Court Opinion

ID: 9529236
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:49:05.901141+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:27:42.818428
License: Public Domain

Nolan, J.
(dissenting, with whom Lynch, J., joins). By some legerdemain, the court today has pulled from the hat a statement that art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights prohibits the Legislature from making an eminently reasonable judgment that organized crime is a greater threat to the people of the Commonwealth than is a warrantless electronic search conducted under very restrictive conditions.
*79Article 14 protects individuals only from unreasonable searches and seizures. There must be found a “search” or seizure before we concern ourselves with whether warrantless surveillance is unreasonable. There can be no search of an area where a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy. Section 99 B 4 represents an inescapable legislative judgment that members of organized crime who converse about a designated offense do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in that conversation. This is a sound judgment.
Yet somehow, in a way that strains credulity, the court manages to evade society’s judgment. Since art. 14 protects people, not places, the location of the conversation is constitutionally immaterial. It is the conversation that is being searched and not the home. These defendants are not passive victims of governmental intrusions into their zones of privacy. Rather, by taking Hudson into their confidence the defendants effectively extended their zones of privacy to include him. There is no constitutional principle that prohibits Hudson from disclosing confidential information to the police. Moreover, even if a person’s home is where he has the most reasonable expectation of privacy, that expectation of privacy is no longer reasonable when the home becomes a site for planning criminal activity. But more importantly, § 99 B 4 informs this court that society does not recognize that expectation as reasonable. It is also incredible for the court to maintain that it is “objectively reasonable” that these defendants did not expect their conversation to be electronically recorded. At best, the only expectation that these defendants could reasonably have possessed is that the police who might have been listening were doing so because they had a warrant. But this expectation was not “objectively reasonable” because § 99 B 4 allows the police to forgo obtaining a warrant in these circumstances.
What is most remarkable, however, are the sources the court utilizes to determine that the defendants’ expectations of privacy were “objectively reasonable.” Ante at 70. The court disregards the statute and instead relies on a few dissenting opinions to tell us what the people of Massachusetts consider reasonable. Until today, I had assumed that the court looked *80to external reference points to determine what society considers reasonable. Of course, I also assumed that a determination of society’s reasonable expectations is merely a descriptive endeavor and not infused with whatever normative content judges think such expectations should possess. Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 143 n.12 (1978).
Even assuming that the defendants had a reasonable expectation of privacy in these circumstances, the question is whether the police conduct was “unreasonable.” This determination is essentially a cost-benefit analysis. Under art. 14, we balance “the nature of the particular form of warrantless surveillance and its likely impact on the individuals’ sense of security.” Commonwealth v. Thorpe, 384 Mass. 271, 285 (1981), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 1147 (1982). The “nature” of the surveillance authorized by § 99 B 4 is that the police must satisfy four requirements before they can bypass the warrant process. The police must (1) have the consent of a party to a conversation which (2) they reasonably suspect will (3) involve organized criminals (4) planning a designated offense. Here the police scrupulously observed these preconditions. Hudson, a member of the criminal conspiracy, transmitted a number of conversations to the police involving only other members of the conspiracy and discussing only that conspiracy. I am unable to comprehend how “free speech and privacy values are unduly threatened by the risk that when one [member of an organized criminal conspiracy] speaks to a known [member of the same conspiracy] he may be recording the conversation.” Id.
It is only by employing a truncated analysis that the court is able to arrive at the result that the statute is irrational. The court states that the question is “whether ‘one party consent’ so alters the balance as to obviate the need for a warrant requirement.” Ante at 70. The court’s magic act is most apparent in how it frames the issue. Suddenly the other three statutory requirements disappear and only one-party consent remains. Before this court can tell the Legislature that it has acted irrationally, the court must at least perform the same balancing test as the Legislature did. In short, the court asks and answers the wrong question. But even if this statute allowed warrant-*81less surveillance where the police had the consent of a party, it would still be reasonable.
This statute represents a modem response to a modem problem. The framers of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights did not foresee the development of electronic surveillance just as they could not imagine the formation of highly organized and disciplined criminal groups. They did, however, intend that art. 14 and other provisions provide the framework in which the republican ideals of liberty and order could flourish. But the court demands a liberal interpretation of art. 14 so that modem privacy rights are protected, while it insists upon a narrow reading when the needs of modem law enforcement are considered. In the guise of protecting privacy, it only protects those who are its greatest threat. I dissent.