Court Opinion

ID: 9426647
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:34.669539+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:02.142980
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marshall,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan joins,
dissenting in part.
The Court today holds that an application for a warrant to authorize a wiretap under Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 18 U. S. C. §§ 2510-2520, must name all individuals who the Government has probable cause to believe are committing the offense being investigated and will be overheard. See 18 U. S. C. § 2518 (1) (b) (iv). It also holds that the Government must provide sufficient information to the issuing judge to allow him to exercise the discretion provided by 18 U. S. C. § 2518 (8) (d). I fully agree with both of these holdings. The Court concludes, however, that if the Government violates these statutory commands, it is nevertheless free to use the intercepted communications as evidence in a criminal proceeding, I cannot agree.
I continue to adhere to the position, expressed for four Members of the Court by Mr. Justice Douglas in his dissent in United States v. Chavez, 416 U. S. 562, 584-585 (1974), that Title III does not authorize “the courts to pick and choose among various statutory provisions, suppressing evidence only when they determine that a provision is 'substantive/ 'central/ or 'directly and substantially’ related to the congressional scheme.” The Court has rejected that argument, however, see United States v. Chavez, supra; United States v. Giordano, 416 U. S. 505 (1974), and nothing is to be gained by renewing it here. But even under the standard set forth *446in Giordano and Chavez and reaffirmed by the Court today, ante, at 433-434, the evidence at issue here should be suppressed.
I
Title III requires that an application for a warrant to authorize wiretapping disclose “the identity of the person, if known, committing the offense and whose communications are to be intercepted.” 18 U. S. C. § 2518 (l)(b)(iv). The Court properly rejects the Government’s contention that this provision requires it to name only the “principal target” of an investigation. In doing so, the Court relies both on the plain language and legislative history of the section, which do not support the Government’s position, and on the statutory context. Ante, at 424-428. Part of that context is the obvious assumption of other portions of Title III that wiretap applications will name more than one target. See 18 U. S. C. §§2518 (l)(e), (8)(d), Another part is
“the fact that identification of an individual in an application for an intercept order triggers other statutory provisions. First, § 2518 (1) (e) requires an intercept application to disclose all previous applications ‘involving any of the same persons . . . specified in the application.’ . . . Second, § 2518 (8) (d) mandates that an inventory notice be served upon ‘the persons named in the order or the application.’ ” Ante, at 425 n. 14 (emphasis added).
Yet in determining whether the identification requirement “directly and substantially implement [s] the congressional intention to limit the use of intercept procedures,” United States v. Giordano, supra, at 527, or plays a “substantive role” in the “regulatory system” established by Congress, United States v. Chavez, supra; at 578, the Court ignores the requirement’s function as a statutory “trigger.” In its analysis, the Court focuses solely on whether a list of ad*447ditional names would affect a judge who must decide whether to issue a warrant. The Court reasons that once the judge has concluded that the specific requirements of § 2518 (3)1 have been met, the presence of additional names in the warrant application could not change his decision. Ante, at 435-436. Failure to provide those names is, therefore, insignificant.
The Court’s reasoning is doubly flawed. First, a judge is not required to issue a warrant if the prerequisites of § 2518 (3) are satisfied; he may do so. Once he determines that the § 2518 (3) requirements have been met, he still must decide whether the invasion of privacy by the proposed wiretap is justified under the circumstances.'2 Second, what is at issue here is more than a simple list of names. Section 2518 (l)(e) requires that the Government disclose to the court the history of all prior applications to intercept the communications of anyone named in a warrant application.
*448A history of recent applications would at the least cause a judge to consider whether the application before him was an attempt to circumvent the restrictive rulings of another judge or to continue an unjustified invasion of privacy.3 The decision whether to issue the warrant would certainly be affected by such consideration.4
It is true, as the Court notes, ante, at 436 n. 23,5 that there is no allegation in this case that had the District Court been informed that the Government expected to overhear respondents Donovan, Buzzacco, and Robbins discussing illegal gambling activities it would not have issued a warrant. But that fact is irrelevant to an analysis of the role of the naming requirement in the regulatory system established by Congress. In Giordano, the Court rejected the argument that the Attorney General’s failure to authorize the application for a warrant could be disregarded because the Attorney General had later ratified the application, thus demonstrating that he would have approved it originally. 416 U. S., at 523-524, n. 12. The important consideration was whether the requirement of high-level authorization was designed to play an important role, not whether it would have mattered in the particular case. The same analysis should be used here.
*449Moreover, even where there is no prior interception or application to disclose, as is apparently the case here, the naming requirement plays a vital role in the system designed by Congress. For unless that requirement is complied with from the first interception, no judge will know that a later interception is not the first. In addition, the naming requirement triggers the mandatory notification provision of § 2518 (8)(d), another important component of the congressional design.6
Thus, I conclude that the naming requirement recognized by the majority does play a “substantive role” in the system designed by Congress to limit the use of electronic surveillance. Failure to comply with that requirement, therefore, should lead to suppression on the ground that “the communication was unlawfully intercepted.” 18 U. S. C. § 2518 (10) (a) (i).
II
The Court’s discussion of the consequences of the Government’s failure to comply with the notice provision of § 2518 (8) (d) parallels its discussion of the naming requirement, and is similarly flawed. The Court does recognize that the notice provision was designed to assure the community that the wiretap technique is reasonably employed and that “Congress placed considerable emphasis on that aspect of the overall statutory scheme.” Ante, at 439. But because notice occurs after the intercept is completed, and because notice is not itself “an independent restraint on resort to the wiretap procedure,” the Court concludes that failure to notify does not render an interception “unlawful” under § 2518 (10) (a) (i). Ante, at 439.
Again, the Court takes too narrow a view of the provision at issue, ignoring its place in the system Congress has created to restrain wiretapping. That system involves not only direct *450restraints on applying for a warrant, but also restraints which reduce wiretaps by providing sanctions for misuse of surveillance techniques. Those sanctions are both criminal, 18 U. S. C. § 2511 (1), and civil, 18 U. S. C. § 2520. Congress designed the notice provisions of § 2518 (8) (d) to provide the information necessary to make the civil sanctions of § 2520 meaningful. The congressional analysis of § 2520 states:
“Injunctive relief, with its attendant discovery proceedings, is not intended to be available .... It is expected that civil suits, if any, will instead grow out of the filing of inventories under section 2518 (8) (d).” S. Rep. No. 1097, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 107 (1968).
See also id., at 105.
The Court’s conclusion that the notice provision is not central dismantles this carefully designed congressional structure.
Ill
The Court’s opinion implies that if the violations of Title III considered here had been intentional, the result would be different. Ante, at 436 n. 23, 439 n. 26. This must be so, for surely this Court would not tolerate the Government’s intentional disregard of duties imposed on it by Congress. I also assume that if the Government fails to establish procedures which offer reasonable assurance that it will strictly adhere to the statutory requirements, see ante, at 439-440, resulting failures to comply will be recognized as intentional. There is, therefore, reason to hope that the Court’s admonition that the Government should obey the law will have some effect in the future.
But that hope is a poor substitute for certainty that the Government will make every effort to fulfill its responsibilities under Title III. We can obtain that certainty only by according full recognition to the role of the naming and notice *451requirements in the statutory scheme created by Congress. I respectfully dissent from the Court’s failure to do so.

 Title 18 U. S. C. § 2518 (3) provides, in pertinent part:
“Upon such application the judge may enter an ex parte order ... if the judge determines on the basis of the facts submitted by the applicant that—
“ (a) there is probable cause for belief that an individual is committing, has committed, or is about to commit a particular offense enumerated in section 2516 of this chapter;
“(b) there is probable cause for belief that particular communications concerning that offense will be obtained through such interception;
“(c) normal investigative procedures have been tried and have failed or reasonably appear to be unlikely to succeed if tried or to be too dangerous;
“(d) there is probable cause for belief that the facilities from which, or the place where, the wire or oral communications are to be intercepted are being used, or are about to be used, in connection with the commission of such offense, or are leased to, listed in the name of, or commonly used by such person.”

 The information which the applicant is required to provide to the district court by §§ 2518 (1) (d)-(f) would be superfluous if the decision whether to issue a warrant depended only on the findings specified in §2518 (3).

 Cf. United States v. Bellosi, 163 U. S. App. D. C. 273, 501 F. 2d 833 (1974).

 Thus, this case is unlike United States v. Chaves. There, the Court concluded that the misidentification of the authorizing official as an Assistant Attorney General when the Attorney General had actually authorized the warrant application could not have affected the judge’s decision to issue the warrant. 416 U. S., at 572.

 The Court actually states only that there is no suggestion that the failure to name respondents kept from the judge information “that might have prompted the court to conclude that probable cause was lacking.” As I have shown, that formulation understates the District Court’s role.

 See Part II, infra.