Court Opinion

ID: 9717569
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:06:07.481519+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:54.048206
License: Public Domain

Shanahan, J.,
dissenting.
In apparently answering one question, the majority raises but avoids a more serious question.
In response to Brennen’s motion to suppress, the State presented no witness to establish that minimization in any degree had been achieved or even attempted in compliance with the order expressly directing minimization throughout the wiretap. The wiretap logs, reflecting only some of the conversations monitored, are conspicuously incomplete and, therefore, lay an insufficient foundation concerning minimization. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 86-705(6) (Reissue 1981) in pertinent part provides: “Every order . . . shall contain a provision [that the wiretap] shall be conducted in such a way as to minimize the interception of communications not otherwise subject to interception ...” Brennen has assigned as error “interception [of his communications] was not conducted in *460such a way as to minimize the interception of communication not subject to interception.” Brief for Appellant at 3.
With regard to minimization Bremen I treated only the omission of statutory language in reference to the wiretap order, namely, the order’s failure to include a verbatim recital of the provision for minimization found in § 86-705. See State v. Brennen, 214 Neb. 734, 336 N.W.2d 79. Bremen I did not dispose of the question “whether they [interceptions of communications] were minimized sufficiently,” notwithstanding such averment in the majority opinion. As a result of osmosis, a question concerning statutory language relative to the wiretap order (Bremen I) has become resolution of a factual question about sufficiency of minimization in the present case. More fascinating is the process by which police inaction in minimization has been transformed into substantial compliance with the minimization requirement of § 86-705(6).
Protection of personal security found in the fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution and article I, § 7, of the Nebraska Constitution extends to conversations as subjects of a wiretap “search.” Cf. Berger v. New York, 388 U.S. 41, 87 S. Ct. 1873, 18 L. Ed. 2d 1040 (1967) (“search” of conversations); cf., also, Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S. Ct. 507, 19 L. Ed. 2d 576 (1967) (“search and seizure” of conversations).
“Unreasonable searches and seizures” prohibited by the Constitutions, state and federal, are in part prevented in Nebraska’s wiretap law by requiring a magistrate’s determination of “probable cause” and the additional requirement of minimized intrusion on conversations tapped. Clearly, minimization is an integral part of any wiretap order and an indispensable condition to be fulfilled for a valid wiretap. “The duty of minimization arises from the particularity and reasonableness requirements of the fourth amendment. . . .” Post-Authorization Problems in the Use of Wiretaps: Minimization, Amendment, Sealing, and Inventories, 61 Cornell L. Rev. 92, 93 (1975). Absent minimization in execution of a wiretap, an officer has “a roving commission to ‘seize’ any and all conversations.” Berger v. New York, supra at 59.
While Nebraska’s wiretap law, Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 86-701 et *461seq. (Reissue 1981), may impose a greater restriction on electronic surveillance and may afford greater protection against unreasonable searches and seizures than is provided by the Constitutions, the wiretap law of Nebraska cannot expand the use of electronic surveillance beyond the constitutional safeguard against unreasonable “searches and seizures.” See State v. Golter, 216 Neb. 36, 342 N.W.2d 650 (1983). Required minimization is crucial to preserve the constitutional guarantee transcending any statute or order making a wiretap available to police.
The minimization directive is a shorthand method of instructing the executing officers to remain within the authority granted by the terms of the eavesdropping order and obey the constitutional proscription of general searches. Its purpose is “to prevent improper invasion of the right of privacy provided by the fourth amendment and to curtail the indiscriminate seizure of communications.” Without minimization, the execution of a surveillance order amounts to a general search.
J. Carr, The Law of Electronic Surveillance, Executing an Electronic Search § 507[1] at 256 (1977).
“The bedrock of our wiretap law is stringent judicial monitoring of law enforcement agencies seeking to use and using electronic surveillance — an investigative technique highly intrusive upon the privacy of the citizenry.” State v. Golter, supra at 41, 342 N.W.2d at 653. Consequently, without minimization of intrusion a wiretap is no better than or different from a general search, which is condemned by the Constitutions.
It is noteworthy that some of the questioned taps related to pay phones and necessarily involved a high expectation of privacy of persons using public phones. A lack of specified minimization under such circumstances is a serious deficiency concerning minimization required by § 86-705(6) of the Nebraska wiretap law. Cf., United States v. James, 494 F.2d 1007 (D.C. Cir. 1974) (government must adopt procedures to limit interception when wiretapping public phones used by persons not under investigation); United States v. John, 508 F.2d 1134, 1139 n.8 (8th Cir. 1975) (interception of *462communications only when it was determined by physical surveillance that a suspect was using the pay telephone).
The majority imposes no obligation on the State to make a prima facie case of compliance with the minimization requirement in the order and statute on which a wiretap is based. Requirement of a prima facie showing of minimization by the government has been adopted in various federal and state courts. See, United States v. Armocida, 515 F.2d 29 (3d Cir. 1975); United States v. Quintana, 508 F.2d 867 (7th Cir. 1975); People v. Di Stefano, 38 N.Y.2d 640, 345 N.E.2d 548, 382 N.Y.S.2d 5 (1976).
In demanding minimization of intrusion Nebraska’s wiretap law contains a constitutionally compulsory condition precedent before the State is entitled to utilize information obtained through a wiretap. Without fulfillment of such condition the State’s claim to wiretap information cannot be constitutionally honored. Fulfillment of a condition precedent before a claim can be honored is not a novelty in our jurisprudence. Protection of a substantial right of the people far outweighs any comparatively small burden on the government in requiring a prima facie showing of minimization of intrusion regarding a wiretap. Exempting the State from such a relatively minor burden is obvious in the majority opinion, but, as expressed by Justice Bradley in the not-so-recent case of Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 635, 6 S. Ct. 524, 29 L. Ed. 746 (1886):
It may be that it is the obnoxious thing in its mildest and least repulsive form; but illegitimate and unconstitutional practices get their first footing in that way, namely, by silent approaches and slight deviations from legal modes of procedure. This can only be obviated by adhering to the rule that constitutional provisions for the security of person and property should be liberally construed. A close and literal construction deprives them of half their efficacy, and leads to gradual depreciation of the right, as if it consisted more in sound than in substance. It is the duty of courts to be watchful for the constitutional rights of the citizen, and against any stealthy encroachments thereon. Their motto should be obsta principiis [trans: resist initial encroachments; TMS].
*463Any product of the Brennen wiretap is inadmissible.
In dispensing police from categorical compliance with mandatory minimization, the majority makes reduction of intrusion a meaningless matter. One does not need a wiretap to hear the call to the Constitutions as another segment of the wall around personal security collapses. In the meantime, who guards us against the guardians?
White, J., joins in this dissent.