Court Opinion

ID: 9418944
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:43:33.1847+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:13.312123
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Sutherland,
dissenting.
I think the word “person” used in this statute does not include an officer of the federal government, actually engaged in the detection of crime and the enforcement of the criminal statutes of the United States, who has good reason to believe that a telephone is being, or is about to be, used as an aid to the commission or concealment of a crime. The decision just made will necessarily have the effect of enabling the most depraved criminals to further their criminal plans over the telephone, in the secure knowledge that even if these plans involve kidnapping and murder, their telephone conversations can never be intercepted by officers of the law and revealed in court. If Congress thus intended to tie the hands of the government in its effort to protect the people against lawlessness of the most serious character, it would have said so in a more definite way than by the use of the ambiguous word “person.” Commonwealth v. Welosky, 276 Mass. 398, 403-404, 406; 177 N. E. 656. For that word has sometimes been construed to include the government and its officials, and sometimes not. I am not aware of any case where it has been given that inclusive effect in a situation such as we have here. Obviously, the situation dealt with in United States v. Arizona, 295 U. S. 174, was quite different. There, a federal statute forbade the construction of any bridge, etc., in any port, etc., “until the consent of Congress . . . shall have been obtained.” The mere building of the designated structure, in the absence of congressional consent, violated the statute. There was no ambiguous term, such as wé have here, or anything else in the language, requiring construction.
*386There is a manifest difference between the case of a private individual who intercepts a message from motives of curiosity or to further personal ends, and that of a responsible official engaged in the governmental duty of uncovering crime and bringing criminals to justice. It is fair to conclude that the word “person” as here used was intended to include the former but not the latter. This accords with the well-settled general rule stated by Justice Story in United States v. Hoar, 2 Mason 311, 314-315; 26 Fed. Cas. 329, 330: “In general, acts of the legislature are meant to regulate and direct the acts and rights of citizens; and in most cases the reasoning applicable to them applies with very different, and often contrary force to the government itself. It appears to me, therefore, to be a safe rule founded in the principles of the common law, that the general words of a statute ought not to include the government, or affect its rights, unless that construction be clear and indisputable upon the text of the act.” And see In the Matter of Will of Fox, 52 N. Y. 530, 535. Compare State v. Gorham, 110 Wash. 330; 188 Pac. 457; Balthasar v. Pacific Electric Ry. Co., 187 Cal. 302, 305-308; 202 Pac. 37. A case in point is that of People v. Hebberd (Sup. Ct. N. Y.), 96 Misc. 617, 620-621; 162 N. Y. S. 80.
In the investigations of the congressional committees, referred to in the opinion of the court, it appeared that the Attorney General had ordered that no tapping of wires should be permitted without the personal direction of the chief of the bureau, after consultation with the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the case; and that such means were to be adopted only as an emergency method. The Attorney General himself appeared before one of the committees and pointed out that crime had become highly organized, with strong political connections and illegal methods of procedure; that gangsters and desperate criminals had equipped themselves with every *387modern convenience and invention; that modern gangsters have no regard for life, property, decency or anything else; and he had no doubt that they tapped wires leading to offices of the United States attorneys to find out what was being done. He cited the case of a Bureau of Investigation agent who had been found shot to death under circumstances which indicated that a gang of narcotic traffickers had murdered him; and he posed the question whether, if it had appeared that the perpetrators of the crime could be detected and brought to justice by tapping their telephone wires, nevertheless, that ought not to be done.
The answer of Congress to the question has been a refusal to pass any of the bills which comprehensively proposed to forbid the practice.
My abhorrence of the odious practices of the town gossip, the Peeping Tom, and the private eavesdropper is quite as strong as that of any of my brethren. But to put the sworn officers of the law, engaged in the detection and apprehension of organized gangs of criminals, in the same category, is to lose all sense of proportion. In view of the safeguards against abuse of power furnished by the order of the Attorney General, and in the light of the deadly conflict constantly being waged between the forces of law and order and the desperate criminals who infest the land, we well may pause to consider whether the application of the rule which forbids an invasion of the privacy of telephone communications is not being carried in the present case to a point where the necessity of public protection against crime is being submerged by an overflow of sentimentality.
I think the judgment below should be affirmed.
Mr. Justice McReynolds joins in this opinion.