Court Opinion

ID: 9641308
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:28:09.753769+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:36.522114
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
This decision and that in the companion case of United States v. Fallon, 2 Cir., 112 F.2d 894, mark a long step beyond previous interdictions of the use of telephonic communications as legal evidence. Heretofore it has been settled that the two parties to a conversation by telephone are immune from being confronted in court with evidence of what they said obtained without their knowledge by the tapping of the telephone wires. Nardone v. United States, 302 U.S. 379, 58 S.Ct. 275, 82 L.Ed 314; Id., 308 U.S. 338, 60 S.Ct. 266, 84 L.Ed. 307; Weiss v. United States, 308 U.S. 321, 60 S.Ct. 269, 84 L.Ed. 298. Now it appears that even one party to the conversation is to have his use of such evidence curtailed in ways and to an extent which are not made wholly clear. I cannot believe it is reasonable to go so far. The governing statute, 47 U.S.C.A. § 605, provides that no person not being authorized by the sender shall intercept any communication by wire and divulge or publish its existence or contents. As pointed out in United States v. Yee Ping Jong, D.C.W.D.Pa., 26 F.Supp. 69, the verb “intercept” means “to take or seize by the way, or before arrival at the destined place” (Webster’s New International Dictionary, 2d Ed.), and does not aptly refer to a communication which has reached its intended destination and is recorded at one end of the line by one of the participants or, it should be added, by his direction. Reasons of policy justify the making of telephonic communications privileged for the two parties involved; they do not justify making them so privileged to one party as against use by the other.
There are niceties of distinction which may be made between the two cases here, as well as between them and other similar situations where telephonic conversations may be recorded. Except for the suggested exception based on implied consent of the other party, the opinion herewith disregards such distinctions — wisely so, as I believe, since they cannot affect essentials. In this case Kafton, the initiator of the conversation, arranged with the F. B. I. agent to make use of equipment already installed and in common use at the F. B. I. office, where the call was put in. In Fal-lon’s case the agent had been staying with Reilly, the Government’s witness, at the latter’s home and for his protection after his testimony before the Grand Jury; and when Fallon left a request that he be called, Reilly and the agent arranged for the installation of the equipment in the first instance in Reilly’s home, in the second instance at Reilly’s summer camp, and then Reilly made the calls. There can be no real distinction — there is none suggested in the statute or by common sense — between these recordings and a transcription made by a private secretary over the telephone in an outer office, or by a servant on an upstairs extension in a house, or even by a person listening at the telephone receiver held by the party to the conversation. Nor can it be of importance whether the transcriber or the party first makes the suggestion for the recording; in either event it is the party who has the power to direct or prohibit its transcription. Neither is it important whether evidence of the conversation comes from the mechanical device of a record or from testimony of those directed to listen in, except that the mechanical device gives the more trustworthy evidence. Indeed, in the Fallon case the agents themselves testified as to what they had overheard, testimony which must be considered objectionable under the decision here.
Hence, but for the suggested exception of implied consent, every bit of evidence of this kind must be illegal save only that given orally by the party himself. And yet this last reservation makes all the other exclusions unreal, as though the trial must be a kind of game where one party may pit his recollection or his trustworthiness against the other party, with the impartial record which would settle the question resolutely excluded. That is, the best evidence must be rejected, contrary to all modern trends in the law of evidence.1 The unreality is made the greater if we attempt a differentiation based upon im*892plied consent of the other party. The rationale of such a distinction must go back to a deduction from common experience that one by writing a letter to another or by communicating directly or indirectly with such other does naturally place himself in the power of the other to make use of the communication for his own benefit. If indulged in at all, the idea of consent should naturally apply to the entire communication. That seems not only the reasonable, but also the only practical, line of demarcation.
If, however, consent is not to be found from voluntary participation in a conversation by telephone, then the court must examine each conversation to see if it contains something suggesting consent. That, it would appear, can be found if, and only if, the conversation was to the advantage of the now objecting party. A test of consent so unreal may well lead to the automatic exclusion of all such evidence when objection is made. But, further, a rule which operates to exclude testimony disadvantageous to one party only has consequences at once serious and socially undesirable. From the public standpoint it means that if criminals take the precaution of communicating with each other by wire or radio they obtain a new kind of partial privilege for themselves, and lessen the risk that one of their number can effectively betray them to the police. From the private standpoint it means that a party to the conversation will not be able to protect himself effectively against misconstruction of his conversation or against criminal threats or attempted blackmail. He is not even permitted the simple, natural course of having his private secretary overhear and transcribe the conversation; he and she both would be guilty of a criminal offense. For under 47 U.S.C.A. § 501, any person who “willfully and knowingly” — as here — does a thing prohibited by the statute is guilty of an offense punishable by fine and imprisonment. Reilly testified that he consented to the recording because he felt he would rather have the truth of whatever he said recorded than made a matter of conjecture.. That natural coursé will now be outlawed.
Nor do I see grounds for distinguishing between a record made for the- party’s own private convenience and a record by him made available to public officials investigating a crime. No such distinction is suggested in the statute. Passing any question why, if a party to a telephonic conversation is himself to be admitted as a Government witness, we should refuse proof of the truth or falsity of his story, we may ask how such a distinction could be applied in practice. In the cases before us Kafton and Reilly were acting in last analysis for their own benefit and to their own great advantage. Indeed Reilly was liable to be indicted by the Grand Jury then in session; it was vitally necessary for him to furnish proof disassociating himself from Fallon. As will often, perhaps usually, happen in such circumstances, the party consenting to the use could save himself only by compromising the other party. And of this necessity he. must, after all, be the judge.
Of course, if a part of the conversation is excluded, all must be, including the consenting party’s own statements, or else the privilege is rendered largely worthless. Probably the willing party's statements will at most be only self-serving, but in any event they will be too revealing as to the nature of the remainder of the conversation to be admissible.
Now . a restriction so far-reaching and so unusual with respect to a device in such common and extensive use as the telephone should be clearly expressed and not discovered only by the process of inference. In the second Nardone case, supra, 308 U.S. at page 340, 60 S.Ct. at page 267, 84 L.Ed. 307, Justice Frankfurter said: “Any claim for the exclusion of evidence logically relevant in -criminal prosecutions is heavily handicapped. It must be justified by an over-riding public policy expressed in the Constitution or the law of the land.” And he held, upon a weighing of opposing policies, that the statutory requirement, construed in the first Nardone case, 302 U.S. 379, 58 S.Ct. 275, 82 L.Ed. 314, to prohibit evidence directly secured by wire-tapping, would also forbid the use of evidence indirectly obtained as a result thereof, since it was “a fruit of the poisonous tree.” In the Weiss case, supra, 308 U.S. at page 330, 60 S.Ct. at page 272, 84 L.Ed. 298, justice Roberts, replying to the contention that the evidence had become admissible because the defendants took the stand to testify as to it, stressed the fact that the evidence had been divulged to the Government before trial, *893thus forcing the defendants to testify, such divulgence “was not consented to by either of the parties to any of the telephone conversations,” and “the participants were ignorant of the interception of the messages and did not consent thereto.” These cases show that the prohibition against wire-tapping must have its reasonable limits.
As has often been pointed out, the objection to wire-tapping is a logical development of the feeling against unlawful searches and seizures — a development shown by Justice Holmes’ characterization of it as a “dirty business,” in dissenting in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 48 S.Ct. 564, 72 L.Ed. 944, 66 A.L.R. 376. The objection has been spelled out of the general terms of the statute upon a careful evaluation of the social need of bringing the guilty to justice and the personal rights so precious to the individual. Or as Justice Roberts said in the first Nardone case, supra, 302 U.S. at page 383, 58 S.Ct. at page 277, 82 L.Ed. 314, “Congress may have thought it less important that some offenders should go unwhipped of justice than that officers should resort to methods deemed inconsistent with ethical standards and destructive of personal liberty.” The general view of commentators has been that the doctrine already promulgated goes to the edge of the requirements of the public policy.2 There can be no such public policy to hamper the normal use of conversation by an individual. If I willingly talk to a man either face to face or by telephone, it cannot be dirty business, or indeed more than I ought to expect, if he uses our conversation for his own ends.
In last analysis we should turn to the statute itself, for that is what we are construing. And that, it seems to me, by its terms excludes the construction here placed upon it. The statute does not refer directly to a tapping of the wires; it provides only that the communication must not be intercepted; it contains none of the exceptions or refinements discussed above. If the communication has reached the person for whom it is intended, it is hard to see how it is intercepted when that person directs it to be transcribed. Other parts of this lengthy section tend to support this view. The first prohibition, limiting publication by a person receiving or assisting in receiving, or transmitting, or assisting in transmitting, a communication, seems obviously directed to agents of communications companies, for it contains exceptions for divulgence through authorized channels of transmission or reception, or to proper accounting or distributing officers of the various communicating centers, or to the master of a ship under whom the person is serving, or in response to a subpoena issued by a court of competent jurisdiction, or on demand of other lawful authority. Next comes the prohibition in issue here, and then follows this highly significant provision: “No person not being entitled thereto shall receive or assist in receiving any interstate or foreign communication by wire or radio and use the same or any information therein contained for his own benefit or for the benefit of another not entitled thereto.” The clear inference would appear to be that the person entitled to receive the communication may himself use it, or the information therein contained, for his own benefit or may have someone else use it for him. The final prohibition is against use by a person of an illegally intercepted communication “for his own benefit or for the benefit of another not entitled thereto.” This carries out the same thought. The receiver of a communication is permitted to' use it for his own benefit. I think the proffered testimony in each case came within this reservation and was therefore properly received in evidence. In my opinion the judgments of conviction should be affirmed.

 Cf. A. L. I. Codo of Evidence, Tentative Draft No. 1, Hules 110-120; Hearsay and the English Evidence Act, 1938, 34 Ill.L.Rev. 974.

 53 Harv.L.Rev. 863; 1 Bill of Rights Rev. 48; 34 Ill.L.Rev. 758; 38 Mich. L.Rev. 1097 ; 27 Mich.L.Rev. 78; 80 U. of Pa.L.Rev. 436; 10 Rocky Mt.L.Rev. 284; 12 Temple L.Q. 409; 16 Tex.L.Rev. 574; Waite, Reasonable Search and Research, 86 U. of Pa.L.Rev. 623; Greenman, Wire-Tapping: Its Relation to Civil Liberties (3938) 7, 45, 46 ; 8 Wigmore, Evidence (3d Ed.3.940) §§ 2384b, 2287.