Opinion ID: 548943
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Audio Enhancement

Text: 24 Reading Rios and our prior decision together, appellants renew their argument that all of the tapes sent to Ginsberg for audio enhancement are subject to suppression. They believe that Rios significantly strengthens their position, as Rios characterized the sealing requirement in 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2518(8)(a) as a means of ensuring that ... the Government has no opportunity to tamper with, alter, or edit the conversations that have been recorded. 110 S.Ct. at 1849. In view of our decision that challenges to the government's physical treatment of tapes after their unsealing should be analyzed in the same manner as sealing delays, appellants conclude that the government's relinquishment of custody of the tapes requires their suppression solely because it heightened the risk of tampering. They argue that, after Rios, our ultimate conclusion that the tapes could not be suppressed because they were proven to be authentic no longer is viable. We disagree. 25 Whereas the result in Rios was compelled by the plain words of the sealing provision, id. at 1850, here we are concerned with a statutory interstice, as Congress did not expressly define the government's responsibilities in handling tapes after their unsealing. 899 F.2d at 240. We adhere to our reasoning that in view of the elaborate scheme it devised to ensure the authenticity of wiretap evidence, Congress could not have been indifferent to the treatment of tapes after their unsealing. Id. But when we decided that the enhancement problem could be analyzed in the same manner as a sealing delay, we did so under the assumption that we were extending the Falcone standard then followed in this circuit to the situation before us. 26 As Judge Rosenn pointed out in his dissent in Falcone, the majority departed from the plain language of the statute and, in effect, adopted a harmless error analysis of sealing delays. 505 F.2d at 487 (Rosenn, J., dissenting). 8 In fact, it could be argued that Falcone did no more than underscore the need for authentication of wiretap evidence in light of Congress's heightened concern about its physical integrity. Considering what Falcone actually held, namely that a sealing delay does not justify the suppression of wiretap evidence proven to be authentic, our extension of Falcone to situations arising after the judicial unsealing of the tapes was unremarkable. We held only that the legislative silence as to the admissibility of surveillance tapes after their unsealing does not imply that adulterated tapes may contribute to a criminal conviction and, therefore, the government must prove the tapes' integrity when confronted with a challenge to its physical treatment of them. 27 Notwithstanding our prior decision, we would not be justified in reading section 2518(8)(a) as a mandate that any post-unsealing use of wiretap evidence capable of compromising its physical integrity must be satisfactorily explained before authenticated evidence can be admitted. 9 As construed in Rios, Congress created in section 2518(8)(a) an extraordinary safeguard against adulteration during the period between interception and trial. However, its failure to extend that remedy to post-unsealing situations was not necessarily an oversight. Possibly, Congress determined that the myriad uses which prosecutors legitimately could have for unsealed wiretap evidence would render it impractical to require judicial scrutiny of the prosecutor's motivation in each such instance. Furthermore, even in the case of judicially sealed tapes, violation of the statutory mandate that custody of the recordings shall be wherever the judge orders, does not trigger the suppression remedy. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2518(8)(a). Considering this circumstance, we would be hard pressed to find that Congress required anything more than proof of authenticity where the custody requirements of unsealing orders technically have been violated. 10 28 Moreover, even if we were to construe section 2518(8)(a) as appellants suggest, the government's relinquishment of custody of the tapes would not supply us with reason to order their suppression. Neither the statute nor Rios takes a per se approach to sealing delays nor, by implication, to unsealing problems. Rather they permit the government to defeat a suppression motion by proving the tapes' authenticity and by furnishing a satisfactory explanation for the statutory violation. The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit which, since United States v. Mora, 821 F.2d 860, 867-68 (1st Cir.1987), has followed the construction of the sealing provision adopted in Rios, held in United States v. Angiulo, 847 F.2d 956 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 928, 109 S.Ct. 314, 102 L.Ed.2d 332 (1988), 11 that: 29 If the unsealing of such tapes is challenged in a motion to suppress, the government should be required to prove (1) that the unsealing and use of the tapes did not result in alterations or tampering and (2) that the circumstances necessitating unsealing were not manufactured for tactical gain and that the defendants will not be unduly prejudiced as a result of the unsealing. 30 Id. at 978. 31 The Angiulo standard is readily satisfied here. As we found in our prior decision, Ginsberg's testimony supplied ample proof that the physical integrity of the tapes remained pure. 899 F.2d at 241-42. While the district court made no specific finding of fact on this point, 12 there can be no doubt as to the sufficiency of the government's factually unchallenged explanation that it sent the tapes to Ginsberg's firm because of the exigencies of the Levy trial, as it could not have completed the enhancements in time for them to be of use to the defendants had it relied on its own facilities. The events which necessitated the enhancements hardly could be said to have been manufactured by the prosecutors for tactical gain. To the contrary, in the context of a multi-defendant case which has been severed for successive trials, it would be grossly unfair to the government to hold that audio enhancements performed for the benefit of one set of defendants could be the basis for suppression of the wiretap evidence in succeeding trials. 13 Accordingly, we reject appellants' contentions regarding the enhancement of the surveillance tapes.