Case Name: STATE of Louisiana v. Charles W. REEVES
Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Decision Date: 1982-03-01
Citations: 427 So. 2d 403
Docket Number: No. 81-KA-0909
Parties: STATE of Louisiana v. Charles W. REEVES.
Judges: WATSON, J., dissents and assigns reasons.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 427
Pages: 403–428

Head Matter:
STATE of Louisiana v. Charles W. REEVES.
No. 81-KA-0909.
Supreme Court of Louisiana.
March 1, 1982.
On Rehearing Jan. 10, 1983.
Rehearing Denied March 4, 1983.
Concurring Opinion March 21, 1983.
William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Barbara Rutledge, Asst. Atty. Gen., Leonard K. Knapp, Dist. Atty., Larry J. Regan, Eugene Bouquet, Asst. Dist. Attys., for plaintiff-ap-pellee.
Richard Ieyoub, Lake Charles, for defendant-appellant.

Opinion:
DENNIS, Justice.
In this case we are called upon to decide whether eavesdropping by state govern ment agents on conversations between an accused and an informant by means of a radio transmitter concealed on the informant's person with his consent violates Article 1, § 5 of the 1974 Louisiana Constitution. We hold that electronic surveillance must be conducted in full compliance with the warrant requirement. A person's "communications" are specifically protected by the state constitution against unreasonable searches, seizures or "invasions of privacy." La. Const.1974, Art. 1, § 5. Consequently, antecedent justification before a magistrate is a precondition of lawful electronic interception of private communications just as it is essential to the lawful search of a house or the seizure of papers and effects. This constitutional safeguard and its warrant requirement protect each person's private communications and privacy regardless of whether his communicatee has consented to an interception or invasion.
Defendant, Charles W. Reeves, an employee of the Department of Elections was convicted of two counts of perjury. He was sentenced concurrently on each count to six months in jail and fined $1000. Defendant was found guilty on evidence showing that in testifying before a grand jury he denied having had conversations about raising compaign contributions by false expense vouchers with a fellow employee, Alvin Pil-ley. Defendant moved unsuccessfully before trial to suppress tape recordings and transcripts of three face-to-face conversations that state agents had intercepted without his consent through the use of a wireless transmitter they had concealed on Pilley. At trial the state was permitted, over the defendant's objection, to introduce recordings and transcripts of the intercepted communications. It is undisputed that this evidence was obtained without a warrant but with Pilley's consent and cooperation.
Defendant contends on appeal that the secret monitoring and taping of his conversations by state agents without first securing a warrant, was an unreasonable invasion of his privacy, prohibited by Article 1, § 5 of the Louisiana Constitution of 1974. The state argues that Article 1, § 5 provides no greater protection against invasions of privacy than the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court in United States v. White, 401 U.S. 745, 91 S.Ct. 1122, 28 L.Ed.2d 453 (1971). In White a plurality of the high court concluded that the Fourth Amendment does not require government agents to first secure a warrant before they secretly monitor private communications when one of the participants consents to the monitoring. We are called on to decide whether the affirmative right to privacy and specific protection of communications contained in Article 1, § 5 of the Louisiana Constitution of 1974, requires state agents to secure a search warrant before such electronic surveillance can be conducted.
Article 1, § 5 of the 1974 Louisiana Constitution says that:
Every person shall be secure in his person, property, communications, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches, seizures, or invasions of privacy. No warrant shall issue without probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, the persons or things to be seized, and the lawful purpose or reason for the search. Any person adversely affected by a search or seizure conducted in violation of this Section shall have standing to raise its illegality in the appropriate court.
By its clear terms the constitution explicitly protects every person's "communications" from unreasonable searches, seizures, and "invasions of privacy," thereby affirmatively establishing a right to privacy including a person's communications. The safeguard is unlimited and thus covers all of a person's private communications. Because the constitution expressly elevates communication as a protected interest to a position of equal stature with other expressly protected interests, invasions or interceptions of them may not be conducted without a warrant issued upon probable cause, particularly describing the communication to be invaded and the lawful purpose or reason for the interception. It is clear that the framers of the constitution sought a solution regulating but not prohibiting electronic surveillance of communications whereby the rights of individual liberty and the needs of law enforcement are fairly accommodated.
The genesis of this accommodation is recorded in the proceedings of the Bill of Rights and Elections Committee of the constitutional convention. Members of the committee urged the adoption of a safeguard more perfect than the Fourth Amendment against threats to the liberty of communications posed by technological advances in electronic wiretapping, eavesdropping and computer science. An early draft of Section 5 provided: "No law shall permit the interception or inspection of any private communication or language." The committee decided to modify this outright ban, however, aftér realizing that it prohibited electronic surveillance even under court supervision. To accommodate this perceived need, the committee altered its draft by placing communications on an equal footing with other expressly protected interests and by interposing the requirement of a warrant before any interception can be conducted. It is clear from the discussion and debate that the committee did not consider that the legitimate needs of law enforcement justified any exception to the warrant requirement for electronic surveillance other than, perhaps, specific exceptions similar to those which have been recognized for searches of other protected areas and interests.
The final committee proposal was adopted without change by the delegates to the constitutional convention and approved by the electorate. Because Article 1, § 5 explicitly and unqualifiedly protects a person's "communications" against warrantless "invasions of privacy," we cannot believe that any reasonable delegate or voter considered that the proposed constitution excluded any form of private communication from its safeguards. These safeguards for communications and privacy are not contained in either the Fourth Amendment or the 1921 Louisiana Constitution. Clearly, the constitutional aim is to elevate them as protected interests to the same rank as houses, papers and effects and to afford them equal defense by the warrant requirement. If the intention of the framers had been otherwise, it would have been an easy matter for them to except certain types of invasions of communications from the warrant requirement, e.g., those done with the consent of a party to the communication. Moreover, we are convinced that the vast majority of law abiding Louisianians regard warrantless surreptitious electronic monitoring of their conversations, even with the consent and collaboration of their communicatees, as unreasonable invasions of their private communications.
Applying these precepts to the present case, we conclude that the state government officials' activities in electronically listening to defendant's words violated his right to privacy and right to be secure in his private communications under Article 1, § 5 of the 1974 Louisiana Constitution. Accordingly, we must reverse the defendant's conviction, order that his intercepted communications be suppressed, and remand the case for further proceedings. The testimony of the informant, Alvin Pilley, however, will not be suppressed, and the state may introduce this evidence at a new trial. As we have noted, the specific constitutional provisions banning unreasonable invasions of communications and privacy were adopted because of the threat to the liberties of innocent citizens by technological advancements in electronic surveillance and computerization. There is no indication the delegates or the electorate sought to protect a person guilty of a crime against betrayal by his confidant or considered the introduction of an informant's testimony itself an unreasonable invasion of privacy and communications.
Several other states have recently adopted constitutional provisions affirmatively guaranteeing the right to privacy or specifically protecting communications against unreasonable invasion. Alaska Const. of 1959, Art. 1, § 22, as amended in 1972 ("The right of the people to privacy is recognized and shall not be infringed . . "); Florida Const. (1968 Revision) Art. 1, § 12 (protects "against . the unreasonable interception of private communications by any means"); Montana Const. of 1972, Art. II, § 10 ("The right of individual privacy is essential to the well being of a free society and shall not be infringed without the showing of a compelling state interest."). The Supreme Court of each state has held that warrant-less electronic surveillance of private communications by state officials is an unreasonable invasion of privacy even when one of the parties to the conversation consents to the surveillance.
In State v. Sarmiento, 397 So.2d 643 (Fla.1981) the Florida Supreme Court held that, although the defendant who discussed a sale of heroin with an undercover officer in his home, assumed the risk that the officer might reveal the contents of their conversation to the outside world, the defendant enjoyed a reasonable expectation of privacy that no one else was listening to the conversation by means of electronic eavesdropping, and thus the recording of his conversation by state officers violated the Florida Constitution. The Court stated:
"We are unwilling to impose upon our citizens the risk of assuming that the uninvited ear of the state is an unseén and unknown listener to every private conversation which they have in their homes. That is too much for a proud and free people to tolerate without taking a long step down the totalitarian road." 397 So.2d at 645.
The Montana Supreme Court, in State v. Brackman, 582 P.2d 1216 (Mont.1978), held that defendant, who was charged with felony intimidation by threatening individuals in a dispute over a debt in a parking lot, was protected by the state constitution against monitoring and recording by officers without a search warrant or prior showing of a compelling state interest in defendant's conversation, and that the evidence was properly suppressed even though the threatened individuals consented to the eavesdropping. The Alaska Supreme Court, in State v. Glass, 583 P.2d 872 (Alaska 1978), held that its state charter required the suppression as evidence of a conversation between defendant and an informant in the defendant's home which was electronically recorded without a search warrant by police officers stationed outside defendant's home through the use of a transmitter worn by the informant.
Article 1, § 11 of the Michigan Constitution of 1963 is very similar to the Fourth Amendment and does not affirmatively guarantee the right to privacy or specifically protect communications. However, the Michigan Supreme Court in People v. Beavers, 393 Mich. 554, 227 N.W.2d 511 (1975), held that electronic surveillance may not be conducted without a warrant even if one of the parties to the communication consents to the invasion of his privacy. The court, in interpreting its state charter recognized the "significant distinction between assuming the risk that communications directed to one party may subsequently be repeated to others and the simultaneous monitoring of a conversation by the uninvited ear of a third party functioning with one of the participants yet unknown to the other," 227 N.W.2d at 515, and suppressed the conversation between defendant and a police informant equipped with a concealed transmitter which was relayed to a police officer without defendant's knowledge and without authorization of a search warrant.
The state's, attorneys argue that Louisiana merely incorporated the United States Supreme Court's interpretation of the Fourth Amendment in Article 1, § 5 of our state constitution. This contention is clearly erroneous. Our charter's affirmative establishment of a right to privacy and its explicit protection of communications as safeguards against unwarranted electronic surveillance are among the most conspicuous instances in which our citizens have chosen a higher standard of individual liberty than that afforded by the current federal jurisprudence. See State v. Abram, 353 So.2d 1019 (La.1978); State v. Hutchinson, 349 So.2d 1252 (La.1977); cf. State v. Overton, 337 So.2d 1201 (La.1976); Hargrave, The Declaration of Rights of the Louisiana Constitution of 1974, 35 La.L.Rev. 1 (1974); Jenkins, The Declaration of Rights, 21 Loy. L.Rev. 27 (1975).
To prove this point it is hardly necessary to go beyond the words of the two constitutions. The Fourth Amendment says that
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Justice Black pointed out that this literal language "imports tangible things, and it would require an expansion of the language used by the framers, in the interest of 'privacy' or some equally vague judge made goal, to hold that it applies to the spoken word." Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967) (Black, J., dissenting). The Louisiana Constitution, on the other hand, expressly establishes an affirmative right to privacy and treats wiretapping and bugging as "communications" within the protection against unreasonable searches, seizures, or "invasions of privacy." See Hargrave, supra, at 20-22. Evidently, the framers and the citizens were dissatisfied with the federal standard of privacy and chose to erect a special defense against potential abuses of modern electronic technology.
Moreover, while the privacy and communications of ordinary law abiding citizens were a major concern of the delegates and the electorate in adopting the 1974 Louisiana Constitution, the United States Supreme Court currently views the Fourth Amendment safeguard against electronic surveillance only in terms of the expectations and risks that "wrongdoers" or "one contemplating illegal activities ought to bear." In United States v. White, 401 U.S. 745, 91 S.Ct. 1122, 28 L.Ed.2d 453 (1971), government agents testified at trial to incriminating conversations between a government informant and the defendant which the agents, acting without a warrant, overheard by monitoring the frequency of a radio transmitter concealed on the informant. A plurality of the court, reversing the court of appeals decision, held that the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights had not been violated. The plurality opinion reasoned that, since the law permits A to relay verbally to the police what is revealed to him by B (as in Lewis v. United States, 385 U.S. 206, 87 S.Ct. 424, 17 L.Ed.2d 312 (1966) and Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293, 87 S.Ct. 408, 17 L.Ed.2d 374 (1966)), or record and later divulge it (as in Lopez v. United States, 373 U.S. 427, 83 S.Ct. 1381, 10 L.Ed.2d 462 (1963)), neither should the law protect B when A conspires with governmental agents to betray B by contemporaneously transmitting to the other all that is said. 401 U.S. at 751, 91 S.Ct. at 1125-26, 28 L.Ed.2d at 458; 401 U.S. at 785, 91 S.Ct. at 1142, 28 L.Ed.2d at 478 (Harlan, J., dissenting). The plurality opinion is not concerned with protection of the ordinary citizen, who has never engaged in illegal conduct in his life, to assure "that he may carry on his private discourse freely, openly and spontaneously without measuring his every word against the connotations it might carry when instantaneously heard by others unknown to him and unfamiliar with his situation or analyzed in a cold, formal record played days, months, years after the conversation." 401 U.S. at 790, 91 S.Ct. at 1145, 28 L.Ed.2d at 480 (Harlan, J., dissenting). The failure to address this concern or to explain why an ordinary citizen does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy from wiretapping or bugging even with the collaboration of his communicatees has been the subject of incisive scholarly criticism. Amsterdam, Perspectives on the Fourth Amendment, 58 Minn.L.Rev. 349 (1974); Comment, Electronic Eavesdropping and the Right to Privacy, 52 B.U.L.Rev. 831 (1972). Cf. Greenwalt, The Consent Problem in Wiretapping and Eavesdropping: Surreptitious Monitoring With the Consent of a Participant in the Conversation, 68 Colum.L.Rev. 189 (1968).
We, of course, give careful consideration to the United States Supreme Court interpretations of relevant provisions of the federal constitution, although we are not bound by them in construing the Louisiana Constitution. The White rationale is entirely inappropriate, however, as a guide for the interpretation of our specific safeguard against invasion of communications and our affirmative right to privacy. The Fourth Amendment does not contain these explicit guarantees and, as interpreted by the White plurality, simply does not address some of the types of invasions of privacy that concerned the delegates and the people of this state in adopting the 1974 Louisiana Constitution. Indeed, it seems likely that Louisiana decided to establish greater safeguards in its 1974 constitution partly because the course of the United States Supreme Court decisions in White and other cases had been "outflanked by the technological advances of the very recent past." Lopez v. United States, 373 U.S. 427, 465-466, 83 S.Ct. 1381, 1401-1402, 10 L.Ed.2d 462, 486 (1963) (Brennan, J., dissenting).
The legislative history and absolute wording of the Louisiana Constitution indicate that the delegates recognized the qualitative difference between the known risk we all take that a false friend might betray our trust by revealing the contents of our conversation to others and the unknown risk that the uninvited ear of the state is an unseen and unknown listener to our private conversations. A party speaking in private conversation does not knowingly expose his conversation to the public simply because an unknown party is surreptitiously hearing and recording every word that is being spoken. A confidence repeated by a false friend is received by others with attendant circumstances of the friend's credibility and memory. Without the use of electronic surveillance, one's remarks are not preserved for posterity on the reels of magnetic tape. As soon as electronic surveillance comes into play, the risk changes crucially and clearly there is an invasion of privacy. While there is no indication that the delegates sought to protect a person against betrayal by his confidant, clearly they sought to eliminate the danger that an official record is being made of what we say to unknown government agents at their unfettered discretion. See State v. Sarmiento, supra; State v. Glass, supra; State v. Brackman, supra; United States v. White, supra (Harlan, J., dissenting); Lopez v. United States, supra (Brennan, J., dissenting); Holmes v. Burr, 486 F.2d 55 at 72 (9th Cir.1973) (Hufstedler, J., dissenting); Amsterdam, supra; Comment, 52 B U.L.Rev. at 842-843.
It is evident from the wording of Article 1, § 5 that it mattered little to the delegates that consensual surveillance is arguably less obnoxious than wholly clandestine surveillance. If the delegates had wished to establish a lesser safeguard, or draw nice distinctions between types of electronic surveillance, they would have adopted a more general provision, identical or more similar to the Fourth Amendment. Indeed, a respectable school of thought holds the view that the Fourth Amendment itself prohibits both methods of electronic surveillance in the absence of judicial supervision. See United States v. White, supra (Harlan, J., dissenting); Lopez v. United States, supra (Brennan, J., dissenting); Hufstedler, Invisible Searches for Intangible Things: Regulation of Governmental Information Gathering, 127 U.Penn.L.Rev. (1979); Parker, A Definition of Privacy, 27 Rut.L.Rev. 275 (1974); Amsterdam, supra; Comment, 51 B.U.L.Rev., supra; Greenwalt, supra.
Our constitution does not condemn the use of participant monitoring by law enforcement personnel. When circumstances justify electronic surveillance, however, the resulting invasion of privacy and communications must be conducted in full compliance with the warrant requirement in order for evidence gained thereby to be admitted at trial. To protect the right of privacy (not for the defendant whose privacy has already been invaded, but for law abiding citizens in the state) is and should be of primary importance to the courts. State v. Melson, 284 So.2d 873, 875 (La.1978). The warrant requirement does not unreasonably impinge on legitimate law enforcement efforts. In all of the cases we have examined, none revealed circumstances so exigent that law enforcement personnel would not have had time to obtain a warrant. In the present case, the informant reported to the FBI in June, 1979 that the defendant was attempting to coerce false expense vouchers and campaign contributions from him. The state attorney general began an investigation of the matter on October 4, 1979 and obtained the informant's consent to participant electronic surveillance on October 15, 1979. The defendant's communications were intercepted on October 17, October 26 and November 23, 1979. If there was probable cause to believe these communications would constitute crimes or contain evidence thereof, a warrant could have been secured. Furthermore, the failure to obtain a warrant does not prevent the informant from testifying to what he heard and observed in his conversations with the defendant. See State v. Sarmiento, supra; State v. Glass, supra; State v. Brackman, supra; People v. Beavers, supra.
For the reasons assigned, the defendant's convictions and sentences are reversed, the contents of the electronic interceptions of the defendant's communications are suppressed, and the case is remanded for a new trial or other proceedings consistent with this opinion.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
WATSON, J., dissents and assigns reasons.
The Honorables Ned E. Doucet, Jr., of the Court of Appeal, Third Circuit, and Thomas J. Klie-bert and Robert J. Klees of the Fourth Circuit, participated in this decision as Associate Justices pro tempore, joined by Chief Justice Dix on and Associate Justices Calogero, Dennis and Watson.
. The question is res nova. We have not before considered what type of "communications" and "privacy" are protected by the express guarantees of Article 1, § 5 of the 1974 Louisiana Constitution or the nature of these safeguards. Previous cases involving electronic surveillance have turned on federal legal and constitutional issues. See State v. Hennigan, 404 So.2d 222 (La.1981); State v. Petta, 359 So.2d 143 (La.1978); State v. Glover, 343 So.2d 118 (La.1977) (on original hearing).
. Mr. Jenkins
"This is at top of page 15. It's my Section 23. It's very simple. It says, 'No law shall permit the interception or inspection of any private communication or message.' And this is aimed directly at eavesdropping, wiretapping and this sort of thing. I hope we never get to the point in this country where the government would look at our mail and listen to our phone conversations and things of this nature. It's just not necessary and this would be a good protection for our people in this regard I think.
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Mr. Jenkins
"Well, I don't know. If you look at some of the congressional investigations, they were Chuck Bursie, Adlai Stevenson, all these people being — the FBI was listening to them. I mean you know, all sorts of reasons. They like to do these things.
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Mr. Roy
"Well, first of all we're starting out with the proposition that you may not under any circumstances intercept or inspect his private communication or messages.
Mr. Weiss
"Except.
Mr. Roy
"No. There's no exception.
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Mr. Weiss
"What about someone plotting to overthrow the government then you would have no right to interfere with any of his messages.
Mr. Roy
"You see, the federal legislation will apply; this is going to stop our state from doing it. There's no way we can stop the attorney general of the United States. Don't they have the right, for national security reasons, to wire-tap?
Mr. Roy
"This is just state.
Mr. Vick
"Because the problem, gentlemen and ladies, has I think been made manifest by the news in the past, you know, weak insofar as surveillance and the . I'm not talking about electronic surveillance only, but, my goodness,' for a law and order administration, I mean you know, we've . we have seen a lot in the past week or so. And I think it commands us to look at our search and seizure article very carefully."
Documents of the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1973 Relative to the Administration of Criminal Justice, pp. 851, 852, 865.
. Mr. Shieber
"I think that there should be something in our state constitution protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures and I agree entirely with that. It's just that the outright ban on . in the last sentence is a threat, to, I think to our state and to the people of our state." Documents, supra, p. 905.
. Mr. Vick
"I just have a point of information. The way you have it now, it would allow under certain circumstances, and with a court order, wiretapping.
Mr. Guarisco
"Yes, it would.
Mr. Weiss
"Yes, communications...
Mr. Vick
"It is the politics involved in it, please don't interpret the tenor of the discussion to indicate that we approve of wiretapping, because we do not.
* sH
Mr. Guarisco
"Let me make this comment, that before we adopted 'communications' you could do it without a warrant. Now we are at least requiring a warrant to do it. So we have improved upon it." Documents, supra, p. 917.
. Documents, supra, p. 854.
. Article 1, § 5 of the Hawaii Constitution, as amended in 1968, protects against "invasions of privacy." The Hawaii Supreme Court concluded in State v. Roy, 54 Haw. 513, 510 P.2d 1066 (1973), that the state constitutional guarantee against invasions of privacy was added "out of a concern to protect against extensive governmental use of electronic surveillance techniques, and not out of any desire to curb the activities of secret government agents" or to suppress their testimony to their direct observations. 510 P.2d at 1069.
. A majority of the high court apparently accepted this holding without further explanation or analysis in United States v. Caceres, 440 U.S. 741, 99 S.Ct. 1465, 59 L.Ed.2d 733 (1979).
. It may be that, as in other search and seizure contexts, the requirement of a warrant may be dispensed with in exigent circumstances. We withhold passing on this issue until presented with a specific case.