Opinion ID: 2295861
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: admission of emergency wiretap evidence

Text: The United States Attorney, pursuant to D.C. Code 1973, § 23-548(a), [25] authorized emergency wiretaps on telephones located at B'nai B'rith headquarters, the District Building, and the Islamic Center. The trial court denied appellants' motions to suppress, holding that they lacked standing to challenge the electronic surveillance. In the alternative, the court held that the government had fully complied with § 23-548(a), and that the statute was constitutional. Appellants now challenge the admission into evidence of taped telephone conversations at the first two locations during the takeover. [26] A. Even before Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978), it was clear that trespassers did not have standing under the Fourth Amendment to contest a search of the premises they wrongfully occupied. Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 267, 80 S.Ct. 725, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960); Brooks v. United States, D.C.App., 263 A.2d 45 (1970); United States v. Gregg, 403 F.2d 222 (6th Cir. 1968), aff'd, 394 U.S. 489, 89 S.Ct. 1134, 22 L.Ed.2d 442, rehearing denied, 395 U.S. 917, 89 S.Ct. 1738, 23 L.Ed.2d 232 (1969). In Rakas, supra, while confirming that `wrongful' presence at the scene of a search would not enable a defendant to object to the legality of the search, id. 99 S.Ct. at 429 n. 9, the Supreme Court merged the question of standing into the substantive question whether the challenged search or seizure violated the Fourth Amendment rights of a criminal defendant who seeks to exclude the evidence obtained. Id. at 429. [27] The inquiry then becomes, more specifically, whether the disputed search and seizure has infringed an interest of the defendant which the Fourth Amendment was designed to protect. Id. The scope of that interest is determined by whether one can be said to have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the invaded place. Rakas, supra at 430; see Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 353, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). This means more than a subjective expectation of not being discovered, Rakas, supra 99 S.Ct. at 430 n. 12; it must be `one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.' Id. The court thereupon held, 5 to 4, that automobile passengers, in contrast with the owner, did not have a constitutionally protected interest  a legitimate expectation of privacy  against a search of the glove compartment and under the front seat. [28] All the more so, the appellants here  who forcibly took over B'nai B'rith headquarters, the District Building, and the Islamic Center without permission and held hostages for several days  cannot have had a legitimate expectation of privacy, protected by the Fourth Amendment, against seizure of their telephone conversations by electronic surveillance on the premises. Nor, in any event, did appellants have any such subjective expectation. See Smith v. Maryland, ___ U.S. ___, 99 S.Ct. 2577, 61 L.Ed.2d 220 (1979). The conversations took place in the presence of one of the hostages, Mrs. Betty Neal, who placed calls and answered the telephone for Khaalis. Khaalis himself testified before the jury that he was aware the telephones were tapped. Khaalis intended to  and did  make his demands public, in part through these telephone conversations, which were calculated to attract the attention of the media, the police, and the public. Cf. Katz v. United States, supra, 389 U.S. at 351, 88 S.Ct. at 511 ([w]hat a person knowingly exposes to the public . . . is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection). Appellants have no privacy interest and thus no constitutional claim to assert. B. The question remains whether admission of the taped conversations into evidence violated appellants' statutory rights under D.C. Code 1973, § 23-548(a). See note 25 supra. The threshold question, once again, is standing. D.C. Code 1973, § 23-551(b) provides that [a]ny aggrieved person. . . may move to suppress the contents of any intercepted wire or oral communication. . . . D.C. Code 1973, § 23-541(9) defines an aggrieved person as a person who was a party to any intercepted wire or oral communication or a person against whom the interception was directed. In Alderman v. United States, 394 U.S. 165, 175-76 & n. 9, 89 S.Ct. 961, 22 L.Ed.2d 176 (1969), the Supreme Court interpreted the virtually identical federal provision defining aggrieved person, 18 U.S.C. § 2518(10) (1976), to conform to the standing rules governing constitutional claims. See S.Rep.No.1097, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. 91, 106 (1968), reprinted in [1968] U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, pp. 2112, 2163, 2179-80. Later, in Rakas, supra, the Court reaffirmed its holding in Alderman, supra, which interpreted the Fourth Amendment standing rules and § 2518(10) interchangeably: persons who were not parties . . or who did not own the premises on which such conversations took place did not have standing to contest the legality of the surveillance, regardless of whether or not they were `targets' of the surveillance. Rakas, supra, 99 S.Ct. at 427 (emphasis added). [29] See also United States v. King, 478 F.2d 494, 506, cert. denied, 414 U.S. 846, 94 S.Ct. 111, 38 L.Ed.2d 94 (1973). We perceive no basis for interpreting the District of Columbia statute differently from its federal analogue. Thus, with the possible exception of Khaalis and Nuh  the only appellants who were parties to an intercepted conversation  it is clear that appellants lack standing to make a statutory challenge. The next question, therefore, is whether Khaalis and Nuh have standing by virtue of the language of D.C. Code 1973, § 23-541(9), defining an aggrieved person, in the first instance, as one who was a party to any intercepted wire or oral communication. We hold that they do not. In enacting Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510, et seq.  the federal analogue of the District of Columbia wiretapping statute  Congress intended to codify the extent to which wiretapping and electronic surveillance are permitted by the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Baldassari, 338 F.Supp. 904, 905 (M.D.Pa.1972); see Kinoy v. Mitchell, 331 F.Supp. 379, 382 (S.D.N.Y.1971). The legislative history states specifically that the procedure was intended to conform to the constitutional standards enunciated in Berger v. New York, 388 U.S. 41, 87 S.Ct. 1873, 18 L.Ed.2d 1040 (1967) and Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). [ United States v. Baldassari, supra at 905.] Thus, Congress did not intend to confer a greater right to suppress evidence derived from wiretapping or electronic surveillance than the Constitution guarantees. See Alderman, supra . Although the Supreme Court in Alderman, supra, 394 U.S. at 176, 89 S.Ct. 961, expressly confirmed a person's standing to challenge electronic eavesdropping of conversations to which he or she was a party, or which took place on his or her own premises, that decision did not involve trespassers. The existent standing rules, id. at 175-76 & n. 9, 89 S.Ct. 961, which underlay  and thus limited  the definition of aggrieved person were, at the time, derived from Jones, supra, which did not extend standing to persons who wrongfully occupied the premises searched. Accordingly, if Congress intended to codify Fourth Amendment rights in Title III, the premise underlying the standing of a party to any intercepted wire or oral communication is that the party is legitimately on the premises. In short, if Title III were at issue, Khaalis and Nuh, as trespassers, would have no greater standing than the other appellants. Because the District of Columbia statute is virtually identical to Title III and has no legislative history that would warrant a different interpretation, we hold that Khaalis and Nuh are not aggrieved persons under D.C. Code 1973, § 23-551(b). [30] Accordingly, the trial court did not err in denying appellants' motion to suppress evidence of the taped telephone conversations. [31]