Court Opinion

ID: 9447218
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:29:12.360696+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:56.921803
License: Public Domain

MEDINA, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur but with some reluctance. While I agree that there seems to be little likelihood that the rule of Schwartz v. State of Texas, 1952, 344 U.S. 199, 73 S.Ct. 232, 97 L.Ed. 231, will be changed, at least in the foreseeable future, it may well be that we are here dealing with something more than a state rule of evidence to the effect that evidence illegally obtained is admissible if relevant to the case and otherwise unobjectionable. The very fact that the State of New York not only has formulated through its courts a rule of evidence, but has also established and maintained, in its Constitution and legislation, a system of wiretapping that is persistently and continuously in operation through orders of New York judges authorizing the wiretapping and through New York enforcement officers who do the wiretapping and then divulge the wiretaps in testimony before Grand Juries and petit juries, all despite the ruling of the Supreme Court in Benanti v. United States, 1957, 355 U.S. 96, 78 S.Ct. 155, 2 L.Ed.2d 126, to the effect that the entire system is illegal and in violation of the federal Communications Act of 1934, 47 U.S.C.A. § 605, and despite the Supremacy Clause, Article VI, Clause 2, U.S. Constitution, may well constitute an invasion of appellant’s constitutional right to due process under the Four*287teenth Amendment.1 If this be so the Supreme Court may grant certiorari to review the ruling we are now making on the affirmance of the judgment of conviction against Graziano. The point is novel and the solution far from clear.

. In Salsburg v. State of Maryland, 1954, 346 U.S. 545, 74 S.Ct. 280, 285, 98 L. Ed. 281, the appellant, who had been convicted of a gambling misdemeanor in a Maryland court, contended that illegally seized evidence had been admitted under a Maryland statute which was unconstitutional. In rejecting a contention that the Maryland statute in question affirmatively sanctioned the unconstitutional searches the Court stated that, “We find no merit in the suggestion of appellant that the 1951 amendment to the Bouse Act affirmatively sanctions illegal searches and seizures in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. If the statute were so interpreted such a question might arise.”!! Footnote 11 reads: “ ‘ * * * we have no hesitation in saying that were a State affirmatively to sanction such police incursion into privacy it would run counter to the guaranty of the Fourteenth Amendment.’ Wolf v. People of State of Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 28, 69 S.Ct. 3359, 93 L.Ed. 1782.”