Court Opinion

ID: 9419244
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:47:54.537671+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:16.562269
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Murphy,
dissenting:
The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Frankfurter, and I cannot agree with the opinion of the Court.
*123Messman and Garrow were the chief witnesses for the Government, and the testimony of each was vital. It is not disputed that Messman turned state’s evidence after he' was confronted with the contents of telephone messages which implicated him in the offense, but which had been obtained by wire-tapping in violation of § 605 of the Federal Communications Act. The extent of the unlawful “tapping” and the keen desire of the Government officials to use the “taps” to secure other testimony are graphically illustrated by the following statement made by an assistant United States attorney to Messman after his arrest:
“I am telling you before we go any further that there is no use of us kidding each other. We have watched your telephone; we have watched all these lawyers’ telephones; we have had rooms tapped. We know what is going on. We are not stabbing in the dark. If you want to hear your voice on a record we will be glad to play it. In your instance, Doctor, there is so much to cover. You have been in this for so many years that we feel that in order for you to help yourself, since you are considered one of the principals here, it would be wise for you to indicate to us whether you intend to tell us everything and come clean, or whether you intend to play ball with the Garrows and the rest of the crowd. We feel that you can be of great value and you want to help yourself. That is straight talk.”
And Garrow knew of the existence of records of damaging conversations made by illegal “taps” on his lines before his decision to testify for the Government.
Neither the intercepted messages nor their purport were placed in evidence, and, so far as the record shows, petitioners were not parties to them. It is evident, nevertheless, that the evidence adduced by the Government against petitioners through the testimony of Messman and Gar-*124row was obtained by the use of information gathered by wire-tapping in violation of law.1
The main question presented for decision is whether evidence so obtained is vitiated and rendered inadmissible by § 605, the relevant part of which reads:
. . and no person not being authorized by the sender shall intercept any communication and divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such intercepted communication to any person; . . . and no person having received such intercepted communi*125cation or having become acquainted with the contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of the same or any part thereof, knowing that such information was so obtained, shall divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of the same or any part thereof, or use the same or any information therein contained for his own benefit or for the benefit of another not entitled thereto . . .”2
The statute expresses a rule of public policy. In enacting § 605, Congress sought to protect society at large against the evils of wire-tapping and kindred unauthorized intrusions into private intercourse conducted by means of the modern media of communication, telephone, telegraph, and radio. To that end the statute prohibits not only the interception and the divulgence of private messages without the consent of the sender, but also the use of information so acquired by any person not entitled to it. The protection of the statute would have been illusory indeed if, while interception and divulgence were penalized, one was free, nevertheless, to use information so obtained. Unless the language of the “use for benefit” prohibition does not mean what it says, the actions of the Government agents in securing the benefit of the crucial testimony of Messman and Garrow by the use of illegal “taps” were clear violations of that prohibition. There is no merit in the Government’s contention that the unequivocal language of the “use for benefit” clause should be construed as condemning only such uses as are designed to result in some monetary or other similar benefit of a private nature, for the prohibitions of § 605 are applicable to the Government and its officers, as well as to private persons. Nardone v. United States, 302 U. S. 379. The prohibition in this last clause of § 605 by Congress of the “use” of outlawed evidence is so unequivocal *126and controlling that the failure of the court below even to refer to this clause can only be explained on the assumption that it was overlooked.
On the issue of admissibility, the second Nardone case, 308 U. S. 338, the logical extension of the principles of Nardone v. United States, 302 U. S. 379, and Weiss v. United States, 308 U. S. 321, should control our decision. In that case, as in this, the evidence in dispute was not the messages themselves or their purport, but the claim was made that other evidence against the defendants was obtained by the use of information gained by unlawful wire-tapping. We held that the policy of § 605 required the exclusion not merely of the intercepted messages but also of the other evidence acquired through their unlawful use. Otherwise the broad purpose of the statute to outlaw practices “inconsistent with ethical standards and destructive of personal liberty”3 would have been largely defeated. We also suggested the preliminary hearing as a procedure for determining what evidence was the “fruit of the poisonous tree” and hence inadmissible. Since the preliminary hearing in this case leaves no doubt that the testimony of Messman and Garrow was the forbidden fruit, it should not have been admitted.
,The only possible differentiation between this case and the second Nardone case is that, here, petitioners were not parties to the illegally intercepted messages, but that? calls for no difference in legal result. While the sender can render interception, divulgence, or use lawful by his consent, it is a complete non sequitur to conclude that he alone has standing to object to the admission of evidence obtained in violation of § 605. To say that petitioners have no standing to object to the testimony of Messman and Garrow because they were not parties to the inter*127cepted messages used to secure that testimony, is to ignore the governing factor that controlled our decision in the second Nardone case, namely, that to permit the use of evidence so obtained would defeat or substantially impair the underlying policy and purpose of § 605. It is immaterial, for the object to be served by that section, whether objection is made by the one sending the communication or by another who is prejudiced by its use. The rule that evidence obtained by a violation of § 605 is inadmissible is not a remedy for the sender; it is the obedient answer to the Congressional command that society shall not be plagued with such practices as wire-tapping.
Lower federal court cases to the effect that only the victim of a search and seizure contravening the Fourth Amendment can object to the evidence thereby obtained do not offer a proper analogy. Not only are those decisions hard to square with statements by Mr. Justice Holmes in Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385, 392,4 but, even assuming their soundness, sufficient difference in scope exists between § 605 and the Fourth Amendment to render analogy unsafe. Thus § 605 forbids all interception, divulgence, or use by any *128person without the consent of the sender, while the Fourth Amendment bans only unreasonable searches and seizures.
The holding in the opinion of the Court that evidence obtained in violation of § 605 is not rendered inadmissible because § 501 of the Act provides specific sanctions for violations of § 605, is a direct repudiation of both Nardone cases and the Weiss case. In each of those cases, evidence secured by violation of § 605 was declared to be inadmissible, despite the existence of § 501. This is so because, as we held in the first Nardone case, “the act forbids such testimony.” 302 U. S. 379, 382. That evidence procured in violation of federal law by agents of the Government is inadmissible in federal prosecutions has been established and enforced by an unbroken series of decisions in this Court beginning with Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383. By these decisions this Court has refused to make itself a participant in lawless conduct by sanctioning the use in open court of evidence illegally secured. That principle was forcibly put in a separate opinion in Sorrells v. United States, 287 U. S. 435, 453. After referring to “the inherent right of the court not to be made the instrument of wrong,” the opinion continues: “The doctrine [the defense of entrapment] rests, rather, on a fundamental rule of public policy. The protection of its own functions and the preservation of the purity of its own temple belongs only to the court. It is the province of the court and of the court alone to protect itself and the government from such prostitution of the criminal law.” 287 U. S. 435, 456, 457. When Congress condemned the “use” of lawlessly intercepted communications, the last thing it intended to sanction was the use of such interceptions in a court of justice. There can be no reason to ignore or silently overrule our considered decisions in both Nardone cases and the Weiss case, especially in view of the fact that Congress has had several opportunities since the first Nardone case to amend § 605 *129to obviate the result of that case if it were not a true interpretation of Congressional policy and intent.5

 Both Messman and Garrow testified at the preliminary hearing that the “taps” did not influence their decisions to testify for the Government, but each was an accomplished perjurer. We do not understand that the trial judge, in ruling that the testimony of Mess-man and Garrow was admissible, meant to find that the Government proved that the “taps” did not contribute to their breakdown. On the contrary, it is clear that he meant to find only that petitioners failed to carry the burden of proving that the Government secured the testimony of Messman and Garrow by use of the “taps,” a burden which he erroneously put upon petitioners. For after an accused sustains the initial burden, imposed by Nardone v. United States, 308 U. S. 338, of proving to the satisfaction of the trial judge in the preliminary hearing that wire-tapping was unlawfully employed, as petitioners did here, it is only fair that the burden should then shift to the Government to convince the trial judge that its proof had an independent origin. As the court below said:
“. . . this should be the rule in analogy to the well settled doctrine in civil cases that a wrongdoer who has mingled the consequences of lawful and unlawful conduct, has the burden of disentangling them and must bear the prejudice of his failure to do so; that is, that it is unfair to throw upon the innocent party the duty of unravelling the skein which the guilty party has snarled. To impose the duty upon the prosecution is particularly appropriate here, for it necessarily has full knowledge of just how its case has been prepared; given a prima facie case against it, i. e., 'taps’ and some use of them, it should do the rest.” 120 F. 2d 485, 488.
Since the trial judge did not shift the burden to the Government after petitioners’ initial showing as he should have done, there can be no contention on this record that the testimony of Messman and Garrow was untainted by “taps.”

 Emphasis added.

 Nardone v. United States, 302 U. S. 379, 383.

 “The essence of a provision forbidding tbe acquisition of evidence in a certain way is that not merely evidence so acquired shall not be used before the Court but that it shall not be used at all. ... the knowledge gained by the Government’s own wrong cannot be used by it in the way proposed.”
The guaranties of the Fourth Amendment “are to be liberally construed to prevent impairment of the protection extended.” Graw v. United States, 287 U. S. 124, 128, and cases cited.
It is evident that to allow the Government to use evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment against parties not victims of the unconstitutional search and seizure is to allow the Government to profit by its wrong and to reduce in large measure the protection of the Amendment.

 Several attempts to amend § 605 since the first Nardone case have failed of enactment. See S. 3756, 75th Cong., 3d Sess. (1938) and S, Rep. No. 1790, 75th Cong., 3d Sess. (1938) p. 3. See also H. J. Res. 571, 76th Cong., 3d Sess. (1940); H. R. 2266, 77th Cong., 1st Sess. (1941); H. R. 3099, 77th Cong., 1st Sess. (1941); H. R. 4228, 77th Cong., 1st Sess. (1941).