Courts › Courts of Appeals › Fifth Circuit › 1977 › United States of America, Plaintiff-appellee, v. Martin Sklaroff, Reuben Goldstein, and Pearl Leppo,...
United States of America, Plaintiff-appellee, v. Martin Sklaroff, Reuben Goldstein, and Pearl Leppo, A/k/aearl Leppo, Defendants-appellants, 552 F.2d 1156 (5th Cir. 1977)
US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit - 552 F.2d 1156 (5th Cir. 1977)
Defendants' primary contentions of error deal with alleged deficiencies in the application for an interception order that the task force attorney submitted to Judge Roettger. First, they argue that the failure of the task force to identify Earl Leppo in either of their applications violated18 U.S.C. § 2518(1) (b) (iv),3 which requires that each application identify all known persons who are committing the offense and whose communications are to be intercepted. Appellants argue that Department of Justice attorneys had probable cause to believe that Earl Leppo was committing the offenses under investigation and violated § 2518(1) (b) (iv) by not listing him on their applications. In United States v. Doolittle, 507 F.2d 1368, aff'd en banc, 518 F.2d 500 (5th Cir. 1975), cert. denied 423 U.S. 1008, 96 S. Ct. 439, 46 L. Ed. 2d 380 (1977) we upheld the admission of evidence from a wiretap against several defendants whom the Government allegedly had probable cause to believe would be involved in the ongoing criminal activity, but who were not named in the wiretap application, on the ground that the defendants had not demonstrated any prejudice in not being named in the application and that defendants had presented no evidence of Governmental bad faith. In a recent holding, however, the Supreme Court had held that while Title III requires the Government to name on its wiretap application any person whom it has probable cause to believe is engaged in the criminal activity under question, failure to meet this requirement does not require suppression of the evidence produced.4 U. S. v. Donovan, --- U.S. ----, 97 S. Ct. 658, 50 L. Ed. 2d 652 (1977). Therefore, according to Donovan, even assuming that Leppo was a "known person" who should have been named in the application, the Government's failure to do this does not require suppression of the evidence obtained against him.
Appellant Goldstein argues that the application did not comply with either § 2518(1) (c) or § 2518(1) (e) and that, as a result, evidence obtained through electronic surveillance made pursuant to those deficient applications should be suppressed. 18 U.S.C. § 2518(1) (c) provides that applications for wire interceptions include:
Appellant contends that the Government's attempt to comply with this requirement was inadequate in that affidavits submitted for this purpose were conclusory and did not provide sufficient facts from which a detached judge could determine whether alternate, viable investigative procedures existed. In support of his argument, appellant Goldstein cites United States v. Kalustian, 529 F.2d 585 (9th Cir. 1975), in which the Ninth Circuit held that affidavits that rely on conclusory allegations and boilerplate language to show the unavailability of other investigative techniques are insufficient to meet the standard set forth in § 2518(1) (c). Yet, this court has held that § 2518(1) (c) "must be read in a common sense fashion." United States v. Robertson, 504 F.2d 289 (5th Cir. 1974), cert. denied 421 U.S. 913, 95 S. Ct. 1568, 43 L. Ed. 2d 778. Accordingly, the purpose of the statute "is not to foreclose electronic surveillance until every other imaginable method of investigation (has) been unsuccessfully attempted, but simply to inform the issuing judge of the difficulties involved in the use of conventional techniques." United States v. Pacheco, 489 F.2d 554, 565 (5th Cir. 1974). Kalustian notwithstanding, this court has recently examined an affidavit containing the same allegations that appellant argues in this case are inadequate and ruled that it complies with § 2518(1) (c). Thus, in United States v. McCoy, 539 F.2d 1050 (5th Cir. 1976), we held that in order to uphold a wiretap order, the affidavit must only supply a "factual predicate" adequate to support the judge's implicit finding that "(the) 'investigative procedures appear unlikely to succeed.' " Id. at 1055-56. In that case, the panel held to be an adequate factual predicate an affidavit stating that based on the FBI agent's experience in investigating gambling offenses and on the fact that searches of gamblers usually failed to prove all the elements of federal offenses, particularly with respect to participants not present at the searched premises, that gamblers often do not keep permanent records, that temporary records are often destroyed during a search and are often in a code that is difficult to decipher, that FBI informants would be unwilling to testify, and that physical surveillance would jeopardize the investigation, electronic surveillance was necessary. The allegations contained in the affidavit under attack in this case being almost identical to those approved in McCoy, we likewise hold that the application in question complied with § 2518(1) (c).
In his final attack on the adequacy of the application for a wiretap order, appellant Goldstein argues that the Government did not comply with 18 U.S.C. § 2518(1) (e), which requires each application to contain
(Emphasis added). In its application to intercept communications of Sklaroff and Goldstein, the Government listed three previous applications for wire interceptions of Sklaroff and Goldstein, two for the former and one for the latter. Appellant Goldstein contends, however, that it failed to mention one wiretap application in which he was involved and that this non-compliance with § 2518(1) (e) mandates suppression of the tapes obtained pursuant to Judge Roettger's two orders. Specifically, Goldstein alleges that the Government did not inform Judge Roettger that Goldstein's conversations were overheard on a 1971 interception authorized by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. Goldstein concedes that he was not a target of the application, itself, in that the application was directed at "James Alexander Clark, a/k/a "Butterball," David R. Thomas, a/k/a "Ross Thomas," and others as yet unknown." Rather, he argues that because the affidavit submitted in support of the application discussed some of his gambling activities with Clark and Thomas, this application should have been brought to Judge Roettger's attention. Several courts, including this one, have held that an application to intercept conversations of a particular individual does not have to reveal a prior interception of that individual's conversations when that person was not the target of the application seeking the prior interception. See United States v. Florea, 541 F.2d 568 (6th Cir. 1976); United States v. Kilgore, 518 F.2d 496 (5th Cir. 1975), reh. denied, 524 F.2d 957, cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 97 S. Ct. 1173 (1977). United States v. Bellosi, 163 U.S.App.D.C. 273, 51 L. Ed. 2d 581, 501 F.2d 833, 839 n. 13 (1974); United States v. O'Neill, 497 F.2d 1020 (6th Cir. 1974); United States v. Chiarizio, 388 F. Supp. 858 (D. Conn. 1975). In other words, if the Government submits an application to intercept the calls of John Doe and during their surveillance of him record conversations with Jane Roe, a subsequent application to intercept Jane Roe's calls does not have to refer to the John Doe application to satisfy § 2518(1) (c). Here, appellant argues that discussion of his gambling activities in an affidavit supporting a Title III application made him a target of that application and rendered that application subject to § 2518(1) (c). We disagree. An affidavit is submitted to justify an interception order by furnishing evidence of the Government's probable cause to believe that the named targets of the application are engaging in illegal gambling activities. In an effort to establish probable cause to conduct surveillance of the named individuals, the affidavit might discuss the activity of numerous people not named as targets of the investigation. It does not follow, however, that anyone listed in the affidavit is thereby deemed a target of the investigation subject to the dictates of § 2518(1) (c). We also find appellant's reliance on United States v. Bellosi, 163 U.S.App. D.C. 273, 501 F.2d 833 (1974), to be misplaced. In Bellosi, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals held that the Government violated § 2518(1) (c) when it purposely did not disclose in its applications that one of the intended targets had also been a target of an earlier application. Here, Goldstein was not a target of the Tennessee application. Likewise, the Government listed three prior interception applications directed at Sklaroff and Goldstein, so that no inference that it was trying to hide any previous interceptions is justified. In short, we hold that § 2518(1) (c) requires disclosure of only those previous applications directed at the person for whom the subsequent application is made.
Appellants contend that Steinberg's commission did not "specifically direct" him to appear before the grand jury pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 515(a). This argument has been rejected in all circuits that have considered it. See United States v. Prueitt, 540 F.2d 995 (9th Cir. 1976); Infelice v. United States, 528 F.2d 204 (7th Cir. 1975); In Re Grand Jury Subpoena of Persico, 522 F.2d 41 (2nd Cir. 1975); United States v. Wrigley, 520 F.2d 362 (8th Cir. 1975), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 987, 96 S. Ct. 396, 46 L. Ed. 2d 304. In United States v. Wrigley, 520 F.2d 362 (9th Cir. 1975), the Ninth Circuit, rejecting the defendant's argument that a letter of appointment identical to the letter being attacked in this case was too broad and failed to give specific direction in the grant of authority, held that the statute does not limit the employment of special attorneys to particular types of cases identified as unusually important or requiring particular expertise; the statute is a grant of authority, not a limitation. Id. at 364-68. We concur and hold that the letter of appointment for special attorney Steinberg complied with § 515(a).
The Supreme Court has held in Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610, 96 S. Ct. 2240, 49 L. Ed. 2d 91 (1976), that the due process clause forbids the prosecution from using evidence of a defendant's post-arrest, post-Miranda warning silence either for substantive or impeachment purposes. In two cases announced since Doyle, this court has found an infraction of the Doyle rule, but has also held that violation to constitute only harmless error. Thus, noting that the prosecutor did not "focus on" or "highlight" defendant's silence in his cross-examination and closing remarks and that the prosecutor's comments did not strike at the "jugular" of the defendant's story this court held to be harmless error the prosecution's elicitation of the defendant's silence during his arrest. United States v. Davis, 546 F.2d 583 (5th Cir. 1977). Likewise, in Chapman v. United States, 547 F.2d 1240 (5th Cir. 1977), a panel of this court held another prosecutorial question on the defendant's post-Miranda warning silence to be harmless error, noting that "when there is but a single reference at trial to the fact of defendant's silence, the reference is neither repeated nor linked with defendant's exculpatory story, and the exculpatory story is transparently frivolous and evidence of guilt is otherwise overwhelming, the reference to defendant's silence constitutes harmless error." Id. at p. 1250. That standard was met here, for in this case there was only one reference to the defendant's silence and that reference was neither made nor elicited by the prosecution, but instead resulted from a spontaneous remark made by the witness. The prosecution never again mentioned the witness' comment and the judge adequately instructed the jury to disregard the comment. Further, no circumstance in Leppo's case gave rise to any expectation that Leppo, if innocent, would have made a statement at the time of his arrest, for his silence did not contradict any exculpatory story made in his defense, since indeed no such story was told.9 In short, the fact of his post-Miranda warning silence was irrelevant to the issues presented at trial.
18 U.S.C. § 2518(1) (b) (iv) states:
While the opinion in Donovan apparently rejects that part of our holding that made a showing of prejudice a ground for suppressing a wiretap based on an application that did not name all "known persons," it did not decide whether proof of Governmental bad faith in not disclosing all such persons would justify suppression. See United States v. Donovan, --- U.S. ---- at ----, 97 S. Ct. 658 at 672, 50 L. Ed. 2d 652, at 673 n.23 (1977). Because appellants do not allege or show such bad faith, we do not have to decide that question in this case