Opinion ID: 1973267
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Suppression/Answering Machine Tape

Text: The municipal court held that the answering machine tape must be suppressed because the Commonwealth failed to establish that the persons leaving messages on appellant's answering machine consented to the recording so as to bring the tape within the mutual consent exception to the Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act, 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5704(4). The common pleas court agreed. We do not. Heretofore, evidence derived from answering machine tapes have been admitted into evidence without objection on the above grounds in a variety of cases. See Matter of Sylvester, 521 Pa. 300, 307, 555 A.2d 1202, 1205 (1989); Commonwealth v. Hart, 384 Pa.Super. 573, 578-79, 559 A.2d 584, 585 (1989); Commonwealth v. Kozinn, 381 Pa. Super. 64, 552 A.2d 1096 (1989); Commonwealth v. Rozanski, 289 Pa.Super. 531, 537, 433 A.2d 1382, 1385 (1981). The municipal court, nonetheless, concluded that Commonwealth v. Jung, 366 Pa.Super. 438, 531 A.2d 498 (1987), compelled suppression. We do not find Jung controlling. First, the portion of Jung purporting to address the merits of the Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act issues, was (as our learned colleague Judge Johnson observed at the time) entirely dicta, without precedential authority. In Jung, once this Court found that the trial court had acquitted the defendant, all further consideration of the case was superfluous dicta. Commonwealth v. Jung, supra, 531 A.2d at 501-02; id., 531 A.2d at 504 (Johnson, J., concurring). Second, Jung is materially distinguishable. In Jung, the defendant surreptitiously taped a conversation between himself and another participant in a live phone conversation. In the instant case, appellant set up a phone answering machine and callers left messages on the answering machine tape. While in Jung there was every reason to believe the other party to the conversation might not have known the conversation was being taped, we take judicial notice of the irrefutable fact that any reasonably intelligent person leaving a message on an ordinary answering machine would have to be aware of, and consented by conduct to, the recording of the message on the answering machine tape. Absent some special showing of unique attributes of a particular answering machine cloaking its identity as an answering machine (not suggested here), we cannot imagine how one could not know and intend that the message placed upon the answering machine tape be taped, and by the very act of leaving a message, expressly consent by conduct to the taping of that message. Thus, we find, as a matter of law, that ordinary answering machine tapes fall within the mutual consent provision of the Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act, 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5704(4), are not unlawful interceptions, and are not subject to the statutory exclusionary rule, 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5721. Moreover, we do not find that appellant was a person aggrieved as that term is defined in 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5702 and incorporated in 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5721. Specifically, we find that the legislature could not have intended those provisions to be construed to permit a defendant to seek exclusion of tapes unlawfully made by the defendant which are offered in evidence against the defendant because of inculpatory information contained on the tapes. Assuming, arguendo, that there was not mutual consent, suppression would be governed by the following statutory provision: § 5721. Suppression of contents of intercepted communication or derivative evidence (a) Motion to suppress.  Any aggrieved person in any trial, hearing, or other adversary proceeding in or before any court or other authority of this Commonwealth may move to suppress the contents of any intercepted wire, electronic or oral communication, or evidence derived therefrom, on any of the following grounds: (1) The communication was unlawfully intercepted. 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5721. (Emphasis added). Aggrieved person is defined as follows: § 5702. Definitions As used in this chapter, the following words and phrases shall have the meanings given to them in this section unless the context clearly indicates otherwise:  Aggrieved person. A person who was a party to any intercepted wire, electronic or oral communication or a person against whom the interception was directed. 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5702. (Emphasis added). Granted, appellant was unquestionably a party to the interception, and thus plausibly falls within the letter of the definition of an aggrieved person. How, though, could appellant be said to be aggrieved in any real sense of that term? The focus and purpose of the Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act is the protection of privacy. With that focus in mind, any construction of the term aggrieved person to include the individual responsible for the invasion of privacy involved in an unlawful interception must be rejected as absurd and unreasonable (1 Pa.C.S.A. § 1922(1)), and as being contrary to what the context clearly indicates otherwise. 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5702. The absurdity of such a construction is manifest. If the person who made an unlawful interception could have the interception and all its derivative fruits suppressed, then criminal and civil remedies for violation of the act would be rendered practically impossible to execute. See 18 Pa.C. S.A. § 5703, 5728, 5747. If the interception and its fruits are to be suppressed upon motion of the person who caused the unlawful interception to be made, how is the fact of an unlawful interception to be proved? Are not the tapes of such interceptions or derivative evidence of those tapes commonly the primary evidence of such violations? The legislature could not have intended that such evidence be suppressable at the defendant's request. The instant case is but a short step removed from the above concededly extreme, reductio ad adsurdum, example. Here, the party setting up the allegedly unlawful interception claims aggrievement from his own illegal act. To do so, however, appellant must shift our focus from the privacy interests which the Wiretapping and Surveillance Control Act is designed to protect, to the tactical prejudice he anticipates from the inculpatory information contained on the answering machine tapes. Therein lies the fallacy. Aggrievement under the Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act refers implicitly and unquestionably to the violation of privacy which an unlawful interception involves. In authorizing the suppression of unlawful interceptions and their fruits, the act is intended to mitigate the invasion of privacy involved in the unlawful interception by preventing its use against the person whose privacy was violated in any administrative, civil, or criminal proceeding. Though the price of privacy thus purchased is often steep, [1] it is readily apparent that our legislature weighed society's interests in the personal privacy of individuals against society's interests in having all relevant evidence thus obtained presented in administrative, civil, and criminal proceedings, and found that the balance favored the personal privacy interests of individuals. The wisdom of the balance struck regarding the statutory exclusionary rule is, of course, a question for legislators and voters, rather than judges. No such opposing interests are presented, however, when it is the person who made the unlawful interception who seeks the statutory suppression. Rather, society's interests in the personal privacy of individuals and society's interests in having all relevant evidence admitted in administrative, civil, and criminal proceedings correspond in favor of denying suppression. Succinctly, if the perpetrator of an unlawful interception is permitted to seek suppression, the Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act would provide an inducement, rather than a deterrent, to such unlawful interceptions. On the other hand, if statutory suppression is denied to a person making or causing an unlawful interception to be made, the deterrent to such misconduct would be enhanced, at the same time the interest of justice were enhanced by the availability of the inculpatory evidence derived from the unlawful interception. Thus, we conclude that a person responsible for, or a party to, the making of an unlawful interception may not be deemed to be an aggrieved person entitled to seek statutory suppression under the Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act, as no privacy interest of that person was aggrieved by the unlawful interception. Hence, for this reason too, suppression was improper in this case.