Court Opinion

ID: 9678763
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:31:29.198351+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:07.738428
License: Public Domain

WAHL, Justice
(dissenting).
Because I conclude that the wiretap warrant was obtained and executed in violation of certain provisions of 18 U.S.C. 2510-2520 (Title III) and the Minnesota Privacy of Communications Act, Minn.Stat. ch. 626A (1982), hence in violation of the right of the people to be secure in their persons and houses from unreasonable searches and seizures, I must respectfully dissent.
Wiretapping, that ultimate invasion of personal privacy, was brought squarely within the purview of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments by the United States Supreme Court in Berger v. New York, 388 U.S. 41, 87 S.Ct. 1873, 18 L.Ed.2d 1040 (1967). Recognizing “few threats to liberty * * * greater than that posed by the use of eavesdropping devices,” the Berger court concluded that “[wjhile ‘[t]he requirements of the Fourth Amendment are not inflexible, or obtusely unyielding to the legitimate needs of law enforcement,’ it is not asking too much that officers be required to comply with the basic command of the Fourth Amendment before the innermost secrets of one’s home or office are invaded.” Id. at 63, 87 S.Ct. at 1885 (citation omitted).
The Court identified a number of prerequisites a statute authorizing wiretapping must contain in order to pass constitutional muster:
(1) There must be probable cause to believe that a particular offense has been committed; (2) the conversations to be intercepted must be particularly described; (3) the surveillance must be for a specific and limited period of time, to minimize the intrusion into privacy; (4) continuing probable cause must be shown *663if the warrant is to be renewed; (5) eavesdropping must terminate once the evidence sought has been seized; (6) there must be notice unless a factual showing of exigency is made; and (7) there must be a return on the warrant so that the court may supervise and restrict the use of the seized conversations.
C. Fishman, Wiretapping and Eavesdropping, 7, n. 17 (1978) (summarizing Berger, 388 U.S. at 54-60, 87 S.Ct. at 1881-84).
There is no constitutional challenge in the cases before us to the federal and state wiretapping statutes, for they were drafted to meet constitutional requirements. Such statutes provide us no protection from unlawful searches and seizures, however, unless we adhere to them in letter and in spirit. To that end this court has strictly construed Minnesota’s wiretapping statute. In State v. Frink, 296 Minn. 57, 206 N.W.2d 664 (1973), we refused to permit an assistant county attorney to apply for a wiretap warrant where the statute did not expressly so authorize. We stated there that “in an area as sensitive as the invasion of privacy of oral communications, there is no room to expand our statute beyond what Congress and the legislature expressly authorized.” Id. at 74, 206 N.W.2d at 674. More recently, in Wolk v. DeCowski, 310 N.W.2d 131 (Minn.1982), we took a strict approach in deciding for which offenses a wiretap warrant could issue and resolved the statutory ambiguity against the state. We noted that “normal standards of statutory interpretation and construction cannot be followed in resolving ambiguities in a statute dealing with interception of private communications to citizens.” Id. at 133.
Strict construction of the statute requires that the attorney authorized to apply for the wiretap also be present before the issuing court. Minn.Stat. § 626A.05, subd. 1, states that the county attorney may apply for a warrant “as provided in section 626A.06, to a judge.” Section 626A.06, subd. 1, provides, as the majority notes, that the application shall be made in writing, but section 626A.06, subd. 2, provides that the court, “before issuing any warrant thereon, may examine on oath the person seeking the warrant.” The statute requires the applicant to be cognizant of all the facts which are relied on in the application. Any facts elicited from police officers before the court but not contained in the sworn application would permit issuance of a warrant based on facts unknown to the applicant if he is not required to appear personally. I would hold, as we did in Frink and Wolk, that any ambiguity be resolved against the state. I would require a personal appearance by the applicant. Since in this case the applicant did not appear, the warrant was invalidly issued.
Second, and even more importantly, the officers failed to minimize their interceptions as required by section 626A.06, subd. 4(h). No attempt was made to intercept only those conversations which were drug-related. From August 12 to August 19, 1981, government agents intercepted a total of 370 calls. It is clear from the transcript of the recorded conversations that the vast majority of those conversations, including many of the lengthy ones, had nothing to do with drug trafficking activity but concerned daily activities, social endeavors or running a farm. A great many of the intercepted calls were made by or to members of the Monsrud household whose conversations showed no knowledge of drug trafficking and who were not under investigation. Even those conversations which the agents did not record, though recording is required by the Act, were monitored audito-rily. Furthermore, the monitoring agents did not make the court that issued the warrant aware of the types of conversations that were being intercepted, so there was no judicial supervision over the interceptions.
The majority opinion recognizes that the procedure followed in this case violated the minimization requirement but would suppress only those conversations which were improperly intercepted. Such a remedy is useless. Because the only conversations the prosecution is interested in are those which are pertinent, suppression of nonpertinent conversations will have no effect on the *664prosecution of cases. It will provide no incentive to law enforcement officers to put forth any but the most nominal effort to minimize their interceptions.
The possibility that some relevant information may be missed if the interception is minimized in no way outweighs the privacy interests of the parties using a wiretapped phone line. As Justice Brandéis reminds us, in his stirring dissent in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 478, 48 S.Ct. 564, 572, 72 L.Ed. 944 (1928), “[t]he makers of our Constitution * * * conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone — the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”
Whether or not the nonpertinent conversations are used at trial is irrelevant. The fact remains that the privacy of unwitting and innocent individuals has been illegally infringed. The only effective way to prevent such infringement is to suppress all evidence obtained by the wiretap. A civil remedy, easily defeated by the officer’s “good faith,” does not provide a sufficient deterrent where the officer is assured of use of any pertinent evidence he uncovers in an unreasonably broad interception.
I would reverse the convictions, remand the case of Arlyn Monsrud for a new trial and remand the case of Alroy Monsrud for a determination of the state’s claim that the introduction of the wiretap evidence was harmless error.