Opinion ID: 276804
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admissibility of Recordings of Telephone Conversations Between the Various Conspirators.

Text: 15 The Government's case consisted in part of evidence secured from dictaphone recordings made by McGuire of his telephone conversations with the other conspirators. The contents of nine of these recording discs were introduced into evidence by the Government at the trial over defendant's objections that the discs were illegally acquired evidence. 16 The Government had in its possession at the time of the trial 87 of McGuire's recording discs. It is undisputed that 43 of these had been voluntarily turned over to the Government by McGuire. Exactly how the Government obtained possession of the remaining 44 discs, among which were eight of the nine discs introduced in evidence at the trial, is disputed. McGuire testified that he left these discs in the home of his sister, and that someone, probably his brother-in-law, William Wolfe, stole them and turned them over to the Government. 4 McGuire does not contend that the Government was a party to the alleged theft but only that it asked for the discs after the theft and that they were then handed over. The Government's version of this incident, based on the testimony of an SEC attorney, is that McGuire voluntarily surrendered all 87 discs, 9 on April 19, 1963, and 78 on April 22. McGuire claims that he handed over 43 discs on April 19 and none on April 22. It does appear that the recordings, no matter how obtained, were used both for investigative purposes and as evidence against the conspirators at trial. 17 The court below did not make a specific finding that the discs in question were stolen from McGuire or one that they were voluntarily turned over to the Government by him. It admitted the recordings into evidence because 'assuming that Wolfe stole the records and Wolfe has got the records and the government goes to Wolfe and says, 'Will you give us the stolen records,' I don't see anything violative of anybody's constitutional rights in that.' This ruling was proper under the rule of Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U.S. 465, 41 S.Ct. 574, 65 L.Ed. 1048 (1921). Nevertheless, appellants urge us to overturn the ruling in the face of the direct Supreme Court precedent. We do not find it necessary to reach this issue, 5 however, because it is clear that the court believed that the recordings were not stolen but were turned over voluntarily to the Government by McGuire. As we have stated, the trial court did not specifically make a finding on how the Government obtained possession of the recordings, but it did state generally as to its resolution of contradictory testimony: 18 The Court finds that the testimony of defendants McGuire and Blumner is in material respects not worthy of belief; to the extent that their testimony is in conflict with testimony offered by the government, their testimony is rejected and the testimony offered by the government is accepted. 249 F.Supp. at 44. 19 This statement applied to the conflict between, on the one hand, uncorroborated testimony of McGuire and, on the other, the uncorroborated testimony of an SEC attorney for the Government. The trial court credited the Government's version of the story that the discs were voluntarily turned over to the Government by McGuire. 20 Appellants also claim that the disc recordings were inadmissible because their receipt in evidence violated Section 605 of the Federal Communications Act, 47 U.S.C. 605. 6 They first urge that interception of a telephone conversation by one of the parties to the conversation is a violation of the Act even though this position has been rejected by the Supreme Court in Rathbun v. United States, 355 U.S. 107, 78 S.Ct. 161, 2 L.Ed.2d 134 (1957). Appellants would restrict the Rathbun holding to situations in which the interception is made over a regular telephone extension although it has been uniformly held to apply to consensual interceptions by various types of recording devices. E.g., United States v. Ballou, 348 F.2d 467 (2 Cir. 1965); Carnes v. United States, 295 F.2d 598 (5 Cir. 1961), cert. denied, 369 U.S. 861, 82 S.Ct. 949, 8 L.Ed.2d 19 (1962), decisions with which we agree. 21 Alternatively, appellants urge that use of these recordings violates Section 605 because that statute provides that not only the interception but the divulgence of an intercepted conversation requires the consent of one of the parties to the conversation. The relevant part of Section 605 reads: 22    no person not being authorized by the sender shall intercept any communication and divulge or publish the    contents    of such intercepted communication any person;    and no person having received such intercepted communication    shall divulge or publish the    contents    of any part thereof   . 23 Though it appears from this language that it is well arguable that the statute prohibits unauthorized divulgence of 'intercepted communications' see United States v. Zarkin, 250 F.Supp. 728, 735 (D.D.C.1966), it would not literally seem to prohibit unauthorized divulgence of a communication which was intercepted by or with the consent of one of the parties to the communication; this therefore would not be an 'intercepted communication' within the meaning of the statute. Moreover, as we have concluded that the court below found that the records were voluntarily turned over to the Government by McGuire, there was also no prohibited divulgence. Section 605 surely does not mean that a party to a telephone conversation may not disclose it, or a recording of it, to another or that the other may not use it if he does. 24 Appellants' final ground for exclusion of the disc recordings is that they were made in violation of Pennsylvania state law. It is claimed that the Pennsylvania statute, 15 Pa.Stat. 2443, 7 prohibits interception of a telephone conversation unless the interception is made with the consent of both parties to the conversation, citing Commonwealth v. Murray, 423 Pa. 37, 223 A.2d 102 (1966). But this case has been distinguished in a later Pennsylvania case, Commonwealth v. Goldberg, 208 Pa.Super. 513, 224 A.2d 91 (1966), on the ground that the Murray case did not involve the interception by a subscriber on his own line. The Goldberg court held that a subscriber had a 'paramount right' to make interceptions on his own telephone line. McGuire's interception in this case would seem to come within the Goldberg rather than the Murray rule, but we need not determine this point for, even if a violation of Pennsylvania law were involved, it would appear that this fact would not render the recordings inadmissible in a federal criminal trial. Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 468-469, 48 S.Ct. 564, 72 L.Ed. 944 (1928); Ferguson v. United States, 307 F.2d 787 (10 Cir. 1962), opinion withdrawn and new trial ordered on other grounds, 329 F.2d 923 (10 Cir. 1964); cf. United States v. Pardo-Bolland, 348 F.2d 316, 322-323 (2 Cir.), cert. denied, 382 U.S. 944, 86 S.Ct. 388, 15 L.Ed.2d 353 (1965). 25