Opinion ID: 2073770
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Tape Recorded Telephone Conversations

Text: At the trial, the State conceded that the recording of the telephone conversations violated § 125A of Art. 27. It maintained that the tape recordings were nevertheless admissible in evidence because the only sanction prescribed by the statute was criminal prosecution of those who violate its provisions. The Court of Special Appeals so held in Reed v. State, 35 Md. App. 472, 372 A.2d 243 (1977), and Pennington v. State, 19 Md. App. 253, 310 A.2d 817 (1973), cert. denied, 271 Md. 742, cert. denied, 419 U.S. 1019 (1974). The appellant does not challenge that interpretation of the statute, and we therefore have no occasion to consider the question in this case. Appellant claims instead that the attachment to the victim's phone of the recording device without a court order constituted an illegal interception of a telephonic communication in contravention of § 10-402 of the Courts Article. Until its repeal by ch. 692 of the Acts of 1977, [2] § 10-402 was part of the Maryland Wire Tapping Act, §§ 10-401 through 10-408 of the Courts Article, in effect at the time of the appellant's arrest and prosecution. That Act declared in § 10-401 that the right of the people to be secure against unreasonable interception of telephonic ... communications may not be violated. It expressed the legislative mandate that the interception and divulgence of a private communication by any person not a party thereto is contrary to the public policy of the state, and may not be permitted except by court order in unusual circumstances to protect the people. Section 10-402(a) makes it unlawful, absent a court order, for any person to obtain a telephonic communication to which he is not a participant by means of any device unless consent is given by the participants. Section 10-406 provides that evidence obtained in violation of the Maryland Wire Tapping Act is inadmissible in court. The appellant relies on Robert v. State, 220 Md. 159, 151 A.2d 737 (1959), as authority for the exclusion of the tape recordings under § 10-402 (a). In Robert, police officers, anticipating that the defendant would make a phone call to certain friends in a motel, positioned themselves at the motel's telephone switchboard. When the expected call came through the switchboard, the officers monitored it by means of a headset connected through a press key to the switchboard. After observing that the officers could not be classified as participants in the conversation, and that they overheard it without the consent of all of the participants, our predecessors held that the headset was an electrical device by which the officers obtained the telephone conversation in contravention of the Act's provisions, rendering the evidence thereby obtained inadmissible in court. Robert is plainly inapposite on its facts. There, the police officers were not participants in the conversation. In the present case, Miss McDonough was a participant in the conversations which she recorded. There is no requirement in § 10-402(a) that consent to the recording must be given by all participants in the conversation. Consequently, there was no violation of § 10-402 (a), although plainly the recording of the conversations violated Art. 27, § 125A. Cf. Clark v. State, 2 Md. App. 756, 237 A.2d 768 (1968), cert. denied, 394 U.S. 1001 (1969). Appellant's suggestion that it was Heline and not the victim who recorded the conversations is not supported by the record. Nor is there any evidence to support Smith's claim that in attaching the recording device to the victim's phone Heline acted as a police agent. Simply because the police learned, after the fact, that the device had been attached to the victim's phone, but did not require its removal, does not warrant a finding that § 10-402 (a) was violated. Finally, there is no justification for Smith's reliance on Commonwealth v. McCoy, 442 Pa. 234, 275 A.2d 28 (1971), and Cameron v. State, 365 P.2d 576 (Okla. 1961), to establish that § 10-402 (a) was violated by the recording of the conversations; the statutes involved in those cases were markedly different from § 10-402 (a) and therefore are not applicable in this case.