Opinion ID: 1040177
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: “Implicates Constitutional Restrictions”

Text: Defendant also argues that the instant case falls within the second exception to the “international silver platter doctrine,” claiming that this case is one in which “cooperation with foreign law enforcement officials may implicate constitutional restrictions.” Lee, 2013 WL 2450533, at  (internal quotation marks omitted). Defendant asserts that a number of factors bring this case within the so-called “constitutional restrictions” 17 No. 11-1237-cr exception, including: (1) the INP initiated its investigation based on the MLAT request from American law enforcement officials; (2) Israel never sought to prosecute Getto; (3) many other members of the conspiracy, or related conspiracies, were extradited to the United States; and (4) an article in an Israeli newspaper stated that American law enforcement agents watched live surveillance of the Ha’Negev boiler room. We have explained that, under the “constitutional restrictions” exception, “constitutional requirements may attach in two situations: (1) where the conduct of foreign law enforcement officials rendered them agents, or virtual agents, of United States law enforcement officials; or (2) where the cooperation between the United States and foreign law enforcement agencies is designed to evade constitutional requirements applicable to American officials.” Lee, 2013 WL 2450533, at  (internal quotation marks omitted). In examining defendant’s claims that both “virtual agency” and an intentional evasion of constitutional requirements occurred here, the District Court found that “[w]hile there was some cooperation in the case,” it was not enough to fall within the exception. Getto, 2010 WL 3467860, at . We agree. Addressing the two situations in turn, Getto first argues that the factors described above rendered the INP “virtual agents” of American law enforcement. In order to render foreign law enforcement officials virtual agents of the United States, American officials must 18 No. 11-1237-cr play some role in controlling or directing the conduct of the foreign parallel investigation. See Lee, 2013 WL 2450533, at  (noting that a foreign law enforcement agency did not “solicit the views, much less approval, of [American] agents prior to conducting surveillance”); United States v. Cotroni, 527 F.2d 708, 712 (2d Cir. 1975) (declining to suppress the fruits of foreign wiretaps where the “United States government did not in any way initiate, supervise, control or direct the wiretapping” (internal quotation marks omitted)). It is not enough that the foreign government undertook its investigation pursuant to an American MLAT request. Courts have repeatedly observed that the purpose of the exclusionary rule for Fourth Amendment violations is “to inculcate a respect for the Constitution in the police of our own nation,” Lee, 2013 WL 2450533, at  (internal quotation marks omitted) (emphasis supplied); see note 7, ante (collecting authorities), and have “seldom used [it] to bar [foreign police] work product” because it “has little if any deterrent effect upon foreign police.” Lee, 2013 WL 2450533, at  (internal quotation marks omitted). An inescapable corollary of this principle is that in instances where American law enforcement agents do not have authority to control or direct an investigation abroad, application of the exclusionary rule to the fruits of that investigation would serve no deterrence purpose. See United States v. Janis, 428 U.S. 433, 446 (1976) (“[T]he prime purpose of the rule, if not the sole one, is to deter future unlawful police conduct.” (internal quotation marks omitted)); see also Pa. Bd. of Prob. & Parole v. Scott, 524 U.S. 357, 363 (1998) (“[B]ecause the rule is prudential rather than 19 No. 11-1237-cr constitutionally mandated, we have held it to be applicable only where its deterrence benefits outweigh its substantial social costs.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). As we explained in United States v. Lira, 515 F.2d 68 (2d Cir. 1975), “where the United States Government plays no direct or substantial role in the misconduct and the foreign police have acted not as United States agents but merely on behalf of their own government, the imposition of a penalty would only deter United States representatives from making a lawful request for the defendant and would not deter any illegal conduct.” Id. at 71. A review of the record here makes clear that U.S. officials neither controlled nor directed the foreign investigation. Although American law enforcement agents requested assistance with investigating Getto and shared the results of their preliminary investigation (e.g., telephone numbers and bank account information) with the INP, the foreign law enforcement agency conducted an independent, parallel investigation. Indeed, the American government has proffered, and Getto has not rebutted, that, although American agents “were in contact frequently [with their Israeli counterparts] to share information,” they did not participate in any law enforcement actions by the INP in Israel.9 Joint App’x 195-96. 9For example, American agents were not involved in the preparation, submission, and execution of search warrants. Nor were they involved in the interviews of witnesses or defendants in Israel. 20 No. 11-1237-cr Defendant’s allegations, even if credited, demonstrate only robust information-sharing and cooperation across parallel investigations and do not contradict the government’s claim that the Israeli investigation was not controlled or directed by American law enforcement. Cf. United States v. Paternina–Vergara, 749 F.2d 993, 998 (2d Cir. 1984) (noting, in the context of statutory analysis of the Jencks Act, that “[t]he investigation of crime increasingly requires the cooperation of foreign and United States law enforcement officials, but there is no reason to think that Congress expected that such cooperation would constitute the foreign officials as agents of the United States”). We do not find persuasive defendant’s argument that a “live feed” allowing American law enforcement agents to view surveillance footage in real time, supposedly referenced in an Israeli newspaper article, demonstrates that the INP acted as virtual agents of the United States. We have long allowed foreign authorities to share the fruits of an investigation with their American counterparts without suggesting or assuming that the latter controlled the investigation. See, e.g., Maturo, 982 F.2d at 61. The ability of modern law enforcement agencies, aided by global telecommunications, to share information across borders without delay is not a significant departure from the traditional method of sharing surveillance after-the-fact and does not, in and of itself, give rise to an inference of agency. See United States v. Morrow, 537 F.2d 120, 140 (5th Cir. 1976) (“Normal lines of communication between the law enforcement agencies 21 No. 11-1237-cr of different countries are beneficial without question and are to be encouraged.”). Likewise, defendant’s argument that the INP would not have investigated defendant but for the MLAT request, even if true, does not bear upon whether American law enforcement directed the subsequent investigation in Israel. Rather, this fact only shows that the INP was unaware of a criminal conspiracy within its jurisdiction whose victims were almost exclusively residing in the United States. See Maturo, 982 F.2d at 61 (“[T]he fact that the [Turkish National Police] did not initiate the wiretap until [American agents] gave them the numbers demonstrates only that the [Turkish National Police] was unaware that these individuals were using their phones to traffick [sic] narcotics.”); Morrow, 537 F.2d at 140 (“Criminal conspiracies . . . are sometimes international in scope, and the routine transmittal of the name and telephone number of a possibly valuable informant [or suspect] across national borders clearly is permissible under the [F]ourth [A]mendment.”). Finally, we do not find particularly significant the fact that the defendant—an American citizen, whose victims were primarily American citizens—was arrested and charged in the United States, rather than charged in Israel. A number of factors may properly inform the decision of prosecutorial venue among different sovereign states, including: (1) the location of the relevant witnesses, victims, and evidence; (2) the nature of different legal systems; (3) the relative priority of a 22 No. 11-1237-cr case to different nations; and (4) the resources available to undertake the prosecution in different jurisdictions. Cf. Linde v. Arab Bank, PLC, 706 F.3d 92, 114 (2d Cir. 2013) (noting that different interests and legal codes might inform the decisions of foreign states in deciding whether to prosecute for similar offense conduct); Slater v. Clarke, 700 F.3d 1200, 1203 (9th Cir. 2012) (noting that “the decision whether to prosecute[ ] involves a balancing of myriad factors, including culpability, prosecutorial resources and public interests” (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted)). We decline to infer that the decision to prosecute defendant in the United States, without more, indicates that American law enforcement directed the preceding investigation abroad. Second, Getto argues, see Appellant’s Br. 43-47, that “the cooperation between the United States and foreign law enforcement agencies [was] designed to evade constitutional requirements applicable to American officials,” Lee, 2013 WL 2450533, at . By its terms, however, this method of fulfilling the “constitutional restrictions” exception requires some intent to evade American constitutional requirements. See id.; cf. United States v. Yousef, 327 F.3d 56, 146 (2d Cir. 2003) (noting, in the context of overseas interrogations, that statements may be suppressed under the Fifth Amendment “where United States officials, although asking no questions directly, use foreign officials as their interrogation agents in order to circumvent the requirements of Miranda” (emphasis supplied)). 23 No. 11-1237-cr Getto points to nothing in the record suggesting an intent to evade the Fourth Amendment’s requirements. Instead, the record demonstrates that the decision to request INP assistance was motivated by the inability of American law enforcement agents to further investigate criminal activity occurring substantially within the territory of a foreign sovereign. See Maturo, 982 F.2d at 62 (“[T]he [Turkish National Police’s] wiretapping of phones in Turkey was prompted not by a desire to circumvent [American] constitutional constraints, but by [a] logistical problem.”). Accordingly, we hold that the information in the record—the MLAT request, the information-sharing between American law enforcement and the INP, and American receipt of the fruits of the INP’s investigation in Israel—reveals no cooperation “designed to evade constitutional requirements,” Maturo, 982 F.2d at 61, but only successful coordinated law enforcement activity.