Court Opinion

ID: 9544974
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:04:08.852523+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:13:49.722700
License: Public Domain

CONCURRING OPINION OF
TANAKA, J.
I concur in the judgment of the court, but not for the reasons set forth in the majority opinion. Stare decisis compels my concurrence.
As set forth in the majority opinion, the case involved four methods used by the police in obtaining evidence without warrants:
(1) A participant-police officer wore a body tape recorder, which recorded face-to-face conversations (hereinafter “participant recording”);
(2) A participant-police officer permitted telephone conversations to be recorded with an audio recorder attached to the telephone which he was using (hereinafter “participant bugging”);
(3) A participant-police officer wore a transmitter, which simultaneously transmitted face-to-face conversations to monitoring police units which recorded the conversations (hereinafter “third-party recording”); and
(4) Monitoring police units videotaped the face-to-face meetings (hereinafter “videotape”). The audio sounds for the videotaped records were provided by the transmitter described in (3) above.
State v. Lester, 64 Haw. 659, 649 P.2d 346 (1982) and State v. Pilago, 65 Haw. 22, 649 P.2d 363 (1982), force my reluctant concurrence in the majority’s decision regarding the question of the suppression of audio recordings obtained by participant recording and participant bugging. Lester involved participant recording, and Pilago dealt with both participant bugging and participant recording. Our supreme court held in Lester and Pilago that the warrantless participant recording and participant bugging did not violate the *413fourth amendment of the U.S. Constitution,1 article I, sections 6 and 7 of the Hawaii Constitution2 and HRS chapter 803, part IV (Supp. 1981) (“Electronic Eavesdropping”). As a member of an inferior appellate court, the authority of Lester and Pilago is binding on me.
Third-party recording was not involved in Lester and Pilago. Justice Menor stated in his concurring opinion in Lester,
Had this been a situation, however, where there had been a simultaneous transmission of the conversation to other hidden and listening enforcement agents, I would have been constrained to find otherwise.
64 Haw. at 674, 649 P.2d at 357. However, in his concurrence, Justice Menor accepted the construction given by the court to article I, section 7 of the Hawaii Constitution (hereinafter “section 7”). He agreed that “the principles enunciated in Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), must govern the disposition of the constitutional issue involving the surreptitious recording.” Lester, 64 Haw. at 672, 649 P.2d at 355.
Applying the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test to the facts in this case, I reach the same result as the majority. Thus, the ruling in Lester, which I am forced to accept, compels my concurrence in the majority’s holding that the lower court erred in suppressing the audio recordings obtained by third-party recording and the video tapes used in conjunction with such recordings.
If this were a case of first impression, I would have dissented. I am convinced by and embrace the rationale of Justice Nakamura in his dissenting opinion in Lester. When section 7 (then section 5)3 was amended during the Constitutional Convention of Hawaii of 1968, the framers meant to protect the individual against indiscriminate wiretapping or electronic eavesdropping. The protection devised was the requirement of a warrant to be issued “upon probable cause, *414supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing . . . the communications sought to be intercepted.” What was discriminate or indiscriminate was to be determined “before the fact” by a neutral and detached judge interposed between the police and the public. See Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10 (1948).
I am not convinced that the privacy provision of section 7 “should be construed in light of the language in Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S. Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967), regarding reasonable expectation of privacy.” Comm. Whole Rep. No. 15, 3d Hawaii Const. Conv., reprinted in I Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of Hawaii of 1978, at 1024. The 1978 Constitutional Convention adopted a new article I, section 6, but never touched section 7. Not being the framers of amended section 7, its construction of section 7 is not binding.4
If the framers, in amending section 7 in 1968, intended that the privacy provision was to “be construed in light of the language in Katz v. United States,” no amendment was necessary. The fourth amendment of the U.S. Constitution and original section 7 (then section 5) contained the same language. Katz and other cases construing the fourth amendment would a fortiori have been binding in the construction of original section 7. I cannot believe that the framers in 1968 amended section 7 to accomplish nothing.
I agree with the dissenting opinion in Lester that “ ‘electronic eavesdropping’ carried out without authorization, in a situation not judicially recognized as an exceptional one where a warrant for a search may be forgone [sic], is unreasonable.” Lester, 64 Haw. at 684, 649 P.2d at 362. In this case, the police had ample opportunity to obtain a warrant or warrants.
The accuracy and permanency of recorded conversations obtained by electronic device is, of course, no excuse for using the recordings against defendants, if their use violates section 7. As in the exclusion of evidence based on the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine, the primary concern is not the accuracy of the evidence, but the protection of individual rights from governmental intrusion.

 U.S. Const, amend. IV. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

 See p. 399 of majority opinion.

 See note 4 of majority opinion.

 This court stated in In Matter of Kaohu, 1 Haw. App. 469, 620 P.2d 1082(1980), that the interpretation given by members of the legislature to a statute enacted five years earlier has no weight. Cf. In Re Island Airlines, 47 Haw. 87, 384 P.2d 536 (1963). See also U.S. v. Southwestern Cable Co., 392 U.S. 157 (1968).