Court Opinion

ID: 9419245
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:47:54.798216+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:16.566182
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Roberts
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The petitioners and another were indicted for conspiracy 1 to violate § 29 (b) (5) of the Bankruptcy Act2 3by receiving, or attempting to obtain, money for acting, or forbearing to act, in a bankruptcy proceeding. They were convicted and sentenced, and the judgments were affirmed by the Circuit Court of Appeals.3 The facts are fully stated in the opinion below and we shall advert only to those essential to an understanding of the questions open in this court.
The petitioners were lawyers. One of them, Martin Goldman, approached Hoffman, the attorney representing *131an assignee for the benefit of creditors, with the proposition that the assignee sell the assets in bulk for an ostensible price which would net the creditors a certain dividend, but in fact at a secret greater price, and that Hoffman and the petitioners should divide the difference between them. Hoffman refused. Shulman, one of the petitioners, then filed an involuntary petition in bankruptcy against the assignor, in such form that it could be dismissed on motion and without notice, and obtained a stay of the assignee’s sale. The bankruptcy court refused to revoke the stay, and Shulman again approached Hoffman stating that, if he agreed to the proposed arrangement, the bankruptcy petition could be dismissed and the plan consummated. Hoffman said he would agree, but he went at once to the referee and disclosed the scheme. A federal investigator was consulted and it was arranged that Hoffman should continue to negotiate with the petitioners. He did so. Numerous conferences were had and the necessary papers drawn and steps taken. Success was frustrated only by the refusal of a creditor to release for the offered percentage of his claim.
Meantime, two federal agents, with the assistance of the building superintendent, obtained access at night to Shulman’s office and to the adjoining one and installed a listening apparatus in a small aperture in the partition wall, with a wire to be attached to earphones extending into the adjoining office. This was for the purpose of overhearing a conference with Hoffman, set for the following afternoon. The next afternoon, one of the agents returned to the adjoining room with two others and a stenographer. They connected the earphones to the apparatus but it would not work. They had with them another device, a detectaphone, having a receiver so delicate as, when placed against the partition wall, to pick up sound waves originating in Shulman’s office, and means for amplifying and hearing them. With this *132the agents overheard, and the stenographer transcribed, portions of conversations between Hoffman, Shulman, and Martin Goldman on several occasions, and also heard what Shulman said when talking over the telephone from his office.
Before the trial, Shulman learned the facts and made a motion, in which the other petitioners joined, to suppress the evidence thus obtained. A preliminary hearing was had and the motion was denied. At the trial, the evidence was admitted over objection that its receipt violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution and, as respects Shulman’s talk into the telephone receiver, violated also § 605 of the Federal Communications Act.4
At the preliminary hearing, and at the trial, counsel for petitioners demanded that they be permitted to inspect the notes and memoranda made by the agents during the investigation, the agents having admitted they had refreshed their recollection from these papers prior to testifying. The trial judge ruled that the papers need not be exhibited by the witnesses.
1. We hold there was no error in denying the inspection of the witnesses’ memoranda. The judge was clearly right in his ruling at the preliminary hearing, as the petitioners should not have had access, prior to trial, to material constituting a substantial portion of the Government’s case.
We think it the better rule that where a witness does not use his notes or memoranda in court, a party has no absolute right to have them produced and to inspect them. Where, as here, they are not only the witness’ notes but are also part of the Government’s files, a large discretion must be allowed the trial judge: We are unwilling to hold that the discretion was abused in this case.
*1332. We hold that the overhearing and divulgence of what Shulman said into a telephone receiver was not a violation of § 605.
The petitioners contend that a communication falls within the protection of the statute once a speaker has uttered words with the intent that they constitute a transmission of a telephone conversation. The validity of the contention must be tested by the terms of the Act fairly construed. So considered, there was neither a “communication” nor an “interception” within the meaning of the Act. The protection intended and afforded by the statute is of the means of communication and not of the secrecy of the conversation. Section 3 embodies the following definition:5
“(a) Wire communication’ or ‘communication by wire’ means the transmission of 'writing, signs, signals, pictures, and sounds of all kinds by aid of wire, cable, or other like connection between the points of origin and reception of such transmission, including all instrumentalities, facilities, apparatus, and services (among other things, the receipt, forwarding, and delivery of communications) incidental to such transmission.”
What is protected is the message itself throughout the course of its transmission by the instrumentality or agency of transmission.6 Words written by a person and intended ultimately to be carried as so written to a telegraph office do not constitute a communication within the terms of the Act until they are handed to an agent of the telegraph company. Words spoken in a room in the presence of another into a telephone receiver do not constitute a communication by wire within the meaning of the section. Letters deposited in the Post Office are *134protected from examination by federal statute,7 but it could not rightly be claimed that the office carbon of such letter, or indeed the letter itself before it has left the office of the sender, comes within the protection of the statute. The same view of the scope of the Communications Act follows from the natural meaning of the term “intercept.” As has rightly been held, this word indicates the taking or seizure by the way or before arrival at the destined place. It does not ordinarily connote the obtaining of what is to be sent before, or at the moment, it leaves the possession of the proposed sender, or after, or at the moment, it comes into the possession of the intended receiver.8 The listening in the next room to the words of Shulman as he talked into the telephone receiver was no more the interception of a wire communication, within the meaning of the Act, than would have been the overhearing of the conversation by one sitting in the same room.
3. We hold that what was heard by the use of the detectaphone was not made illegal by trespass or unlawful entry.
The petitioners’ contend that the trespass committed in Shulman’s office when the listening apparatus was there installed, and what was learned as the result of that trespass, was of some assistance on the following day in locating the receiver of the detectaphone in the adjoining office, and this connection between the trespass and the listening resulted in a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Whatever trespass was committed was connected with the installation of the listening apparatus. As respects it, the trespass might be said to be continuing and, if the apparatus had been used it might, with reason, be claimed that the continuing trespass was the concomi*135tant of its use. On the other hand, the relation between the trespass and the use of the detectaphone was that of antecedent and consequent. Both courts below have found that the trespass did not aid materially in the use of the detectaphone. Since we accept these concurrent findings, we need not consider a contention based on a denial of their verity.
4. We hold that the use of the detectaphone by Government agents was not a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
In asking us to hold that the information obtained was obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and that its use at the trial was, therefore, banned by the Amendment, the petitioners recognize that they must reckon with our decision in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438. They argue that the case may be distinguished. The suggested ground of distinction is that the Olmstead case dealt with the tapping of telephone wires, and the court adverted to the fact that, in using a telephone, the speaker projects his voice beyond the confines of his home or office and, therefore, assumes the risk that his message may be intercepted. It is urged that where, as in the present case, one talks in his own office, and intends his conversation to be confined within the four walls of the room, he does not intend his voice shall go beyond those walls and it is not to be assumed he takes the risk of someone’s use of a delicate detector in the next room. We think, however, the distinction is too nice for practical application of the Constitutional guarantee, and no reasonable or logical distinction can be drawn between what federal agents did in the present case and state officers did in the Olmstead case.
The petitioners ask us, if we are unable to distinguish Olmstead v. United States, to overrule it. This we are unwilling to do. That case was the subject of prolonged consideration by this court. The views of the court, and *136of the dissenting justices, were expressed clearly and at length. To rehearse and reappraise the arguments pro and con, and the conflicting views exhibited in the opinions, would serve no good purpose. Nothing now can be profitably added to what was there said. It suffices to say that we adhere to the opinion there expressed.
The judgments are

Affirmed.

Me. Chief Justice Stone and Me. Justice Frankfueteb:
Had a majority of the Court been willing at this time to overrule the Olmstead case, we should have been happy to join them. But as they have declined to do so, and as we think this case is indistinguishable in principle from Olmstead’s, we have no occasion to repeat here the dissenting views in that case with which we agree.
Me. Justice Jackson took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.

 Criminal Code § 37; 18 U.'S. C. § 88.

 11 U. S. C. § 52 (b) (5).

 118 F. 2d 310.

 Act of June 19, 1934, 48 Stat. 1064, 1103; 47 U. S. C. § 605.

 47 U. S. C. § 153.

 Compare Diamond v. United States, 108 F. 2d 859, 860; United States v. Polakoff, 112 F. 2d 888, 890.

 Ex parte Jackson, 96 U. S. 727.

 United States v. Yee Ping Jong, 26 F. Supp. 69, 70.