Court Opinion

ID: 9726793
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:09:00.991185+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:30.869778
License: Public Domain

Liacos, C.J.
(dissenting). The court today holds that the defendant lacks standing to challenge the admissibility of covertly obtained videotapes which show the defendant purchasing marihuana from undercover State troopers. The analysis adopted by the court to reach this result, however, could be applied just as easily to deny standing to challenge secret videotapes of any number of legal activities undertaken by citizens of this Commonwealth each day. Furthermore, the court’s opinion will encourage the police to engage in surreptitious videotaping without a warrant specifically authorizing such activity. The warrant in this case on which the court relies to justify the secret videotaping activity, as well as the secret audio recording, is inappropriate for both these forms of electronic surveillance. I am concerned that the impact of today’s decision will be to sanction unregulated covert electronic surveillance, thereby diminishing the privacy rights of the people of this Commonwealth. Accordingly, I dissent.
The court bases its denial of standing on the conclusion that the defendant could not have had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his conversations in the motel room. In support of this conclusion, the court notes that: (1) the defendant was negotiating a major business transaction with people he and his associates had just met; (2) the negotiations took place in a motel room which was registered in the name of a *676person about whom the defendant knew almost nothing; and (3) the transaction between the defendant and the State troopers was conducted at “arm’s length,” with “manifestations of suspicion and distrust.” Ante at 672. My difficulty with the court’s analysis in this regard is that the factors it considers in rejecting the defendant’s expectation of privacy as unreasonable would appear to apply with equal force to a legitimate business meeting conducted in a hotel suite or conference room. Many lawful business transactions are carried out between strangers and in surroundings over which at least one party may have no control. Furthermore, it should surprise no one that many, if not most, legitimate business negotiations are conducted at “arm’s length” and involve “manifestations of suspicion and distrust.” Would not society accept as reasonable, for example, a real estate buyer’s expectation that confidential negotiations regarding the sale of land conducted in a hotel conference room rented by the seller would remain private? The reasonable expectation of privacy analysis laid out by the court provides no guidance as to how this situation is distinguished from that of the defendant. If I am correct in my assessment of the court’s opinion, the right of our citizens to challenge covert electronic surveillance of legitimate private activity will be improperly diminished.
The court appears confident that privacy rights will not suffer as a result of its opinion in part because the State troopers conducting the electronic surveillance in this case had a search warrant. The court recognizes that the warrant authorized only audio surveillance, and not video surveillance, but concludes that the additional unwarranted video surveillance was “a relatively minor intrusion beyond the warranted audio recording.” Ante at 674. As an initial matter, I suggest that this court should tread with extreme caution in approving the seizure of items not specifically described in a search warrant. Article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights specifically requires that all search warrants “be . . . accompanied with a special designation of the persons or objects of search, arrest, or seizure.” See *677Commonwealth v. Rutkowski, 406 Mass. 673, 675-676 (1990); Commonwealth v. Taylor, 383 Mass. 272, 275 (1981). See also G. L. c. 276, § 2 (“[s]earch warrants . . . shall particularly describe the property or articles to be searched for”). The fact that a judge issued a warrant authorizing the State troopers in this case to search for, and seize, one type of evidence should not be taken as providing the police carte blanche to seize any evidence they can lay their hands on. This court should be particularly sensitive to the particularity requirement of art. 14 when the unwarranted search involves electronic surveillance. Video surveillance has been described as “exceedingly intrusive, especially in combination . . . with audio surveillance, and inherently indiscriminate, and . . . could be grossly abused — to eliminate personal privacy as understood in modern Western nations.” United States v. Torres, 751 F.2d 875, 882 (7th Cir. 1984), cert, denied, 470 U.S. 1087 (1985). See United States v. Cuevas-Sanchez, 821 F.2d 248, 250 (5th Cir. 1987) (videotape surveillance described as a “potentially indiscriminate and most intrusive method of surveillance”); Application for Order Authorizing Interception of Oral Communications & Videotape Surveillance, 513 F. Supp. 421, 422 (D. Mass. 1980) (combination of videotape and audio surveillance described as “extraordinarily intrusive”). Given the exceptionally intrusive nature of video surveillance, this court should be loath to allow the admission of covert videotapes in the absence of a warrant specifically authorizing their use for a particular purpose.
I am also concerned with the court’s conclusion that the audio surveillance in this case was properly authorized by a warrant. Ante at 673-674. The troopers recorded and seized the conversations in the motel room pursuant to a search warrant obtained under G. L. c. 276, §§ 1-7 (1988 ed.), which provides in general for search warrants. However, the Legislature has provided a special procedure to obtain audio surveillance search warrants under G. L. c. 272, § 99 (1988 ed.), which differs substantially from the terms of G. L. c. 276, §§ 1-7. The most significant difference between the *678warrant procedures of the two statutes is that under G. L. c. 272, § 99 E 3, a warrant applicant must show that “normal investigative procedures have been tried and have failed or reasonably appear unlikely to succeed if tried.” This requirement demonstrates the Legislature’s intention that electronic surveillance of citizens by law enforcement officials in this Commonwealth be the exception, and not the rule. This requirement, it would appear, is directly linked to the Legislature’s conclusion that “the uncontrolled development and unrestricted use of modern electronic surveillance devices pose grave dangers to the privacy of all citizens of the commonwealth.” G. L. c. 272, § 99 A.
While a warrant under G. L. c. 272, § 99, takes into account the Legislature’s concern with the dangers of electronic surveillance, a warrant to conduct electronic surveillance under G. L. c. 276, §§ 1-7, incorporates no such concern. Ac. 276 warrant could issue irrespective of the fact that the evidence to be obtained through electronic surveillance could be gathered easily through standard police procedures. Surreptitious electronic surveillance, conducted pursuant to c. 276 warrants could become a routine occurrence, unwarranted by any particular need for the unique characteristics of electronic surveillance. Such a result would be likely to raise serious conflicts with the right to privacy guaranteed by art. 14. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Blood, 400 Mass. 61 (1987). It is my opinion that a search warrant issued under G. L. c. 276, §§ 1-7, is inadequate to protect the privacy rights of the citizens of this Commonwealth against the dangers of electronic surveillance. Therefore, I would hold that the warrant in the present case was inadequate to justify the audio or video surveillance of the defendant. Accordingly, I would exclude the audio and video recordings as the products of an impermissible warrantless search.
“Since it is the task of the law to form and protect, as well as mirror and reflect, we should not, as judges, merely recite the expectations and risks without examining the desirability of saddling them upon society. The critical question, therefore, is whether under our system of government, as reflected *679in the Constitution, we should impose on our citizens the risks of the electronic listener or observer without at least the protection of a warrant requirement.” United States v. White, 401 U.S. 745, 786 (1971) (Harlan, J., dissenting). The citizens of this Commonwealth should not have to live with the fear that at any given moment they might be the subject of unauthorized covert electronic surveillance by the police.
This court previously has recognized the threat that electronic surveillance poses to an individual’s right of privacy. In Commonwealth v. Blood, supra at 70, we noted that “because the peculiar virtues of [electronic eavesdropping] techniques are ones which threaten the privacy of our most cherished possessions, our thoughts and emotions, these techniques are peculiarly intrusive upon that sense of personal security which art. 14 commands us to protect.” When faced with the unique dangers of electronic surveillance, we should not allow the fate of the privacy rights of the citizens of this Commonwealth to rest upon the calculation of a standard as “manipulable” as expectation of privacy analysis. See Commonwealth v. Amendola, 406 Mass. 592, 601 (1990). I would hold that, regardless of an individual’s expectation of privacy, art. 14 forbids the covert use of electronic surveillance by the police in the absence of an appropriate warrant specifically authorizing such activity. In my view, such a holding would be consistent also with the clear limitations on electronic surveillance set by the Legislature by enacting G. L. c. 272, § 99. This landmark statute, more restrictive than Federal law, see 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510 et seq. (1970), and Commonwealth v. Thorpe, 384 Mass. 271, 288-289 (1981) (Liacos, J., dissenting), cert, denied, 454 U.S. 1147 (1982), should be viewed as a manifestation of the Legislature’s attempt to meet its own constitutional responsibility to carry out the mandate of art. 14. Were we to take this view, electronic surveillance procedures would be available to law enforcement officials while still subject to judicial review to prevent the unnecessary violation of art. 14 privacy rights. “It is the purpose of the warrant requirement in art. 14 to *680subject police suspicions to the scrutiny of ‘a neutral and detached magistrate instead of [leaving them to be] judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.’ ” Commonwealth v. Blood, supra at 72-73, quoting Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 14 (1948). I dissent.