Opinion ID: 715778
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admission of the Prison Recordings

Text: 8 Prior to trial, defendants moved to suppress recordings made by prison officials of Green's incriminating conversations on the prison telephone. Defendants contended these recordings were made in violation of Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510-22 (Title III), the Fourth Amendment, and the New York State Constitution. 9 At a hearing held before the start of the trial, Lieutenant Tasker--the afternoon Watch Commander at the Shawangunk prison--testified that all of Green's telephone calls were recorded on cassette from the start of his incarceration, and sent to law enforcement officials for use in an ongoing criminal investigation. Between March 1991 and July 1992, prison officials recorded approximately 1,000 separate conversations. The district court denied the motion to suppress, and numerous recordings of Green's prison conversations were received at trial.
10 Title III generally forbids the intentional interception of wire communications, such as telephone calls, when done without court-ordered authorization. 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510-2522. An unlawfully intercepted telephone call may not be offered as evidence in any trial. See 18 U.S.C. § 2515 (Whenever any wire or oral communication has been intercepted, no part of the contents of such communication ... may be received in evidence in any trial ... if the disclosure of that information would be in violation of this chapter.). 11 Title III allows for certain exceptions, however. Among them, the statute provides that [i]t shall not be unlawful ... for a person acting under color of law to intercept a wire, oral, or electronic communication, where ... one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to such interception. 18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(c). Consent may be either express or implied. United States v. Amen, 831 F.2d 373, 378 (2d Cir.1987), cert. denied, 485 U.S. 1021, 108 S.Ct. 1573, 99 L.Ed.2d 889 (1988). We have long recognized that, under certain circumstances, prisoners are deemed to have given consent for purposes of Title III to the interception of their calls on institutional telephones. See United States v. Willoughby, 860 F.2d 15, 19-20 (2d Cir.1988), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 1033, 109 S.Ct. 846, 102 L.Ed.2d 978 (1989); Amen, 831 F.2d at 378-79. 12 In Amen, we held that inmates impliedly consent to have their telephone conversations monitored where they have received notice of the surveillance and nevertheless use the prison telephones. 831 F.2d at 378-79. The notice in that case consisted of federal prison regulations clearly indicating that inmate telephone calls were subject to monitoring, an orientation lecture in which the monitoring and taping system was discussed, an informational handbook received by every inmate describing the system, and signs near the telephones notifying inmates of the monitoring. Id. Similarly, we held in Willoughby that a combination of notification at an orientation lecture and signs near the telephones explaining the policy was sufficient to justify the inference of consent by prisoners who used the phones. Willoughby, 860 F.2d at 20. 2 13 Although Green was given somewhat less notice than the inmates in Willoughby and Amen, he had sufficient warning of the monitoring program that his use of the telephones implied consent to the surveillance. A sign, written in English and Spanish, notifying inmates of the monitoring program was placed near each telephone in the prison. The warning read: NOTICE 14 ALL INMATE TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS ARE SUBJECT TO ELECTRONIC MONITORING BY DEPARTMENTAL PERSONNEL. 15 Approximately one week after arriving at the prison, Green was provided with an orientation handbook. This manual provided further notice of the telephone monitoring program. Green signed a form stating that he had received the handbook. Finally, New York State regulations then in force provided public notice that prisoner calls are subject to monitoring and may be tape recorded. N.Y.Comp.Codes R. & Regs. tit. 7, at § 723.5(a)(1) (1986) (policy for inmate self-dialed calls); see also id. at § 723.4 (parallel policy for staff-assisted calls). Furthermore, Green's statements on the recordings show that he was successfully informed by the prison's notification program. On many of the tapes, Green warned his interlocutors that the call might be monitored, and he sometimes used coded language in an apparent effort to mislead authorities who might be listening. 16 Green argues that the notice he received was insufficient. In particular, he claims that--unlike the federal prison inmates in Willoughby and Amen--he was told of New York's prison telephone monitoring program, but never expressly informed either that his use of the telephones would constitute consent to the surveillance, or that the monitoring could include recording of his conversations. 17 Green's argument misunderstands the reasoning of Amen and Willoughby. Nothing in those cases turned on whether the prisoner was specifically told that use of the telephones constituted consent. Rather, we inferred consent from circumstances indicating that the prisoner used the telephone with awareness of the possible surveillance. See Amen, 831 F.2d at 378. The legislative history [of Title III] shows that Congress intended the consent requirement to be construed broadly. Id.; see S.Rep. No. 1097, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in 1968 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2112, 2182. When an inmate has repeatedly received notice that calls placed on prison telephones are subject to surveillance, the evidence indicates that he is in fact aware of the monitoring program, and he nevertheless uses the telephones, by that use he impliedly consents to be monitored for purposes of Title III. See Amen, 831 F.2d at 379 (where defendants had notice of the interception system ... their use of the telephones ... constituted implied consent to the monitoring). 3 18 Green points out that neither the sign near the telephone nor the inmate handbook provided to him expressly stated that the monitoring program might include recording. That is of no importance. Recording is simply one way of preserving the information gained from the electronic monitoring. The prison need no more have provided notice that it would record the intercepted conversations than that it might maintain shorthand notes. Moreover, the relevant New York State regulations provided public notice that the state recorded inmate telephone conversations. N.Y.Comp.Codes R. & Regs. tit. 7, §§ 723.4, 723.5(a)(1) (1986). 19 We agree with the district court that the State of New York could and should make greater efforts to ensure that prison inmates have notice of its telephone surveillance policy. However, given Green's plain awareness that his conversations were subject to monitoring at the time he chose to use the prison telephones to conduct his illicit enterprise, we find that he impliedly consented to the surveillance.
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