Opinion ID: 430880
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Additional Issues Raised in Defendants' Motion to Suppress

Text: 39 The wiretap authorization issue addressed in the first part of this opinion was only one among many issues defendants originally raised in support of their claim that the district court should have suppressed the wiretap evidence. The panel of this court that first heard their appeal found that the Massachusetts wiretap authorization procedure failed to comply with the requirements of Title III, and it reversed defendants' convictions on this basis without reaching the additional issues. In the light of our present determination that the Massachusetts authorization procedure is facially valid, we must now consider whether there is any merit in the remaining issues raised by defendants. 40 These issues fall into two broad categories. In the first category are allegations that elements of the Massachusetts wiretap statute other than the authorization procedure fail to meet the requirements of Title III. In the second category are charges that, even if the Massachusetts statute does comply with Title III, the procedure followed in this case failed to meet the requirements of these statutes and so the wiretap evidence should have been suppressed. 41
42 When Congress enacted Title III, it intended to occupy the field of wiretapping; concurrent state regulation of wiretapping is valid only to the extent that it complies with the requirements of Title III. Title III requires suppression [w]henever any wire or oral communication has been intercepted if disclosing evidence of the intercepted communication would be in violation of this chapter. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2515. Defendants argue that wiretap evidence gathered pursuant to provisions of the Massachusetts statute must be suppressed if those state provisions provide fewer safeguards than Title III. They point to a number of provisions of the Massachusetts statute (in addition to the authorization procedure discussed above) that are arguably less restrictive than the parallel provisions of Title III. 43 It is not enough for defendants to show that various provisions of the Massachusetts statute might countenance procedures that would violate the requirements of Title III: they must show that such improper procedures were used in this case. The criterion for determining whether a state law is preempted by federal regulation requires us to consider the relationship between state and federal laws as they are interpreted and applied, not merely as they are written. Jones v. Rath Packing Co., 430 U.S. 519, 526, 97 S.Ct. 1305, 1310, 51 L.Ed.2d 604 (1977) (emphasis added). If judges and law enforcement officers in Massachusetts have interpreted the state statute to require procedural protections equal to those required under Title III, defendants will not be heard to argue that a different interpretation of the state statute might produce a result violative of Title III. Thus, for example, defendants cannot prevail on their claim that Sec. 99 J of the Massachusetts statute is void for failing to require a separate probable cause determination in a warrant renewal order, since they have made no showing that the warrant renewals in their case were made without separate probable cause determinations. To the contrary, the record demonstrates that Justice McGuire of the Massachusetts superior court did make a separate probable cause determination for each warrant renewal. 44 One of defendants' objections to the Massachusetts statute is that it allows a wiretap warrant to be issued by a judge of competent jurisdiction who sits either in the county where the interception is to take place or in the county where the office of the applicant is located. Mass.Gen.Laws Ann. ch. 272, Sec. 99 G. Title III provides that a federal judge may issue wiretap warrants only within the territorial jurisdiction of the court in which the judge is sitting. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2518(2). Defendants argue that the Massachusetts provision, which permits a judge in one county to issue a warrant for a wiretap in a different county, is less restrictive than the parallel provision of Title III and so is void. Defendants note that in this case, the Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney was able to apply for and obtain from a superior court justice sitting in Suffolk county warrants for three wiretaps on Norfolk County telephones. They argue that this procedure violates the purpose of Title III, which is to centralize in a publicly responsible official subject to the political process the formulation of law enforcement policy on the use of electronic surveillance techniques. S.Rep. No. 1097, reprinted in 1968 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News at 2185. 45 We note at the outset that the publicly responsible official contemplated by Title III is the attorney general or district attorney who authorizes the wiretap application, not the judge who approves the warrant. The Suffolk County District Attorney has jurisdiction over conspiracies that take place partly in his county. The fact that he is not responsible to a Norfolk County electorate should not prevent him from seeking a warrant to tap telephones located in that county if he can establish probable cause to believe that the intercepted conversations will provide evidence of a conspiracy taking place in his own county. See United States v. Lilla, 534 F.Supp. 1247 (N.D.N.Y.1982) (holding that Title III does not purport to dictate to states what the geographical authority of their enforcement officers must be); People v. DiPasquale, 47 N.Y.2d 764, 391 N.E.2d 710, 417 N.Y.S.2d 678 (1979) (holding that under New York law, a district attorney may apply for an out-of-county wiretap warrant as long as there is a sufficient nexus between the conduct covered by the application and the county represented by the district attorney). 46 The provision of Title III that authorizes state wiretap statutes says that the appropriate state prosecuting attorney may apply to a State court judge of competent jurisdiction for a wiretap warrant. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2510(9)(b). In Massachusetts, the superior court is a court of general criminal jurisdiction. Mass.Gen.Laws Ann. ch. 212, Sec. 6; see also New England Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. District Attorney of Norfolk County, 374 Mass. 569, 373 N.E.2d 960 (1978), citing Commonwealth v. Kemp, 254 Mass. 190, 150 N.E. 172 (1926). Any superior court justice, regardless of the county in which he sits, exercises all the jurisdiction of the court. Mass.Gen.Laws Ann. ch. 212, Secs. 1, 2. The Massachusetts statute could, in compliance with Title III, authorize the applicant to seek a wiretap warrant from any superior court justice anywhere in the state; but Sec. 99 G limits the applicant's choice to a justice sitting in the county in which the tap is to occur or in the county in which the applicant's office is located. In this respect the Massachusetts statute is more restrictive, not less restrictive, than Title III demands. 47 In another challenge to the wiretap procedure followed in their case, defendants point out that Title III provides, Every order and extension thereof ... shall be conducted in such a way as to minimize the interception of communications not otherwise subject to interception under this chapter. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2518(5). Defendants argue that the Massachusetts statute is invalid because it contains no minimization provision. 48 Title III does not require that the state wiretap statute contain any language expressly addressing the minimization requirement. At most, it requires state statutes to provide procedural protections that prevent the officers conducting the wiretap from unnecessarily seizing extraneous communications. We agree with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's holding in Vitello that the Massachusetts wiretap statute provides adequate minimization safeguards. 367 Mass. at 266, 327 N.E.2d 819. For example, Sec. 99 F(2)(e) of the Massachusetts statute requires the wiretap application to state that the communications sought to be intercepted are material to a particularly described investigation and are not privileged. Section 99 F(2)(f) requires that the application state, if practicable, the hours during which the interceptions are expected to occur. Section 99 I(3) states that the wiretap warrant must contain a particular description of the nature of the oral or wire communications to be obtained by the interception. Section 99 M(e) requires any agent who intercepted communications to swear to the content of communications intercepted but not recorded. The cumulative effect of these and other provisions is to make clear to the executing officer that his surveillance is to be limited to the conversations material to designated offenses under investigation. 367 Mass. at 266, 327 N.E.2d 819. 49 It is still possible, of course, for a defendant to argue that a particular Massachusetts wiretap has been conducted in a manner that violates the minimization requirement of Title III. Defendants apparently attempt to make such an argument by noting that the warrants' only minimization restriction ... [is] to avoid recording 'clearly non-criminal' offenses. This assertion is contradicted by the record. The order authorizing the interceptions specifically identifies the people whose conversations may be intercepted and limits interceptions of other conversations to a sixty-second initial check and subsequent ten-second spot checks to discover whether one of the named individuals has become a party to the conversation. It provides that the intercepting device be monitored at all times, so that there is no automatic recording of conversations not covered by the intercept order. It forbids the recording of conversations that are clearly non-criminal or are privileged. It requires written reports at three-day intervals advising the judge of the results of the interceptions and the need for continued interceptions. These specific directions, combined with the order's general direction that the law enforcement officers executing this order shall make interceptions in such a way as to minimize the interceptions of oral or wire communications not otherwise subject to interception, provide ample protection against unwarranted seizures. 50 The Supreme Judicial Court's decision in Vitello disposes of a number of other objections that defendants make to the Massachusetts wiretap statute. We have already noted that we regard the statute as existing in the form given to it by the Supreme Judicial Court's interpretation: for our purposes, the provisions read into the statute by the Supreme Judicial Court are as much a part of the Massachusetts wiretap law as the language enacted by the legislature. We hold that Vitello adequately answers the following claims made by defendants: Claim C that Sec. 99 K does not require execution of wiretap warrants as soon as practicable, 367 Mass. at 260-61, 327 N.E.2d 819; Claim E that the warrant execution provision in Sec. 99 K(2) of the Massachusetts statute conflicts with Sec. 2516(2) and Sec. 2518(4)(d) of Title III, id. at 260, 327 N.E.2d 819; Claim H that Sec. 99 B(7) allows electronic surveillance for offenses not within the scope of the federal authorization in Sec. 2516(2), id. at 268, 327 N.E.2d 819 (defendants were convicted of conspiracy, as Title III authorizes, not of simple possession of drugs); Claim I that Sec. 99 E(3) does not require a full and complete statement that normal investigative procedures have been tried and have failed, id. at 259, 327 N.E.2d 819; Claim K that Sec. 99 M and N do not require immediate return of the warrant and sealing of the tapes and so conflict with Sec. 2518(8)(a) of Title III, id. at 266-68, 327 N.E.2d 819; Claim L that the mandatory notice requirements of Sec. 99 L are less stringent than those of the Title III, id. at 268, 327 N.E.2d 819. 51 As to defendants' remaining attacks on the Massachusetts wiretap statute, we note that we have considered them and found them unconvincing. Some, as we have already observed, are abstract charges that the statute is insufficient, charges unaccompanied by any claim that defendants have suffered prejudice from the alleged insufficiencies. Some are based on mere semantic differences between the state and the federal statute that signal no underlying difference in the safeguards provided by each. Some are based on a creative misreading of the language of the federal statute. Some misstate the requirements of the state statute. All are without merit. 52
53 Defendants argue that even if the Massachusetts wiretap statute is facially sufficient, the warrants issued in this case are void for failure to comply with the procedures required by the state statute, the federal statute, or both. Specifically, defendants allege (1) that the affidavits accompanying the warrant applications failed to demonstrate that normal investigative procedures had been tried and had failed; (2) that the affidavits accompanying the applications failed to establish probable cause to issue the warrants; (3) that the warrants allowed interception of conversations by people not named in the warrants, in violation of Mass.Gen.Laws Ann. ch. 272, Sec. 99 I; and (4) that the investigating officers returned the warrants and tapes eight days after the warrants had expired rather than the seven days required by Mass.Gen.Laws Ann. ch. 272, Sec. 99 M. 54 The district court, in its memorandum accompanying the order denying defendants' motion to suppress, answered all of these complaints completely and correctly. Defendants have added nothing to their original arguments that prompts us to engage in a lengthy reconsideration of these issues. We make a few additional points here to aid the parties in understanding why we consider the district court's disposition correct. 55 We note first that we have recently reaffirmed the standard we adopted in United States v. Scibelli, 549 F.2d 222 (1st Cir.1977), for reviewing the sufficiency of wiretap applications. United States v. Southard, 700 F.2d 1 (1st Cir.1983). It is not our province to engage in de novo review of an application; instead, we test it in a practical and commonsense manner to determine whether the facts which it sets forth are minimally adequate to support the findings made by the issuing judge. Id. at 28, citing Scibelli at 226. The applications for the wiretaps in this case easily satisfy the criteria we identified in Scibelli and Southard. 56 We also note that defendants' challenge to the probable cause finding depends in large measure on their charge that the information of confidential informants failed to meet the tests for reliability established by the Supreme Court in Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964), and Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 413, 89 S.Ct. 584, 587, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969). The Supreme Court has recently abandoned rigid adherence to the two-pronged Aguilar/Spinelli test and has adopted a more flexible totality of the circumstances test for determining whether a confidential informant's tip is reliable. Illinois v. Gates, --- U.S. ----, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983). Again, we think the warrant applications in this case easily meet the current standard. 57 Finally, we observe that we have no need to rule on defendants' arguments that Sec. 99 I of the Massachusetts statute establishes a standard more stringent than that of Title III for intercepting the communications of persons not identified in the warrant, and that an interception made in violation of Sec. 99 I cannot be admitted in a federal proceeding even though it complies with the requirements of the federal statute. We agree with the district court that the original warrant, if read in its entirety, meets the standard of Sec. 99 I. It allows the conversations of unnamed conspirators to be intercepted only during brief spot checks and provides that the investigating officers shall not expand the scope of their investigation to include these conspirators unless the officers first procure an amended warrant from the issuing judge.