Opinion ID: 536025
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: electronic surveillance evidence

Text: 27 Zannino attacks the district court's denial of his motion to suppress the voluminous evidence obtained through electronic surveillance. He claims that suppression is warranted because the government, in its affidavit supporting the application for judicial permission to carry out the bugging of the premises, failed to reveal previous wiretap applications. 28 It is true that, when the government asked the federal district court for authorization to proceed in January 1981, the moving papers did not disclose the existence of five earlier applications by Massachusetts police (circa 1978) seeking to make appellant the target of electronic eavesdropping. By the same token, the record is barren of any direct evidence that the federal investigators knew of these earlier state efforts. Appellant contends, however, that the circumstances leading to his arrest in 1978 were so well known in the Boston area that, in the present investigation, federal authorities must have known that he had been the subject of court-ordered electronic surveillance some years previously. Even if the individuals responsible for conducting the current investigation did not have actual knowledge of the prior interceptions, Zannino argues, other members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Strike Force unquestionably had such knowledge. The failure to make reasonable inquiry of knowledgeable persons in those agencies, he concludes, was so reckless an omission as to invalidate the surveillance which led to the instant indictment. 29 We start with the applicable statute, which requires that each application for electronic surveillance include: 30 a full and complete statement of the facts concerning all previous applications known to the individuals authorizing and making the application, made to any judge for authorization [of electronic surveillance] involving any of the same persons, facilities or places specified in the application, and the action taken by the judge on each such application. 31 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2518(1)(e). The statute's plain language is, we think, the best guide to its meaning. Giving the language its ordinary purport, the only potentially disqualifying knowledge is that of the individuals authorizing and making the application. Id. That is how the statute reads and how it has generally been interpreted. See, e.g., United States v. O'Neill, 497 F.2d 1020, 1025-26 (6th Cir.1974) (complete compliance with Sec. 2518(1)(e) achieved where application disclosed all previous applications known to individual actors, notwithstanding that other applications existed); United States v. Harvey, 560 F.Supp. 1040, 1073 (S.D.Fla.1982) (similar), aff'd, 789 F.2d 1492 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 854, 107 S.Ct. 190, 93 L.Ed.2d 123 (1986). 32 In this case, the district court held a pretrial suppression hearing. Collins, the Strike Force attorney who applied for the surveillance warrants, and the affiants in connection therewith (FBI agents Quinn and Rafferty), all testified that, at the time, they were unaware of the local authorities' 1978 applications. The district court credited this testimony. We review this finding only for clear error--and can discern none. That, it would seem, should end the matter: an investigator cannot be expected to disclose something he or she does not know. Section 2518(1)(e) requires government agents to be forthcoming, not omniscient. 33 Undeterred, appellant urges that, even if the agents were uninformed, they were chargeable with constructive knowledge. The short answer to this plaint is that the statute requires actual, not constructive, knowledge. The slightly longer answer is that, even if the government may not recklessly remain ignorant of previous applications, United States v. Sullivan, 586 F.Supp. 1314, 1318 (D.Mass.1984)--an idea we leave for another day--there was no evidence of willful blindness here. At best, appellant showed the possibility of a negligent, but unintentional, violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2518(1)(e): the agents testified that they conducted a thorough inspection of FBI files to determine whether there were any prior applications for electronic surveillance directed at Zannino or other proposed targets, and came up empty. If they were careless, and erred, it profits appellant naught. Mere negligence would not warrant suppression of the evidence. See United States v. Abramson, 553 F.2d 1164, 1169-70 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 433 U.S. 911, 97 S.Ct. 2979, 53 L.Ed.2d 1095 (1977); see also United States v. Giordano, 416 U.S. 505, 527, 94 S.Ct. 1820, 1832, 40 L.Ed.2d 341 (1974) (indicating that suppression of evidence would be justified only if electronic surveillance violation contravened those statutory requirements that directly and substantially implement the congressional intention to limit the use of intercept procedures to those situations clearly calling for the employment of this extraordinary investigative device); cf. United States v. Mora, 821 F.2d 860, 870 (1st Cir.1987) (evidence obtained through wiretaps was admissible at defendants' trial even though tapes were not judicially sealed in strict accordance with 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2518(8)(a)). 34 Because the record amply supports the district court's finding that the responsible government officials were unaware, after a good faith inquiry, of the earlier state applications for electronic surveillance, the disclosure requirements of section 2518(1)(e) were not flouted. The motion to suppress was properly rebuffed. 7