Court Opinion

ID: 9460067
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:39:59.781137+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:27.587313
License: Public Domain

FERGUSON, District Judge
(dissenting in part):
I respectfully dissent from Part I of the court’s decision. In my view, 47 U. S.C. § 605 requires a reversal of the convictions.
Se'ction 605 provides in pertinent part:
“Except as authorized by chapter 119, Title 18, no person receiving any interstate communication by wire or radio shall divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning thereof, except ... [in certain situations not here applicable]. No person not being authorized by the sender shall intercept any radio communication and divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such intercepted communication to any person. ft
It is clear that prior to the 1968 amendment, the word “person” in § 605 encompassed law enforcement officials. Lee v. Florida, 392 U.S. 378, 88 S.Ct. 2096, 20 L.Ed.2d 1166 (1968); Nardone v. United States, 302 U.S. 379, 58 S.Ct. 275, 82 L.Ed. 314 (1937). In Lee, the Supreme Court squarely faced the issue:
“In [Nardone], the Court was first called upon to decide whéther § 605 had indeed served to render evidence of intercepted communications inadmissible in a federal trial. In that case the Government urged that ‘a construction be given the section which would exclude federal agents since it is improbable Congress intended to hamper and impede the activities of the government in the detection and punishment of crime.’ 302 U.S., at 383 [58 S.Ct. at 277]. In reversing the judgment of conviction, the Court’s answer to that argument was unequivocal:
‘[T]he plain words of § 605 forbid anyone, unless authorized by the sender, to intercept a telephone message, and direct in equally clear language that “no person” shall divulge or publish the message or its substance to “any person.” To recite the contents of the message in testimony before a court is to divulge the message. The conclusion that the act forbids such testimony seems to us unshaken by the government’s arguments.
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‘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 same considerations may well have moved the Congress to adopt § 605 as evoked the guaranty against practices and proce*200dures violative of privacy, embodied in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution.’ 302 U.S., at 382, 383 [58 S.Ct. at 276].” 392 U.S. at 382-383, 88 S.Ct. at 2099-2100.
Section 605 as amended in 1968 likewise provides that “no person” shall divulge any communication covered by the statute to “any person.” The statutory language is clear and unambiguous. Nowhere in the statute is the word “person” restricted, limited, or modified. If the words of the statute are interpreted according to their plain meaning, § 605 clearly applies to law enforcement officers.
The majority fastens on two sentences in the Senate report to the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to support its conclusion that § 605 as amended does not apply to law enforcement officials:
“ ‘Person’ does not include a law enforcement officer acting in the normal course of his duties. But see United States v. Sugden (226 F.2d 281 (9th Cir. 1955), affirmed per curiam, 76 S.Ct. 709, 351 U.S. 916 [100 L.Ed. 1449] (1956)).” S.Rep.No.1097, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 1968 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, pp. 2112, 2197.
The reference to the Sugden case was clearly intended to emphasize the word “normal” in the preceding sentence. In Sugden, short wave radio transmissions on a private farm were monitored by a Federal Communications Commission employee and were then used to prosecute the broadcasters for immigration law violations. This court, by Judge Chambers, noted that the “theory of conduct” of the immigration officers “seems to have been, ‘The Federal Communications Commission can legally listen. So we shall use their ears for what we, the Immigration Service, cannot do.’ ” 226 F.2d at 285. The court held that the intercepted conversations were inadmissible as long as the radio station was legally on the air and the operators were legally authorized to operate it.
The majority’s conclusion in Part I that § 605 does not compel a reversal of the convictions in these cases turns on the statement in the Senate report that “ ‘Person’ does not include a law enforcement officer acting in the normal course of his duties.” I would hold that where, as here, the statutory language is clear and unambiguous, and where Congress could easily have incorporated any intended restriction or limitation on the meaning of any word in the statute itself, the words of the statute must be interpreted according to their plain meaning, and the statutory language must control.
It is a well-established principle of law that “there is no need to refer to the legislative history where the statutory language is clear.” Ex parte Collett, 337 U.S. 55, 61, 69 S.Ct. 944-947, 93 L. Ed. 1207 (1949). In Easson v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 294 F.2d 653, 656 (9th Cir. 1961), this court held that “[w]hen a statute is unambiguous, the courts may not look elsewhere for the legislative intent.” In United States v. Oregon, 366 U.S. 643, 648, 81 S.Ct. 1278, 1281, 6 L.Ed.2d 575 (1961), the Supreme Court stated, “Having concluded that the provisions of § 1 [of the statute in question] are clear' and unequivocal on their face, we find no need to resort to the legislative history of the Act.” (Footnote omitted.) This principle of statutory interpretation has been applied in many cases. See Ex parte Collett, supra, 337 U.S. at 58; 69 S.Ct. 944; Arkansas Valley Industries, Inc. v. Freeman, 415 F.2d 713, 717 (8th Cir. 1969); Sea-Land Service, Inc. v. Federal Maritime Commission, 404 F.2d 824, 828 (D.C. Cir. 1968); Department Employees’ Local 1265 v. Brown, 284 F.2d 619, 627 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 366 U. S. 934, 81 S.Ct. 1659, 6 L.Ed.2d 846 (1961).
The principle that clear and unambiguous statutory language must prevail over a conflicting statement in the legislative history holds' true particularly where, as here, the same language was contained and authoritatively construed *201in an earlier version of the statute. If Congress had intended to restrict or limit the meaning of the word “person” in the 1968 amendment, it could easily have done so in the statute itself. Indeed, Congress did explicitly distinguish between “person” and “law enforcement officer” in another section of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act. 18 U.S.C. § 2510, enacted (with 47 U.S. C. § 605) in Title III of the Act, contains separate definitions for “person” and for “Investigative and law enforcement officer.” These definitions apply to the provisions of chapter 119 of Title 18, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510-20. If Congress had intended law enforcement officers to be excluded from the word “person” in § 605, it manifestly would have done so through clear statutory language, as it did in 18 U.S.C. § 2510.
The majority also seeks support for its conclusion in Part I in the statement in the Senate report that the amended section “is not intended merely to be a reenactment of section 605. The new provision is intended as a substitute.” 1968 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, at p. 2196. In my view, this statement was intended to emphasize that the scope of coverage of § 605 was narrowed by the 1968 amendment, and that part of the area formerly regulated by § 605 was now to be regulated by chapter 119 of Title 18, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510-20. Whereas formerly the provisions of § 605 applied to both wire and radio communications, the amendment restricted the scope of all provisions after the first sentence to radio communications. The amendment inserted the word “radio” before “communication” in the second and fourth sentences, deleted the phrase “wire or” preceding “radio” in the third sentence, and added the introductory clause “Except as authorized by chapter 119, Title 18,” 47 U.S.C. § 605. In these respects, the amended section was a “substitute” for, and not merely a “reenactment of,” § 605.
One court has held that § 605 as amended renders evidence of telephonic communications intercepted by police officers inadmissible. In People v. Trief, 65 Misc.2d 272, 317 N.Y.S.2d 525 (1970), aff’d mem., 37 A.D.2d 553, 323 N.Y.S.2d 659 (1971), the prosecution sought to introduce evidence obtained from telephone conversations intercepted by police officers. The prosecution conceded that prior to the 1968 amendment, the intercepted conversations would have been inadmissible, but contended that the amendment rendered them admissible. The court squarely rejected this view, holding that under § 605 as amended, the intercepted conversations must be suppressed.1 Cf. Commonwealth v. Coviello, Mass., 291 N.E.2d 416 (1973).
The government concedes that the convictions of the defendants were possible only because of the intercepted communications. I would hold that the divulgence of those communications to the officers of the Arizona Department of Public Safety and their divulgence by the officers at trial violated 47 U.S.C. § 605, and I would reverse the convictions.2

. While People v. Trief involved interceptions of wire rather than oral eommunications, its interpretation of § 605 to prohibit the divulgence of conversations intercepted by police officers does not depend upon the distinction between oral and wire communications. If § 605 applies to law enforcement officials, it covers interceptions of oral as well as wire communications.

. It is clear that no expectation-of-privacy requirement is contained in § 605. United States v. Sugden, supra, 226 F.2d at 284-285; United States v. Laughlin, 226 F.Supp. 112 (D.D.C.1964) ; United States v. Fuller, 202 F.Supp. 356 (N.D.Cal.1962).