Opinion ID: 2801017
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Mr. Drimal’s Criminal Case

Text: Drimal’s complaint arises out of an earlier criminal prosecution in the Southern District of New York that was ultimately tried before Judge Richard J. Sullivan. See United States v. Goffer, 756 F. Supp. 2d 588 (S.D.N.Y. 2011), aff’d, 721 F.3d 113 (2d Cir. 2013). The trial was preceded by a wide‐ranging federal securities fraud investigation that included a wiretap of her husband’s cellular Drimal also alleges that the defendants violated Section 52‐570d of 1 the Connecticut General Statutes. Like the district court, we focus on her Title III claim. 5 phone during which FBI agents intercepted and monitored his calls with Drimal. A court order authorizing the wiretap of Mr. Drimal’s cellular telephone for two thirty‐day periods in late 2007 and early 2008, id. at 590, specified that “[m]onitoring of conversations must immediately terminate when it is determined that the conversation is unrelated to communications subject to interception . . . . If a conversation is minimized, monitoring agents shall spot check to ensure that the conversation has not turned to criminal matters.” Id. The Assistant United States Attorney who supervised the wiretap also issued written instructions on the minimization requirement. He instructed agents to “listen to the beginning of each communication only so long as is necessary to determine the nature of the communication and, in any case, no longer than a few minutes unless the communication is ‘pertinent.’” Id. In addition, he advised that “[i]f, after several days or weeks of interception” it became apparent that conversations between Mr. Drimal and another party involved “invariably innocent, non‐crime related matters,” then 6 communications between those parties “should not be recorded, listened to, or even spot monitored.” Id. Finally, the agents were told to “discontinue monitoring if you discover that you are intercepting a personal communication solely between husband and wife” unless the conversations included a third party or addressed “ongoing as opposed to past violations of law.” Id. at 591. During the wiretap, agents monitored over one thousand of Mr. Drimal’s telephone conversations, including approximately 180 calls with Mrs. Drimal that were not pertinent to the investigation. Id. at 591, 595. In 2010, Mr. Drimal moved before Judge Sullivan to suppress the entire wiretap on the basis that the government had failed to properly minimize calls with his wife. Id. at 589, 591. At the hearing, several agents testified, including defendant Special Agent Lomonaco who admitted that he had listened to a privileged conversation which he had “no right” to hear and defendant Special Agent Ford who remembered “kicking [him]self” for listening to a privileged marital conversation. J.A. 49. The district court denied the motion to suppress all of the 7 wiretapped phone calls. Focusing on eighteen calls it identified as “potentially violative,” the district court stated that the monitoring of three of these calls had been “particularly egregious,” 756 F. Supp. 2d at 594, and that another five calls “raise[d] questions about the sufficiency of the agents’ minimization efforts,” id. at 595. The district court concluded, however, that “on the whole, the wiretap was professionally conducted and generally well‐executed,” id. at 597, even as it described certain failures to minimize private calls between husband and wife as “inexcusable and disturbing,” id. at 598. The district court observed that the “most egregious failures occurred in the early stages of the wiretap,” when agents might still be learning to identify Drimal’s voice, and that agents minimized the calls satisfactorily later in the wiretap. 2 Id. at 596.