Opinion ID: 391003
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Procedural Rights of the Church in the District Court

Text: 12 We think the kinds of interests raised by the Church in its effort to protect the confidentiality of documents seized from its premises are sufficiently strong to mandate the identification of some procedural mechanism by which those interests can be presented contemporaneously to the court that controls public access to the records of which the documents became a part. Our evaluation of the strength of the interests sought to be asserted by the Church derives from an analysis of the Church's asserted property rights in the seized documents and from our recognition of the intrusion by government officials upon the Church's privacy which a compulsory search of Church premises may represent and the compounding of this intrusion that is worked by public access to the contents of the documents seized. 13 Although we decline the Church's invitation expressly to ground the Church's protectible interests in the Constitution's provisions, we find the kinds of interests asserted to have some constitutional footing, both cognate to and supportive of, constitutional rights. 23 This understanding has framed our consideration of both the procedural and the substantive questions raised in these appeals and has contributed substantially to the conclusions we have reached. 14 Prior decisions of this court have made clear that the party from whom materials are seized in the course of a criminal investigation retains a protectible property interest in the seized materials. (T)he Government's right to seize and retain certain evidence for use at trial, we have said,  'does not in itself entitle the State to its retention' after trial, . . . . 24 Rather, as we have declared, it is fundamental to the integrity of the criminal justice process that property involved in the proceeding, against which no Government claim lies, be returned promptly to its rightful owner. 25 Lawful seizure of the property, of itself, may affect the timing of the return, 26 but never the owner's right to eventual return. (T)he district court, once its need for the property has terminated, has both the jurisdiction and the duty to return the . . . property . . . regardless and independently of the validity or invalidity of the underlying search and seizure. 27 15 Both in the district court here and in the Central District of California the Church has asserted entitlement to lawful possession of the documents seized and a corresponding right to their return. 28 In the court below this claim was coupled with a request for injunctive relief retaining the documents under seal pending their return. Otherwise, the Church argued, the ultimate granting of (the) motion (for return of property) will be a meaningless achievement. 29 The Church continued, The publication of the documents invades the right of privacy of the petitioner and its members, violates the petitioner's Fourth Amendment rights, and chills the rights of and free exercise of religion. This damage cannot be undone by the eventual return to petitioner of its property. 30 16 The privacy interests asserted by the Church in its application for injunctive relief pending the documents' return were also asserted in its motion to intervene in the criminal case. In those papers the Church relied not only on the property interests which it retained in the seized documents but on the violation of its right of privacy which release of the seized documents would effect. 31 Although adverting to the confidential nature of the information contained in certain of the seized documents, the Church asserted a privacy interest not in particular documents but in the documents as a whole, 32 relying, inter alia, on the fact that the materials seized were documents, on the circumstances under which they were seized, on the measures theretofore taken by the parties to preserve the documents' confidentiality, and on the fact that the defendants were certain to appeal their criminal convictions on the grounds of the lawfulness of the search and seizure. 33 17 That the fourth amendment which is now recognized to protect legitimate expectations of privacy 34 can be invoked by corporations to suppress the fruits of a search of corporate premises 35 demonstrates an understanding that a compulsory search of even corporate premises may constitute an intrusion upon privacy. 36 Furthermore, the Supreme Court has recognized an obligation on the part of the courts to take some measures to protect even a suspected criminal's privacy. The special difficulties of document searches in this connection have been noted. In Andresen v. Maryland, 37 the Court stated: 18 We recognize that there are grave dangers inherent in executing a warrant authorizing a search and seizure of a person's papers that are not necessarily present in executing a warrant to search for physical objects whose relevance is more easily ascertainable. In searches for papers, it is certain that some innocuous documents will be examined, at least cursorily, in order to determine whether they are, in fact, among those papers authorized to be seized. Similar dangers, of course, are present in executing a warrant for the seizure of telephone conversations. In both kinds of searches, responsible officials, including judicial officials, must take care to assure that they are conducted in a manner that minimizes unwarranted intrusions upon privacy. 19 However, the value assigned by our society to protection against governmental invasions of privacy is not measured solely by the fourth amendment's exclusionary rule. The fourteenth amendment's protection against arbitrary or unjustifiable state deprivations of personal liberty also prevents encroachment upon a constitutionally recognized sphere of personal privacy. 38 The fifth amendment's protection of liberty from federal intrusion upon this sphere can be no less comprehensive. 39 20 Minimizing the initial intrusiveness of necessary governmental activity is one means of serving fundamental privacy interests, but controlling broadside disclosure of materials or information obtained by intrusive means is another. 40 For example, on at least two recent occasions Congress has recognized that the dissemination of information compounds whatever infringement of privacy occurs when materials or information are obtained through compulsory means. 41 The need for both kinds of protection has been perceived by state legislatures as well as by the Congress. 42 21 Finally, although the scope of the privacy interests protected by the Constitution differ from the privacy interests protectible under state law, 43 the concept of a protectible right of privacy has found widespread acceptance in the state law of this country, 44 and has been embraced both in the District of Columbia 45 and in California. 46 ] Whether and to what extent the privacy interests protected by state law may be asserted by corporate bodies is still unsettled. 47 However, we think one cannot draw a bright line at the corporate structure. The public attributes of corporations may indeed reduce pro tanto the reasonability of their expectation of privacy, 48 but the nature and purposes of the corporate entity and the nature of the interest sought to be protected will determine the question whether under given facts the corporation per se has a protectible privacy interest. 49 Moreover at least certain types of organizations corporate or non-corporate should be able to assert in good faith the privacy interests of their members. 50 Finally, whether acting for itself or on behalf of its members, surely the privacy interests of a church must be assessed somewhat differently from the privacy interests of other sorts of corporations. 51 22 Because state law privacy rights are seldom litigated, 52 their contours remain unclear and application of these still-evolving concepts to the claims here stated cannot be determined by reference to already decided cases. However, in our judgment the combination of property and privacy interests asserted were significant enough to warrant an opportunity for the Church to state its interests in the only forum where meaningful relief could expeditiously have been had 53 and within whose supervisory discretion a decision to foreclose public access resides. 54 23
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25 Our decisions make plain that a federal trial court has ancillary jurisdiction to hear and determine claims closely related to and arising out of the criminal proceedings brought before it. 55 We think this concept of ancillary jurisdiction is flexible enough to accommodate claims relating to seized property, even when made by strangers to the criminal case. 56 We thus conclude that the trial court had jurisdiction to hear the claims made. However, this conclusion does not imply the proper method by which the claim should be presented, and to that question we turn below. 26
27 The means by which third parties have sought to assert their interests in criminal cases have been manifold. 57 Indeed, the Church here chose to employ three of the mechanisms which have been used, with varying success, by other parties in other cases. 58 It first sought to intervene in the criminal case, it then brought a motion for return of property, accompanied by an application for an order temporarily restraining public access to the documents at issue. Finally, it petitioned this court for a writ of mandamus directing the district court, inter alia, to refrain from unsealing for public inspection 59 the documents at issue. 28 Of these methods we think the last employed was neither appropriate nor adequate to the task. It is the trial court and not this court that should engage in the initial consideration of the interests at stake, especially where, as here, the matter is urgent and largely dependent on an extensive record with which the trial judge is intimately familiar. 60 Even assuming mandamus relief is available to non-parties in a criminal proceeding, 61 we think the inevitable delay in seeking a writ and the narrow circumstances under which it will be granted 62 render it inadequate to redress the type of injury here alleged and mandate the identification of some other means by which a non-party's interest may timely be presented to the district court whose actions are alleged to affect that interest. 29 Of the two other methods by which the Church attempted to assert its interests, we think the motion for return of property and the accompanying application for temporary injunctive relief most closely approximated a proper means by which the trial court's ancillary jurisdiction could have been invoked by the Church to present its claims to retain the documents under seal. 63 In our view the Church could have proceeded by simple motion, served on the parties in the criminal case, under the caption of that case. 64 We think such a motion would have served the Church's interests adequately and we treat the Church's efforts in the district court as having commenced such a proceeding. 65 30 It has long been recognized that a summary proceeding initiated simply by motion to the court of trial is ordinarily suitable for the purpose of asserting an interest in the ultimate disposition of property seized in a criminal proceeding. 66 We now hold that it is also appropriate for the purpose of the presumptive owner's assertion of interest in maintaining the confidentiality of documents so seized. 31 The availability of this ancillary, summary proceeding and our treatment of the Church's efforts as having commenced such a proceeding make it unnecessary either to decide the procedural propriety of the methods in fact employed by the Church in its efforts in the district court to retain the documents under seal, or to address the question whether one may ever intervene in a criminal case. 67 Furthermore, because we think the Church was in fact heard on the merits in its efforts to retain the seized documents under seal, 68 and because the district court's rationale for denying relief, insofar as it can be ascertained on this record, turned at least in part on the merits of the interests asserted, 69 we treat the orders appealed by the Church as having reached the merits and will consider the remainder of the issues raised by those appeals accordingly. 32