Court Opinion

ID: 9464289
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:30:06.719165+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:33.674975
License: Public Domain

ON REHEARING
HENLEY, Circuit Judge.
On July 25, 1977 in connection with a motion for rehearing filed by the defendant, Thomas Fontanello, we entered an order staying our original mandates as to both Fontanello and his co-defendant, Bar-letta, and remanded the case to the district court for an evidentiary hearing such as had been ordered by another panel of this court in United States v. DiGirlomo, 550 F.2d 404 (8th Cir. 1977), after the Supreme Court of the United States had handed down its decision in United States v. Donovan, 429 U.S. 413, 97 S.Ct. 658, 50 L.Ed.2d 652 (1977). The district court was directed to make findings on the questions of “why appellants were not identified to the district court as persons whose communications had been intercepted and whether and to what extent, if any, they were prejudiced respectively by not being served with discretionary inventories of the interceptions as provided by 18 U.S.C. § 2518(8)(d).”
The hearing was held in due course, and the district court promptly certified to us its findings on the questions that had been submitted to it. The district court found in substance that while the failure of the government to identify these defendants to the district court as persons upon whom discretionary inventories might appropriately be served was not inadvertent, it was not motivated by any bad faith on the part of the government or by any desire to deceive the district court or to gain any unfair advantage over the defendants.1
*993On the issue of prejudice the district court found that both defendants were supplied with transcripts of their intercepted communications immediately after their indictment and were given access to the original tapes of their intercepted communications; that neither defendant ever contended that the voices which the government identified as those of the defendants were not their own voices; and that in the circumstances neither defendant was prejudiced by not being served with inventories.
The findings of the district court were based on oral testimony, and the able and experienced district judge was, of course, in a position to pass on the credibility of the witnesses and the weight to be given to their testimony, and we cannot say that his findings are without substantial evidentiary support or that they are clearly erroneous.
Although counsel for the respective defendants argue, as they argued originally, that there are controlling distinctions between this case and Donovan, we reject that argument, as we did before, and hold that in the circumstances here present the failure of the defendants to be served with discretionary inventories does not require that their convictions be reversed. We also adhere to our view that as to Fontanello there was substantial evidence to sustain the jury’s verdict.
Rehearing denied. Let mandates issue forthwith.

. As to Barletta, the district court found that there was no identification of Barletta’s voice until after the original indictment was returned in October, 1970 and no positive identification of his voice until August, 1971. As to Fonta-nello, it was found that his voice was first identified on September 16, 1970, “although probably the positive identification that would stand up in court was not made until after three more interviews with Fontanello by FBI agents which continued into October of 1970.” With regard to both defendants the district court found that the statutory time for the service of inventories expired on April 18, 1970, *993several months before the first identification of the voice of Fontanello in September of that year. The district court stated: “At the time these identifications were made, there was no attempt to notify the Judge who had issued the wiretap order that these voices had been identified, presumably because the statutory time for service of inventories was so far passed.”