Opinion ID: 715778
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Federal and State Constitutional Rights

Text: 20 Rodgers claims that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated when prison officials recorded his conversations with Green. We have squarely rejected this argument. As we held in Willoughby, the interception of calls from inmates to noninmates does not violate the privacy rights of the noninmates. Willoughby, 860 F.2d at 22. Only a single participant in a conversation need agree to the monitoring in order to satisfy the requirements of the Fourth Amendment, and Green implicitly gave his consent here. See United States v. White, 401 U.S. 745, 91 S.Ct. 1122, 28 L.Ed.2d 453 (1971) (Fourth Amendment does not prohibit use of recorded conversations where one party is complicit in the monitoring); United States v. Barone, 913 F.2d 46, 49 (2d Cir.1990); United States v. Coven, 662 F.2d 162, 173 & n. 8 (2d Cir.1981), cert. denied, 456 U.S. 916, 102 S.Ct. 1771, 72 L.Ed.2d 176 (1982). 21 Rodgers also argues that the telephone recordings made by state prison officials, even if not in violation of the Fourth Amendment, constituted an abrogation of his rights under parallel provisions of the New York State Constitution, and that this evidence should therefore have been suppressed. See N.Y. Const. art. I, § 12 (guaranteeing [t]he right of the people to be secure against unreasonable interception of telephone ... communications). We have no need to determine whether Rodgers has properly construed the State Constitution. Even if he is correct in his interpretation, and we are aware of no authority to this effect, the district court's decision to admit the recordings was nevertheless proper. 22 We confronted a similar question in United States v. Pforzheimer, 826 F.2d 200 (2d Cir.1987). In that case, a defendant argued that the fruits of a search conducted by state officials pursuant to a state court warrant should be suppressed in a federal prosecution where a more stringent state constitutional rule would have required suppression, even though the evidence was admissible as a matter of federal constitutional law. Without passing on the merits of the state constitutional question, we ruled the evidence admissible, holding that where evidence seized by state officers is subsequently offered in a federal criminal proceeding, the seizure need not satisfy state law requirements. Id. at 204; see United States v. Smith, 9 F.3d 1007, 1014 (2d Cir.1993) (touchstone of a federal court's review of a state search warrant secured by local police officials and employed in a federal prosecution is the Fourth Amendment and its requirements, and no more); United States v. Rowell, 903 F.2d 899, 901-02 (2d Cir.1990). Cf. United States v. Brown, 52 F.3d 415, 426-27 (2d Cir.1995) (Leval, J., concurring), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 116 S.Ct. 754, 133 L.Ed.2d 701 (1996). 23 This case is analogous. Rodgers argues that evidence procured by a state official should be excluded from a federal prosecution if the state official failed to conform to state constitutional standards. There is no such requirement for admissibility of evidence in a federal criminal prosecution. See United States v. Butera, 677 F.2d 1376, 1380 (11th Cir.1982) (tape recordings properly made by state officials pursuant to consent provisions of Title III, 18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(c), admissible in federal prosecution even where state constitutional law would have required warrant), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1108, 103 S.Ct. 735, 74 L.Ed.2d 958 (1983); United States v. Nelligan, 573 F.2d 251, 253 (5th Cir.1978) (tape recording of conversation made with consent of one party in compliance with Title III admissible in federal prosecution despite state statute requiring consent of all parties to conversation). 4