Opinion ID: 175207
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Mahan Order

Text: Like Judges Cooper and Illston, Judge Mahan determined that [t]he government callously disregarded the affected players' constitutional rights. Judge Mahan also concluded that the government unreasonab[ly] ... refuse[d] to follow the procedures set forth in United States v. Tamura ... upon learning that drug-testing records for the ten athletes named in the original April 8 warrants executed at Quest and at [CDT] were intermingled with records for other athletes not named in those warrants. We can and do uphold these findings based on the preclusive effect of the Cooper and Illston Orders. However, because the matter is important, and to avoid any quibble about the proper scope of preclusion, we also dispose of the government's contrary arguments.
The government argues that it did comply with the procedures articulated in Tamura, but was not required to return any data it found showing steroid use by other baseball players because that evidence was in plain view once government agents examined the Tracey Directory. Officers may lawfully seize evidence of a crime that is in plain view, the government argues, and thus it had no obligation under Tamura to return that property. The warrant even contemplated this eventuality, says the government, when it excluded from the obligation to return property any that was otherwise legally seized. Putting aside the fact that Judges Cooper and Illston, whose courts issued the warrants and whose orders are now final, rejected this argument, it is at any rate too clever by half. The point of the Tamura procedures is to maintain the privacy of materials that are intermingled with seizable materials, and to avoid turning a limited search for particular information into a general search of office file systems and computer databases. If the government can't be sure whether data may be concealed, compressed, erased or booby-trapped without carefully examining the contents of every fileand we have no cavil with this general propositionthen everything the government chooses to seize will, under this theory, automatically come into plain view. Since the government agents ultimately decide how much to actually take, this will create a powerful incentive for them to seize more rather than less: Why stop at the list of all baseball players when you can seize the entire Tracey Directory? Why just that directory and not the entire hard drive? Why just this computer and not the one in the next room and the next room after that? Can't find the computer? Seize the Zip disks under the bed in the room where the computer once might have been. See United States v. Hill, 322 F.Supp.2d 1081 (C.D.Cal.2004). Let's take everything back to the lab, have a good look around and see what we might stumble upon. This would make a mockery of Tamura and render the carefully crafted safeguards in the Central District warrant a nullity. All three judges below rejected this construction, and with good reason. One phrase in the warrant cannot be read as eviscerating the other parts, which would be the result if the otherwise legally seized language were read to permit the government to keep anything one of its agents happened to see while performing a forensic analysis of a hard drive. The phrase is more plausibly construed as referring to any evidence that the government is entitled to retain entirely independent of this seizure. The government had no such independent basis to retain the test results of other than the ten players specified in the warrant.
The government also failed to comply with another important procedure specified in the warrant, namely that computer personnel conduct the initial review of the seized data and segregate materials not the object of the warrant for return to their owner. As noted, Judge Cooper found that these procedures were completely ignored; rather, the case agent immediately rooted out information pertaining to all professional baseball players and used it to generate additional warrants and subpoenas to advance the investigation. Judge Illston found the same. The record reflects no forensic lab analysis, no defusing of booby traps, no decryption, no cracking of passwords and certainly no effort by a dedicated computer specialist to separate data for which the government had probable cause from everything else in the Tracey Directory. Instead, as soon as the Tracey Directory was extracted from the CDT computers, the case agent assumed control over it, examined the list of all professional baseball players and extracted the names of those who had tested positive for steroids. See Comprehensive Drug Testing, 513 F.3d at 1134-35 (Thomas, J., dissenting). Indeed, the government admitted at the hearing before Judge Mahan that the idea behind taking [the copy of the Tracey Directory] was to take it and later on briefly peruse it to see if there was anything above and beyond that which was authorized for seizure in the initial warrant. The government agents obviously were counting on the search to bring constitutionally protected data into the plain view of the investigating agents. But it was wholly unnecessary for the case agent to view any data for which the government did not already have probable cause because there was an agent at the scene who was specially trained in computer forensics. This agent did make an initial determination that the CDT computer containing the Tracey Directory could not be searched and segregated on-site, and that it would be safe to copy the Tracey Directory, rather than seizing the entire hard drive or computer. After that copy was made, however, it was turned over to the case agent, and the specialist did nothing further to segregate the target data from that which was swept up simply because it was nearby or commingled. The sequence of events supports the suspicion that representations in the warrant about the necessity for broad authority to seize materials were designed to give the government access to the full list of professional baseball players and their confidential drug testing records. The government argues that it didn't violate the warrant protocol because the warrant didn't specify that only computer personnel could examine the seized files, and the case agent was therefore entitled to view them alongside the computer specialist. This, once again, is sophistry. It would make no sense to represent that computer personnel would be used to segregate data if investigatory personnel were also going to access all the data seized. What would be the point? The government doesn't need instruction from the court as to what kind of employees to use to serve its own purposes; the representation in the warrant that computer personnel would be used to examine and segregate the data was obviously designed to reassure the issuing magistrate that the government wouldn't sweep up large quantities of data in the hope of dredging up information it could not otherwise lawfully seize. Judge Cooper found that the government utterly failed to follow the warrant's protocol. Judge Illston also found that the government's seizure, in callous disregard of the Fourth Amendment, reached information clearly not covered by a warrant. These findings are binding on the government, but simple common sense leads to precisely the same conclusion: This was an obvious case of deliberate overreaching by the government in an effort to seize data as to which it lacked probable cause.
Judge Mahan cured this overreaching by ordering the government to return the illegally seized data. We have long held that Rule 41(g) empowers district courts to do just that. Ramsden v. United States, 2 F.3d 322 (9th Cir.1993). Though styled as a motion under a Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure, when the motion is made by a party against whom no criminal charges have been brought, such a motion is in fact a petition that the district court invoke its civil equitable jurisdiction. Id. at 324. We agree with the panel that the district court in this case did not abuse its discretion in choosing to exercise that jurisdiction. Comprehensive Drug Testing, 513 F.3d at 1104. The government argues that Rule 41(g) is inapplicable because it is not designed to be used as a suppression motion. But CDT and the Players Association are not seeking to have evidence suppressed, as they are not criminal defendants. Rather, by forcing the government to return property that it had not properly seized, CDT is preserving the integrity of its business and the Players Association is protecting the privacy and economic well-being of its members, which could easily be impaired if the government were to release the test results swept up in the dragnet. Judge Ikuta's dissent overlooks the crucial distinction between a motion to suppress and a motion for return of property: The former is limited by the exclusionary rule, the latter is not. In United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 348 n. 6, 94 S.Ct. 613, 38 L.Ed.2d 561 (1974), and United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727, 728, 735-36 & n. 7, 100 S.Ct. 2439, 65 L.Ed.2d 468 (1980), the Court addressed the suppression, not the return, of seized materialsa detail perhaps obscured because the version of Rule 41 then in existence addressed motions to suppress and motions to return in the same subsection. Lest there be any doubt that these are only suppression cases, note that Calandra used the availability of a motion to return, among other remedies, as a reason the exclusionary rule need not apply to grand jury proceedings. See 414 U.S. at 354 n. 10, 94 S.Ct. 613. Payner, which never mentions Rule 41 or a motion to return, simply held that the supervisory power does not authorize a federal court to suppress otherwise admissible evidence on the ground that it was seized unlawfully from a third party not before the court. 447 U.S. at 735, 100 S.Ct. 2439. This rule has no relevance here because no motion to suppress, whether based on Rule 41(h) or the supervisory power, is before us. That Rule 41(g) is broader than the exclusionary rule can no longer be in doubt in light of the 1989 amendments which explicitly authorize a motion to return property on behalf of any person aggrieved by an unlawful search and seizure of property or by the deprivation of property.  Fed.R.Crim.P. 41(g) (emphasis added). This language was designed to expand the rule's coverage to include property lawfully seized. See id. advisory committee notes. It goes without saying that lawfully seized evidence may not be suppressed. The return of seized property under Rule 41(g) and the exclusionary rule serve fundamentally different purposes. Suppression helps ensure that law enforcement personnel adhere to constitutional norms by denying them, and the government they serve, the benefit of property that is unlawfully seized. Rule 41(g) is concerned with those whose property or privacy interests are impaired by the seizure. Suppression applies only to criminal defendants whereas the class of those aggrieved can be, as this case illustrates, much broader. Most importantly, judicially-imposed restrictions on the scope of the exclusionary ruleitself a judicially-created remedyare not applicable to orders for return of property which derive their authority from the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and their enabling legislation. This is not, in any event, a question properly presented in the case now before us: What uses the government may make of the Quest evidence during a criminal proceeding must be decided in the context of such a proceeding, when and if criminal charges are brought against any of the players. Under Ramsden, the district court is required to balance four discretionary factors to determine whether to allow the government to retain the property, order it returned or (as happened in Ramsden ) craft a compromise solution that seeks to accommodate the interests of all parties. The Players Association is (1) plainly aggrieved by the deprivation, Fed.R.Crim.P. Rule 41(g), and (2) likely to suffer irreparable injury if it's not returned. And as the three judge panel recognized, the government has conceded (3) the lack of an adequate remedy at law. Comprehensive Drug Testing, 513 F.3d at 1103. Judge Ikuta is thus mistaken when she suggests that the Players Association is not entitled to bring the 41(g) motion because it lacks a property interest in the urine samples and other bodily fluids. Ikuta dissent at 1194 n.2. The rule nowhere speaks of an ownership interest; rather, by its plain terms, it authorizes anyone aggrieved by a deprivation of property to seek its return. Here, the Players Association is aggrieved by the seizure as the removal of the specimens and documents breaches its negotiated agreement for confidentiality, violates its members' privacy interests and interferes with the operation of its business. Cf. NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449, 458-60, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488 (1958). In any event, we are again bound by the preclusive effect of the Illston and Cooper orders. The only Ramsden factor fairly in dispute is (4) whether the government showed a callous disregard for the rights of third parties. Judge Mahan concluded that it didas did every other district judge who examined the question. There is ample evidence to support this determination, even if the government were not bound by that same finding in the Cooper and Illston Orders. As a factual finding, we review such a determination only for clear error. SEC v. Coldicutt, 258 F.3d 939, 941 (9th Cir.2001). We find none here. Contrary to our dissenting colleagues' view of the matter, Ikuta dissent at 1194-96, Rule 41(g) does indeed contemplate that district judges may order the return of the originals, as well as any copies, of seized evidence: In some circumstances, however, equitable considerations might justify an order requiring the government to return or destroy all copies of records that it has seized. Fed.R.Crim.P. 41 advisory committee notes (1989 amendments). What circumstances merit this remedy is left to the discretion of the district court in the first instance, and our review of this issue is limited by the Illston Order's preclusive effect. Apart from preclusion, however, we cannot see how Judge Mahan abused his discretion by concluding that equitable considerations required sequestration and the return of copies. The risk to the players associated with disclosure, and with that the ability of the Players Association to obtain voluntary compliance with drug testing from its members in the future, is very high. Indeed, some players appear to have already suffered this very harm as a result of the government's seizure. See, e.g., Michael S. Schmidt, Ortiz and Ramirez Said to Be on 2003 Doping List, N.Y. Times, July 31, 2009, at A1; Michael S. Schmidt, Sosa Is Said to Have Tested Positive in 2003, N.Y. Times, June 17, 2009, at B11; Michael S. Schmidt, Rodriguez Said to Test Positive in 2003, N.Y. Times, February 8, 2009, at A1. Judge Mahan certainly did not abuse his broad discretion in balancing these equities. We affirm Judge Mahan on an alternative ground as well: When, as here, the government comes into possession of evidence by circumventing or willfully disregarding limitations in a search warrant, it must not be allowed to benefit from its own wrongdoing by retaining the wrongfully obtained evidence or any fruits thereof. When the district court determines that the government has obtained the evidence through intentional wrongdoingrather than through a technical or good faith mistakeit should order return of the property without the need for balancing that is applicable in the more ordinary case.