Court Opinion

ID: 9604179
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:16:02.917003+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:18:25.977307
License: Public Domain

URBIGKIT, Justice, Retired,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the result in finding no error by the trial court in denial of suppression for the telephone subscriber information. *599However, my conclusion to reject error regarding the telephone numbers — address of where the telephone was emplaced, is in no way based upon Saldana v. State, 846 P.2d 604 (Wyo.1993). I dissented in Salda-na and strongly believe that it is not only bad law, but an unnecessary and improvident attack on protections guaranteed in the Wyoming Bill of Rights provided. in Wyo. Const, art. 1.
I do not find non-aural acquisition to be properly excluded from the Wyoming statute in constituting an appropriate test, under either constitution or statute, when we consider, generally, government invasion of the remaining emburdened citizen rights to privacy.
Law enforcement agents became involved in this ease without any evidence that the telephone number for the manager of the residential apartments was unlisted, as in fact it was not. Whether the unlisted status of the second telephone number is significant will not be considered since it was not used in acquisition of information upon which the case was built.
What this case really demonstrates, and the reason for my concurrence, is that the address and listed user identification were readily available by looking at the usual reverse telephone directory that relates a name to a listed subscriber and the subscriber by name to address. What this case further demonstrates is that a simple call to anyone with a Denver, Colorado reverse directory could have provided the information, which is neither secret nor unpublished.
Additionally, as recognized by the district court, Allen Craig Wells had no privacy protected interest in the telephone number that was used to locate him. It was a listed office telephone number that was used and it does not raise the standing issue argued by Wells. The information regarding the address of the telephone number for the manager of the apartment complex was not private. It would be no different than if a public telephone booth had been used.
The Wyoming law enforcement personnel here, rather than using a simple and completely legal and appropriate method of user address identification, or just calling the number, resorted to a questionable violation of the Wyoming Constitution and its anti-wire tapping statutes, Wyo.Stat. §§ 7-3-601 through 7-3-611 (Cum.Supp.1992), by requesting federal agency intervention to subvert our law. Actually, if the federal agencies in Denver cannot directly utilize computer access by dialing into telephone company identification storage, the ultimate source of the identification may well have been their use of a published city directory. A simple call to the number from Cheyenne, Wyoming, which was done at a later date, would have been equally effective. This record did not actually show knowledge by the Cheyenne police of how the federal authorities acquired the address. Rather than going to the trouble of an “administrative subpoena,” they may have looked in a directory or made a telephone call themselves, either to the telephone company or to the acquired number.
Nothing was obtained for this prosecution which was protected by any privacy concept where the information obtained was readily available by reading a book. Consequently, I concur without accepting any part of the Saldana warrantless invasion by a federal agency “Administrative subpoena” subterfuge. See Francis S. Chlapowski, Note, The Constitutional Protection of Informational Privacy, 71 B.U.L.Rev. 133, 160 (1991), which states:
Personal information, an integral aspect of an individual’s identity, is crucial to most theories of personhood. The personal interest can be protected from unwarranted governmental intrusions only by recognizing a constitutional right to informational privacy based on person-hood. Furthermore, the nature of information in modern society requires that personal information also be treated as property. Thus, the due process clauses’ protection of liberty and property mandate the constitutional right of informational privacy.
In Riley K. Temple and Michael Regan, Recent Developments Relating to Caller *600ID, 18 W.St.U.L.Rev. 549, 557-58 (1991) (quoting Bellotti, Brant & Halprin, The Developing Right of Privacy, 1 J.Crim.Def. 457, 458 (1976); Warren & Brandeis, The Rights to Privacy, 4 Harv.L.Rev. 193 (1890); and Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 478, 48 S.Ct. 564, 572, 72 L.Ed. 944 (1928), Brandeis, J., dissenting) (footnotes omitted), the authors stated:
A recognized right of privacy is of fairly recent origin in American jurisprudence, and “[t]he notion that an invasion of privacy might be actionable in tort is of comparatively recent acceptance.” A tort-based privacy right probably could be traced to the 1890 law review article of Louis Brandéis and Samuel Warren, which argued that “[i]n every such case the individual is entitled to decide whether that which is his shall be given to the public. No other has the right to publish his productions in any form, without his consent.” The article concluded that public revelation of private information without the private individual’s consent, should be actionable in tort. In his famous dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Justice Brandéis suggested that the rights of privacy specifically included “the right to be let alone.” More recently, the courts have determined that there are constitutionally protected “zones of privacy” in which individuals have an “expectation of privacy.”
As those authors recognized, and other authorities have considered, Dean William L. Prosser provided the expansive evaluation in dividing the privacy right into four categories. These include: (1) public disclosure of private facts for anticipated personal gain; (2) publicity that places the person in a false light in the public eye; (3) public disclosure of private information; and (4) offensive intrusion upon a person’s right to be left alone. William L. Prosser, Privacy, 48 Cal.L.Rev. 383, 389 (1960). See Glenn Chatmas Smith, We’ve Got Your Number! (Is It Constitutional to Give It Out?): Caller Identification Technology and the Right to Informational Privacy, 87 UCLA L.Rev. 145 (1989). See also Barasch v. Pennsylvania Public Utility Com’n, 133 Pa.Cmwlth. 285, 576 A.2d 79 (1990), affd 529 Pa. 523, 605 A.2d 1198 (1992), where the court reversed the order of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission which authorized Caller* ID service. The court found that the service, in either blockable or unblockable format, violates the privacy rights of the people of the state. The court further said: “In the framework of a democratic society, the privacy rights concept is much too fundamental to be compromised or abridged by permitting Caller*ID.” Id. 576 A.2d at 89.
Hence, consumers of telephone service should not suffer an invasion, erosion or deprivation of their privacy rights to protect the unascertainable number of individuals or groups who receive nuisance, obscene or annoying telephone calls which can already be traced or otherwise dealt with by existing services provided by Bell.

Id.

The acquisition of the address, by use of the apartment manager’s listed telephone number, does not raise any of these privacy issues sufficient to require suppression of evidence consequently obtained. However, I respectfully dissent from the conclusion that Wells improvidently, in the absence of counsel, initiated the conversations in the automobile while he was being brought back to Cheyenne by the special drug agents for extradition. I find a direct and specific contradiction in comparing this majority decision to the recent United States Supreme Court case of Minnick v. Mississippi, 498 U.S. 146, 111 S.Ct. 486, 112 L.Ed.2d 489 (1990). Unfortunately, this case follows the many other recent cases where all of the facts are not fully disclosed in the appellate record, e.g., Goettl v. State, 842 P.2d 549 (Wyo.1992), Urbigkit, J., dissenting.
The events resulting in this conviction allegedly occurred on August 15, 1989, amended by the district court to August 13 and September 4, 1989. A warrant for arrest was issued December 13, 1989 and Wells was then apparently arrested in the Aurora, Colorado area on December 19, to be held in jail until extradited on February 20, 1990. While in confinement in the *601Arapahoe County jail, Wells arranged for filing an affidavit for a Wyoming attorney which resulted, on February 20, 1990, with the appointment of a public defender by the county court of Laramie County, Wyoming.
What happened regarding extradition is not clearly disclosed in this record, but it appears that a Governor’s warrant was issued and, on March 27, 1990, two special drug agents, Special Agent Wheeler and Special Agent Arter, as a favor for the Laramie County deputy sheriff who normally handles extraditions, went to the Arapahoe County jail to secure the prisoner for extradition. It is what occurred during the automobile trip that provides the basis for my dissent. One of the extraditing officers was Steve Wheeler, who had originally worked on the case as a Cheyenne police officer and then continued thereafter following a transfer to the state drug enforcement agency. The second person was Special Agent Arter of the same agency. At a suppression hearing before the district court in Laramie County, the questioning regarding knowledge of representation was asked and answered:
Q. [Assistant Public Defender] On March 27th, the day that Mr. Wells was extradited from Fort Collins to here, did you know that I was representing him at that point?
A. [Steve Wheeler] No, I didn’t.
Q. Okay. You filed a report with regards to what happened during that extradition, didn’t you?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Okay. And at the bottom of this report — it’s dated the 27th — March 27, 1990, so let me hand you this. So is that report dated the same day that the extradition took place?
A. The date of the report is the 27th of March, the date it was typed was the 29th of March, so, yes.
Q. Okay. So is all the information that is in that record information that you knew on the 27th?
A. Yes, this is a report of what occurred during the extradition of Allen Wells.
Q. Okay. And you knew all of that information that you included in that report as of the evening of the 27th or so?
A. That’s correct.
Q. Okay. Oh, could you read the last line of that, please?
A. A preliminary hearing in the case of Allen Wells is set for April 3, 1990, in Laramie County Court. Wells will be represented by David Lindsey.
Q. So was that something you did on the 27th or did you add that in later?
A. The report was typed on the 29th. So sometime before the 29th when that report was typed I learned when the hearing was set and that you are representing him.
Q. But you don’t know when I was appointed to represent Mr. Wells, do you? A. No, I do not.[1]
It is noteworthy that the answer exactly follows the question and no doubt was correctly stated that Special Agent Wheeler did not know that Assistant Public Defender Lindsey was representing Wells, not that he may well have known that an appointed attorney had been named for representation by the Wyoming court. We are not provided computer run off information from either the sheriff's office or the county attorney’s office to establish whether either or both offices maintained file information prior to March 27, 1990 that representation had been requested and that *602counsel had been appointed by the court on February 10, 1990.
We chase the frontiers of supposition in this record in stating that Special Agent Wheeler and Special Agent Arter just accidentally happened to make the extradition trip from Aurora to Cheyenne and did not know that some attorney had been appointed for Wells after an apparent contested extradition proceeding in Colorado and then happened to not interrogate by a specific question to find out from Wells whether he had counsel.
Wells was asked about the subject matter of interest to the two special agents by explicit questions:
Q. [Assistant Public Defender] Okay. During the course of that extradition you had a conversation with Mr. Wells, didn’t you?
A. [Steve Wheeler] Yes.
Q. Okay. And you had occasion to ask Mr. Wells some questions during that conversation, didn’t you?
A. Not really.
Q. In the third paragraph of your report, can you read the first highlighted sentence for me, please?
A. Special Agent Wheeler asked how his fingerprints would have gotten on the cocaine.
Q. So that seems like you asked a question to me, am I interpreting that wrong? A. I asked a question but it was in response to something he said to me. Q. All right. Well, I didn’t ask you if it was in response to something. Let me ask you this: You had a conversation with Mr. Wells, correct?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Okay. And during this conversation, even though Mr. Wells initiated it, you asked him questions, didn’t you?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Okay. And I think we have already covered the first question that you asked him, but let’s redo it. Did you ask him if — or how his fingerprints might have got on a package of cocaine that was found at Mr. Steiner’s house?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. And what was his response?
A. He said maybe he had his lunch in some sandwich bags and he ate his lunch and then Steiner had put cocaine in the sandwich bags after he had eaten his lunch.
Q. Okay. And after he responded with that did you ask him another question?
A. Yes.
Q. Okay. And was that question: Special Agent Wheeler then asked Wells how he knew that the cocaine was in sandwich bags?
A. That’s correct.
Q. Okay. And how did Mr. Wells respond to that question?
A. He became kind of upset and flustered and got quiet for awhile.
Q. Okay. Do you remember if you asked Mr. Wells any other questions?
A. I don’t recall specifically.
Q. Okay. In your report it says that S.A. Wheeler asked who ended up with all of the money that Steiner gave him. Do you remember asking that question?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. And what did Mr. Wells respond with?
A. He said he had never received any money ever at all from Kevin Steiner.
Q. Okay. Did he give you any explanation as to why some certain money orders might have been made out to him by Kevin Steiner?
A. After — after he made that statement I asked him what about the Western Union money orders and he said, had Kevin told you I bought an engine from him or something like that.
Q. All right. And did you ask him another question after that?
A. Yeah, I asked him why it was that he would buy an engine from Kevin and Kevin would give him the engine and also send him some money.
Q. And how did Mr. Wells respond to that?
A. Well, again he didn’t quite know what to say.
*603Q. All right. What was your purpose in asking Mr. Wells all of these questions?
A. My purpose was to respond to statements or questions that he asked us and to see how he would react.
Q. Uh-huh. Were any of his reactions or answers helpful to your investigation of this case?
A. Oh, he didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.
Q. All right. Did you find some of his statements or reactions to be incriminating?
A. Certainly.
MR. TRISTANI: Objection, Your Honor. That’s up to the fact finder or the jury or a court whether it is incriminating or exculpatory.
THE COURT: Overruled. He may answer.
A. I thought so.
Q. (By Mr. Lindsey) And why was that?
A. Well, in my opinion I caught him with his pants down.
Q. Uh-huh. What do you mean by that?
A. Out of the blue he knew the cocaine was in sandwich bags; that is a fact that only investigators in this case knew, no one else.
Q. Okay.
A. His explanation for receiving money from Kevin Steiner was that he bought something from Kevin Steiner; that’s ludicrous.
Q. Did he appear to be covering his guilt when, as you say here, Wells appeared to become frustrated and quit talking for several minutes; would that be your impression of what he was doing?
A. My impression was he knew he had been caught with his pants down and he had to think for a while.
There is nothing in this record that reveals Wells initiated discussion while he was involuntarily in the car to be returned to Cheyenne by the two officers. Like the Mississippi deputy sheriff in Minnick, 498 U.S. at-, 111 S.Ct. at 489, Wells was reminded of his Miranda rights and did not sign a waiver form.
From that time, this case explicitly fits the course of events detailed in Minnick. Conversations “developed during the ride back to Cheyenne.” In the course of those conversations, Wells gave incriminating answers. The one question never asked, according to the record, was whether Wells had an attorney, or for that matter, wanted an attorney to assist him during the session underway while he was being involuntarily returned to Cheyenne for extradition.
In application of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), as reinforced by Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 68 L.Ed.2d 378 (1981), and now determinatively defined in Minnick, 498 U.S. at-, 111 S.Ct. 486, the interrogation of the accused, while in the close, confining control of the officers, in the absence of counsel, and on the extended trip from Aurora, Colorado to Cheyenne, should have been ordered suppressed at the suppression hearing. Wells had not instigated contact within the purview of Oregon v. Bradshaw, 462 U.S. 1039, 103 S.Ct. 2830, 77 L.Ed.2d 405 (1983). He was no doubt taken in handcuffs, and probably leg irons, from the Arapahoe County jail and placed in a ear for the transportation to Wyoming. Subsequent events, as far as this record reveals, demonstrate skillful interrogation which elicited highly incriminating testimony, all done in the absence of appointed counsel. That counsel probably had not even been advised about the scheduled trip by the drug investigators to bring his appointed client to the Cheyenne jail.
Denial of the suppression motion for this testimony elicited during the trip constitutes reversible error under Minnick; Edwards, and Miranda.
I respectfully dissent.

1. The specific order appointing counsel did not name the Assistant Public Defender, David Lindsey, as the member of the Public Defender’s office as counsel for Wells. The order stated:
I certify that the above named defendant charged with a violation of Wyoming Statute 35 — 7—1031(a)(i)—35—7—1016(b)(iv)—1 ct. and 35-7-1042 — 1 ct. and appeared before me this date without counsel, alleged to be unable to employ counsel, and requested appointment of counsel for proceedings before this Court. The Court having determined the defendant to be needy as required by Wyoming Statute,
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the Public Defender’s Office be appointed to represent the defendant in all proceedings before the County Court and all future proceedings unless this order be rescinded with due cause by the Court or District Court.