Court Opinion

ID: 9741929
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:04:19.061597+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:27.242991
License: Public Domain

*801Shanahan, J.,
dissenting.
With good reason, there is detectable uneasiness and, perhaps, apocalyptic apprehension in the majority’s opinion. Since State v. Brennen, 218 Neb. 454, 356 N.W.2d 861 (1984), in which this court adopted the doctrine of “substantial compliance” to validate a wiretap despite police departure from requirements specified in wiretap statutes, the State has prevailed in every appeal to this court on the issue of police noncompliance with the statutory requirements for a wiretap — a batting average of 1.000, which would be an outstanding feat in the major leagues but is hardly a commendable indication of obedience to laws protecting the privacy of Nebraska citizens.
INDEPENDENT DETERMINATION
The majority has circumvented the question whether a pen register, in the absence of authorization by a valid warrant, violates a citizen’s protection available under the Nebraska Constitution. While a court should not be asked to “hunt through a constitution in an effort to find language which might arguably support a challenger’s position, ” location of the particular constitutional provision applicable in this case does not require some tiresome trek through the Nebraska Constitution, from article I, § 1 (a person’s inalienable rights and a government from the consent of the governed), to article XVII, § 9 (Nebraska Constitution enrolled and deposited in the Secretary of State’s office). The federal cases mentioned by the majority, namely, United States v. New York Telephone Co., 434 U.S. 159, 98 S. Ct. 364, 54 L. Ed. 2d 376 (1977), and Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 99 S. Ct. 2577, 61 L. Ed. 2d 220 (1979), involve a pen register in relation to the fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause . . . ,” while the cited cases from state courts, People v. Sporleder, 666 P.2d 135 (Colo. 1983), and Com. v. Beauford, 327 Pa. Super. 253, 475 A.2d 783 (1984), answered the pen register question in reference to respective state constitutions which provided protection against “unreasonable searches and *802seizures.” The constitutional quarry of the “hunt” in Hinton’s case is found at Neb. Const, art. I, § 7: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated; and no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause . ..,” which is the exact constitutional protection examined in the above-indicated cases, federal and state. Therefore, as the result of Hinton’s unquestionable reference to Neb. Const, art. I, § 7, this court should have resolved the issue about the pen register which produced information effective in Hinton’s conviction.
Without question, a state may impose higher standards governing police practices on the basis of state law, and may guard individual rights, including the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, more fervently than the U.S. Supreme Court does under the federal Constitution. Mills v. Rogers, 457 U.S. 291, 102 S. Ct. 2442, 73 L. Ed. 2d 16 (1982); Oregon v. Hass, 420 U.S. 714, 95 S. Ct. 1215, 43 L. Ed. 2d 570 (1975); State v. Havlat, 222 Neb. 554, 385 N.W.2d 436 (1986). “[T]he substantive rights provided by the Federal Constitution define only a minimum,” a floor rather than a ceiling. Mills v. Rogers, supra at 300. “The present function of state constitutions is as a second line of defense for those rights protected by the federal Constitution and as an independent source of supplemental rights unrecognized by federal law.” Developments in the Law — The Interpretation of State Constitutional Rights, 95 Harv. L. Rev. 1324, 1367 (1982). Although opinions from federal courts, deciding questions involving the U.S. Constitution as well as other federal law analogously applicable to questions of state law, may provide appropriate models for resolution of issues arising under state law, a state court should not automatically defer to federal decisions, but should critically examine federal decisions, make an independent analysis of state law issues to be resolved, and determine solutions under appropriate state law. See Dix, Exclusionary Rule Issues as Matters of State Law, 11 Am. J. Crim. L. 109, 148 (1983).
PEN REGISTER
In United States v. Caplan, 255 F. Supp. 805, 807 (E.D. Mich. 1966), a pen register was characterized or described as
*803a device attached to a given telephone line usually at a central telephone office. A pulsation of the dial on the line to which the pen register is attached records on a paper tape dashes equal in number to the number dialed. The paper tape then becomes a permanent and complete record of outgoing numbers called on the particular line. With reference to incoming calls, the pen register records only a dash for each ring of the telephone but does not identify the number from which the incoming call originated. The pen register cuts off after the number is dialed on outgoing calls and after the ringing is concluded on incoming calls without determining whether the call is completed or the receiver is answered. There is neither recording nor monitoring of the conversation.
In Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 99 S. Ct. 2577, 61 L. Ed. 2d 220 (1979), a divided U.S. Supreme Court held that a pen register by a telephone company does not constitute a search, and the customer or subscriber assumed the risk of the company’s disclosure to police, eliminating the expectation of privacy necessary for fourth amendment protection.
Criticizing the majority opinion in Smith v. Maryland, supra, LaFave makes the following observation:
Under Smith, the police may without any cause whatsoever and for whatever purpose they choose uncover private relationships with impunity merely because the telephone company might under some circumstances for certain limited purposes make a record of such relationships for the company’s own use. Indeed, it is enough for the majority in Smith that the telephone company has the capacity to make a record of such relationships, even though the company has had the good sense not to offend its subscribers by making or keeping those records for no reason.
. . . [I]t makes no sense to say that the telephone subscriber (any more than the tenant or hotel occupant) is fair game for unrestrained police scrutiny merely because he has surrendered some degree of his privacy for a limited purpose to those with whom he is doing business. As *804Professor Amsterdam put it, “[t]he fact that our ordinary social intercourse, uncontrolled by government, imposes certain risks upon us hardly means that government is constitutionally unconstrained in adding to those risks.” [Amsterdam, Perspectives on the Fourth Amendment, 58 Minn. L. Rev. 349, 406 (1974).]
1 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 2.7(b) at 507-08 (2d ed. 1987).
In Com. v. Beauford, 327 Pa. Super. 253, 475 A.2d 783, 791 (1984), the Pennsylvania Superior Court commented:
If any law enforcement officer could, with or without probable cause or even reasonable suspicion, use a pen register on his own authority to record every number dialed by any citizen in Pennsylvania from a residential, business, or government phone, the pen register clearly could become a powerful weapon threatening invasion not only of the individual’s intimate privacy, but also his political liberty, including his rights to associate, to express his views, and even to think in freedom.
Several state courts, construing their respective state constitutions, have concluded that a citizen has a right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure in the form of police installation or use of a pen register, obtained without a warrant issued on probable cause, to record telephone numbers dialed in privacy. See, Com. v. Beauford, supra; People v. Sporleder, 666 P.2d 135 (Colo. 1983); People v. Blair, 25 Cal. 3d 640, 602 P.2d 738, 159 Cal. Rptr. 818 (1979); State v. Hunt, 91 N. J. 338, 450 A.2d 952 (1982) (applied to toll billing records). In view of the vital role of telephonic communication in the private lives of Nebraska citizens, this court should have considered the constitutional question about police use of a pen register to obtain information otherwise beyond the control of the police, and should have required a warrant issued on probable cause as a condition precedent to acquisition of such pen register information.
WIRETAP
The notion that the standards imposed by state law may be more restrictive than federal standards, and may exceed federal constitutional mandates or mínimums, also applies to *805requirements for a wiretap authorized under state law. See, State v. Golter, 216 Neb. 36, 342 N.W.2d 650 (1983); J. Carr, The Law of Electronic Surveillance, Enactment and Constitutionality of Title III (2d ed. 1987).
The case now before this court further illustrates how the “substantial compliance” doctrine has encouraged, and will continue to encourage, police noncompliance with wiretap statutes and court orders for electronic surveillance by law enforcement personnel. In Hinton’s case, police routinely filed tardy interim reports or, worse yet, filed none at all, notwithstanding the court order for interim reports every 10 days after installation of the wiretap; persisted in the sloppy practice of late returns on search warrants; and filed the statutorily required wiretap inventory some 2 months after the 90-day period specified by statute. See Neb. Rev. Stat. § 86-705(9) (Reissue 1981).
The majority of this court feels that, inasmuch as interim progress reports on a wiretap are not required by the wiretap statute, failure to file progress reports, ordered by the court which authorized the wiretap, may be excused as a form of discretionary afterthought on the part of the authorizing court. Although § 86-705(7) provides that a court may require progress reports, that statute also contains a mandatory directive: “Such reports shall be made at such intervals as the judge may require.” (Emphasis supplied.) If a court decides that progress reports are necessary to judicially determine whether a wiretap’s objective has been achieved, thereby minimizing the intrusive nature of a wiretap, and then orders such progress reports from the police, rendition of progress reports is mandatory. Interim progress reports, when ordered by a court, and a wiretap inventory were intended by the Legislature to be substantial parts of the Nebraska wiretap law. In the wiretap statutes, as legislated requirements for a valid wiretap, nothing indicates a formula or factors by which one statutory component is accorded significance and value greater than any other part of the statutory scheme for wiretaps. On what basis and by what method a court may pick and choose among the several parts of the wiretap scheme to evaluate and characterize one part as more or less substantial than another *806and, consequently, arrive at “substantial compliance” remains unexplained. See United States v. Chavez, 416 U.S. 562, 94 S. Ct. 1849, 40 L. Ed. 2d 380 (1974) (Douglas, J., dissenting in part).
While this court’s majority believes that presence or absence of actual prejudice to Hinton is a consideration in evaluating police failure to file interim progress reports, a paramount consideration is the judicial role in monitoring police conduct in a wiretap. As we expressed in State v. Golter, supra: “The bedrock of our wiretap law is stringent judicial monitoring of law enforcement agencies seeking to use and using electronic surveillance — an investigative technique highly intrusive upon the privacy of the citizenry.” 216 Neb. at 41, 342 N.W.2d at 653. Continued condonation of prosecutory or police indifference to, or ignorance of, Nebraska wiretap statutes and court orders pertaining to wiretaps leaves little inducement for law enforcement to obey the law. The doctrine of substantial compliance with wiretap statutes makes obedience to the law neither a virtue nor a duty in law enforcement. More important, by the doctrine of substantial compliance, the judicial role as a neutral monitor of a wiretap is relinquished to law enforcement, and efficiency in law enforcement, unrestrained by constitutional safeguards for citizens, becomes an absolute end in itself. Requiring strict compliance with wiretap statutes, however, will allay the concern contained in the “caveat” found in the majority’s opinion.
The present case demonstrates that the substantial compliance doctrine only lessens law enforcement’s incentive to adhere to the requirements of wiretap statutes. Dissenting in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 485, 48 S. Ct. 564, 72 L. Ed. 944 (1928), Justice Brandeis warned:
Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizens.... Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
It remains to be seen what respect for law emerges from breach of law by those charged with enforcing laws.
*807Although the Nebraska wiretap statutes, as written, may be constitutional, the substantial compliance doctrine charts a course for inevitable collision with the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. While recognizing that police have departed from requirements imposed by the Nebraska wiretap statutes, this court’s majority supplies no discernible demarcation to separate tolerable substantial compliance from a constabulary’s contemptuous noncompliance condoned by the courts, and leaves one wondering when there is substantial compliance or not. Requiring the government’s strict statutory compliance in wiretaps is but a small token to be paid for protection of privacy, lest nibbling at the wiretap statutes whets an appetite to devour constitutional safeguards against unreasonable search and seizure.
White, J., joins in this dissent.