Court Opinion

ID: 9460110
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:41:55.564903+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:29.281654
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part, dissenting in part):
I agree with Parts I, II and IV of the majority opinion, but not, however, with Part III. The two address books of appellants that were illegally seized were lost by the Government on the eve of trial. We must, therefore, “strictly scrutinize” the Government’s claim — on which it has the burden of proof, United States v. Schipani, 414 F.2d 1262 (2d Cir. 1969), cert. denied, 397 U.S. 922, 90 S.Ct. 902, 25 L.Ed.2d 102 (1970) — that there was an independent source for the discovery of appellants’ customs broker. See United States v. Huss, 482 F.2d 38, 52 (2d Cir. 1973) (destruction of tapes from illegal wiretaps foreclosed appellant from pursuing issue of taint). The Government and the majority opinion rely on Customs Agent Connolly’s testimony that he only “cursorily” examined the illegally seized address books, and that he would have eventually obtained the name of the Falleys’ customs broker anyway by some sort of “saturation” investigation. This he explained as his contacting by telephone individual customs brokers to determine whether they had documents relating to a Michael or a Janet Falley, a David or Marcia Stolzenberg or a company named “Barter, Unlimited.” But in fact, Connolly had contacted by telephone what he said were “less than ten” of the brokers, of whom there were indeed 98, when his investigation was, as the Government brief rather cryptically concedes, “short circuited.” 1 Brief at 16. According to the testimony of Coscetta, the Falleys’ customs broker, it would be “virtually impossible” to locate specific documents as a result of a telephone call. Moreover, he said that customs brokers’ files are by number of document, not by name of the consignee, so that to find the documents he actually did produce for the Government after a specific request, handling as he did about 1,000 transactions per month, he had to search some 24,000 separate items individually. At the very least what I think we should be talking about is whether there was a reasonable probability that the Government would have uncovered the Falleys’ shipments through its customs house telephone calls, not just a remote or perhaps hypothetical possibility that this would occur. See United States v. Paroutian, 299 F.2d 486, 489 (2d Cir. 1962). United States v. Cole, 463 F.2d 163 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 409 U.S. 942, 93 S.Ct. 238, 34 L.Ed.2d 193 (1972), is not to the contrary; indeed there the court specifically said that it was not undermining the Paroutiun rule, which it stated was
not whether the government would have, in the normal course of events, discovered the evidence by independent legal sources, but whether in fact they did actually make the discovery from independent legal sources.
463 F.2d at 174. Here under Paroutian and Cole standards, my view is that there was taint.
The acceptance by the majority of the thin thread of evidence presented by the Government to show an “independent basis” for the discovery of appellants’ *43customs broker verges on adoption of a rule that would permit the Government to prevail in a “taint” hearing on the mere showing of a hypothetical independent source for the information obtained as the fruits of an illegal search or seizure. Only the other day, Mr. Justice White stated that “it is a significant constitutional question whether the ‘independent source’ exception to inadmissibility of fruits, Wong Sun [v. United States] . . . 371 U.S., at 487-488 [83 S.Ct. 407], encompasses a hypothetical as well as an, actual independent source.” Fitzpatrick v. New York, 414 U.S. 1050, 94 S.Ct. 554, 38 L.Ed.2d 338 (1973) (White, J., dissenting from denial of cert., joined by Douglas, J.). In doing so he also pointed out that the Second Circuit in Paroutian, supra, had rejected the “inevitable discovery” rule — to the effect that proper police investigation would in any event have resulted in the obtaining of the information. It seems to me that the panel majority here is in effect overruling Paroutian sub silentio.
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent, and would reverse and remand on this ground also.

. It is difficult to tell just what the Government means by this term. There appears to be only one meaning, viz., that by obtaining some other information the “saturation” investigation was no longer necessary. That information could come from only one of two sources, however, the now lost address books or as the result of a slip of paper on which was written an airway bill number and which was also illegally seized and indeed suppressed by the trial court.