Court Opinion

ID: 9678762
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:31:29.192837+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:07.737118
License: Public Domain

SIMONETT, Justice
(concurring specialty)-
I agree with the court’s opinion but wish to comment on the majority’s statement that “[i]f, in their good faith efforts in executing the warrant they [the law enforcement agents] seized conversations beyond those authorized by the warrant, the remedy would be to limit the suppression to those conversations seized in violation of the warrant and statute.”
*662In other words, only conversations that are properly seized may be admitted. This is not the same thing, it seems to me, as saying that only nonpertinent conversations will be suppressed. If an unlawful intercept occurs because of a failure to minimize and a pertinent conversation is obtained thereby, that conversation would be suppressible. See United States v. Suquet, 547 F.Supp. 1034, 1044 (1982); United States v. Dorfman, 542 F.Supp. 345, 395 (N.D.Ill.1982).1
Some eases suggest, further, that a distinction should be made between minimization efforts which are simply inadequate or fail to comply with the warrant requirements and those situations where there is a “flagrant disregard” of the minimization limitation. See, e.g., Suquet, 547 F.Supp. at 1039-40, and cases there cited. When minimization is flagrantly disregarded so that the particularized search authorized by the warrant becomes, in practice, a general search prohibited by the fourth amendment, total suppression of the intercepts may be appropriate. People v. Brenes, 42 N.Y.2d 41, 396 N.Y.S.2d 629, 364 N.E.2d 1322, 1328 (1977) (total suppression upheld where agents acted “as if in defiance” of the minimization requirements). Though difficult to apply, it seems to me this distinction may have merit and might be applicable in a case of egregious monitoring abuse, such as where no effort at all is made at minimization.
Here, although the effort fell short, the agents did attempt to minimize their interceptions by distinguishing between pertinent and nonpertinent conversations and by turning off the recording device for those which were nonpertinent. The effort fell short because the agents should also have stopped listening when they were not recording. This violation, however, was not in flagrant disregard or defiance of the law; indeed, it was apparently based on an alternative interpretation of the statute, an interpretation we now reject. I would, therefore, affirm the trial court’s ruling.

. If the government continues to intercept, for example, a person not named in the authorizing order after his or her identity has been established and a pattern of innocent conversation takes place, it would be of no moment that eventually that individual was heard discussing incriminating matter; the conversation would still be subject to suppression because it would have been “unlawful” for the monitors to be overhearing the conversation in the first instance.
United States v. Dorfman, 542 F.Supp. 345, 395 (N.D.Ill.1982).