Court Opinion

ID: 9842940
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:22:17.615543+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:21.643241
License: Public Domain

LEVIN H. CAMPBELL, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
While I find the case very close, I accept the judgment of the district court and of my colleagues that the language in this warrant does not provide a clear enough description to comply with the fourth amendment’s requirement that a warrant “particularly describ[e] . . . the things to be seized.” A dictionary definition of “particularly” includes the notion of “item by item.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, at 1647 (1971). While the courts have not gone so far as to require a warrant to contain, in effect, a laundry list of seizable items, they have required, in keeping with the very express language of the fourth amendment, that the
“property [to be seized] must be so definitely described that the officer making the search will not seize the wrong property.” People v. Prall, 314 Ill. 518, 522-23, 145 N.E. 610, 612 (1924), quoted in United States v. Klein, 565 F.2d 183, 190 (1st Cir. 1977) (dissenting opinion).
Here the warrant directed seizure of records “which show actual medical services performed and fraudulent services claimed to have been performed in a scheme to defraud the United States , and to submit false Medicare and Medicaid claims for payments to the United States or its agents; in violation of Title 18, United States Code, *548Section 1001.” I reluctantly accept the view that this is too elliptical to give clear guidance to the seizing officer.
The present description, to be sure, avoids the chief infirmity of the warrant in In re Lafayette Academy, 610 F.2d 1 (1st Cir. 1979); it directs the executing officers only to papers constituting evidence of a particular, narrowly defined crime, i. e., Medicare-Medicaid fraud,"which was the crime forming the basis of the probable cause to issue the warrant. In Lafayette, by contrast, the criminal scheme under investigation was not described at all in the warrant. We emphasized in Lafayette, however, that it might not be sufficient merely to describe the objects to be seized in terms of their character as evidence of the stated fraud. Id., note 4. Thus we said,
“In many instances of warrants authorizing the seizure of documents from a general file efforts may also be required to narrow the documents by category, time periods, and the like.” Id.
The need for particularization gives rise to a dilemma in fraud investigations. The investigators usually do not, and often cannot, know in advance precisely what .they will find when they search through files pursuant to a warrant. They, therefore, may find it difficult to describe what they are seeking, other than to say that they expect to find, and will seize, documents constituting evidence of the particular fraud. Such a description leaves it up to the officers executing the warrant to determine, on the spot, what papers constitute relevant evidence of the fraud being investigated, and to seize only those. Yet while such a general description makes sense from the point of view of those investigating crime, and may, indeed, be the very best they can provide in some cases, the constitution requires the warrant to “particularly describe” the things to be seized. Hence the dilemma.
I don’t know what the eventual answer to this problem will be. No Supreme Court case fully confronts the question. In Andresen v. Maryland, 427 U.S. 463, 478-84, 96 S.Ct. 2737, 2747-2750, 49 L.Ed.2d 627 (1976), the Supreme Court did accept a warrant description which, after a fairly particularized listing of items, went on to direct the seizure of books, records, etc., “showing or tending to show a fraudulent intent and/or knowledge as elements of the crime of false pretenses.” Id. And the warrant ended with the challenged catch-all phrase permitting seizure of fruits, instrumentalities and evidence of crime “at this [time] unknown.” The foregoing language, however, follows an otherwise quite specific and narrow description. Furthermore, with respect to this language, the Andresen Court never discussed the fact that in the course of the search the officers would necessarily have to make some sort of on the spot determination of their own as to just what items constituted relevant evidence of the designated crime, in order to know what to seize. Lower courts such as ourselves, and law enforcement authorities, will have to await future guidance on the question whether a warrant is sufficiently particular if it identifies the documents to be seized solely or largely in terms of their character as evidence of the fraud under investigation. The answer may turn, in part, on whether it is difficult or easy, in a given case, for officers to determine whether certain documents evidence the fraud in question. In some cases, e. g., an anti-trust case, the executing officer would have to exercise a far more refined legal judgment than in others to determine what papers constituted “evidence” and hence were seizable. Cf. Montilla Records of Puerto Rico, Inc. v. Morales, 575 F.2d 324 (1st Cir. 1978). Unless the necessary judgment is one the executing officers can be expected to perform reliably, a description identifying seizable items as any that constitute evidence of the particular fraud would seem too general. A related question is the extent to which a warrant may properly authorize the seizure of files containing a jumble of “innocent” as well as “guilty” materials. In the present case, the file of a Medicare-Medicaid patient obviously contains a good deal more material than that which bears on the padded reimbursement claims of the physician. The latter presumably consists main*549ly of papers showing what actual medical services and procedures were provided, together with copies of the doctor’s claim for monetary reimbursement. But the physician may also have retained in the file notes of patient complaints and history, and of his own diagnoses and evaluation. The file could include patient information of a very private nature. Compare Hawaii Psychiatric Association v. Ariyoshi, 481 F.Supp. 1028 (D.C.Haw.1979) (enjoining search, pursuant to state administrative warrant, of Medicaid psychiatric patient records). In cases of the present sort, I do not believe that a criminal warrant can properly direct the seizure of each Medicare-Medicaid patient’s entire file in a doctor’s office, with its mix of relevant and irrelevant materials. As discussed in Lafayette, such a warrant might be adequately particular, in that it would inform the executing officer precisely what to take (i. e., all files of Medicare-Medicaid patients), but it would violate the probable cause requirement of the fourth amendment, since it would permit the indiscriminate seizure of irrelevant “innocent” materials of a confidential nature along with materials pertinent to the Medicare-Medicaid fraud being investigated.1
The law is still largely unformed in this difficult area. The problem is not merely the product of the development of the Xerox machine, the growth of white-collar fraud, and the accompanying explosion of paper; it is more immediately the product of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 87 S.Ct. 1642, 18 L.Ed.2d 782 (1967), and, more recently, in Andresen, 427 U.S. 463, 96 S.Ct. 2737, 49 L.Ed.2d 627. Prior to these cases government agents could not have searched personal files, see, e. g., Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 625-26, 6 S.Ct. 524, 529-530, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886), nor were warrants available for the seizure of “mere evidence” (as distinct from the fruits and instrumentalities) of crime. Thus only recently have investigators been encouraged to try to use warrants interchangeably with subpoenas in fraud cases.2 See generally 90 Harv.L. Rev. 945, “Formalism, Legal Realism, and Constitutionally Protected Privacy under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.” An investigator’s understandable and, in some respects, perfectly reasonable desire to use a warrant to get at myriad documents he cannot describe in advance is in tension with the fourth amendment’s flat command that a warrant describe the “things to be seized” with particularity.
While we are in no position to resolve this general controversy, there is no escaping the need to decide this case; and, somewhat reluctantly, I accede to my brothers’ decision regarding the present warrant. For reasons already expressed, this warrant would clearly exceed the probable cause requirement of the fourth amendment were it construed to authorize the wholesale seizure of all files pertaining to Medicare-Medicaid patients, that actually occurred. While the warrant is, in fact, narrower than that, the operative language informing the officers what to take is overly succinct. They are to seize records “which show actual medical services performed and fraudulent services claimed to have been performed” in the described scheme to defraud. While suggestive of what is to be taken, this formula is scarcely more specific than a direction to take all documents evidencing the particular fraud. The more one studies it, the less certain it seems. What records show “actual” services performed? How *550will the investigators know? What records will show “fraudulent services claimed to have been performed”? Must the investigator know the claimed service was not performed to seize the record?
While common sense might provide an answer to many of these questions, I am not satisfied that the general statement measures up to the particularity expressly required by the fourth amendment. At least this is so where the search and seizure is directed at medical files, and not at files of a substantially or wholly illegal enterprise, involving privacy interests of a lesser character. The government, moreover, should have been able to do better. Surely its records reflected the names of the patients for whom Dr. Abrams had obtained Medicare-Medicaid reimbursement and in what amounts. Could it not have named these patients in the warrant, and directed the seizure of evidence of the services performed with respect to those individuals? At very least, the relevant time frames should have been indicated.3
I make several concluding comments. First, insofar as much of the court’s opinion is based on the' failure of the officers to execute the warrant properly, I think it confuses improper execution with the particularity requirement of the fourth amendment. It is clear that overzealous execution requires suppression only of any materials seized outside of the warrant’s authority (and the fruits of any such improperly seized material). See Andresen, supra. Improper execution may to some degree be evidence that the warrant description was confusing, hence lacking in particularity, but it can just as easily reflect overzealousness or ineptness by the executing officers. In any event, the relevant issue here is the description, not the execution.
Second, I agree the officers should not have seized all Medicare-Medicaid files, but in fairness I don’t think the warrant authorized such blanket seizure and removal of files. Thus the court’s admonition to conduct the entire search in situ, while certainly correct, relates only indirectly to the constitutionality of the warrant. Suppression, moreover, is not the remedy for improperly taking all the files off the premises.
Third, I note my exception to the surprising view implied in the court’s opinion that only the affidavit, not the warrant, should be read in a “common sense fashion.” While the familiar phrase from United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102, 85 S.Ct. 741, 13 L.Ed.2d 684 (1965), was framed in a case dealing with the sufficiency of an affidavit, I cannot believe the court means to indicate that a significantly different standard should apply to the warrant itself. Warrants, like affidavits, are often drafted under conditions of exigency and one cannot realistically demand the niceties required in fields like conveyancing and estate planning. A tendency of courts towards 20-20 hindsight review of descriptive warrant language would place even the most careful investigations and prosecutions under a cloud. Suppression proceedings arise after thousands of dollars and many hours have been spent to investigate and prosecute a crime; suppression is a drastic remedy which may well insulate a wrongdoer from all further prosecution. It should only be invoked where constitutional rights have been clearly violated — never where only minor technical errors, of no real substance, have occurred.
Finally, the time may have come to stop quoting the phrase from Marron v. United *551States, 275 U.S. 192, 196, 48 S.Ct. 74, 76, 72 L.Ed. 231 (1927), “As to what is taken, nothing is left to the discretion of the officer executing the warrant.” While this phrase establishes a worthy ideal, the standard is utterly unreal, as commentators recognize. Compare W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 4.6, Vol. II, p. 96 (noting that under a literal reading of that language few warrants would pass muster). Warrant descriptions must, of course, provide firm guidance to the executing officer, but cannot avoid delegating some responsibility to him. The question is whether the delegation is sufficiently confined by the directions given.
The fourth amendment, as the Supreme Court recently observed, imposes “a standard of reasonableness” upon the exercise of discretion by government officials “to safeguard against arbitrary invasions.” Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979). I am not persuaded that the standard of reasonableness requires making warrants practically unavailable in cases of white-collar fraud. A white-collar wrongdoer has the same incentive as any other to secrete and destroy evidence; the Supreme Court has not adopted the view, implied by the court here, that a subpoena is virtually the only proper method for obtaining voluminous documentary evidence. Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U.S. 547, 98 S.Ct. 1970, 56 L.Ed.2d 525 (1978). See also Andresen, 427 U.S. 463, 96 S.Ct. 2737, 49 L.Ed.2d 627.
Still, I agree with my brethren that the particularity requirement remains a critical mandate of the fourth amendment, and that the relaxed discovery standards associated with subpoenas are not appropriate for a warrant except, conceivably, in narrowly circumscribed classes of cases involving wholly or largely criminal enterprises. Here, while the case is very close, sufficient attention was not paid to providing specific instructions as to the particular categories of documents that alone could be seized.

. While such a warrant authorizing seizure of entire files would be improper in a case like this, it might be proper in cases involving a largely or wholly illicit business — such as an illegal drug manufacturing concern. In such cases, even if the files turn out to contain much irrelevant or innocent material, the predominantly illegal character of the enterprise could provide probable cause to seize entire files.

. The looser standards of relevance applicable to subpoenas are justified, to some extent, by the fact that the party whose papers are being seized or copied can seek judicial narrowing of the subpoena or a protective order prior to compliance. While the subject of a warrant can seek the return of papers alleged to have been improperly seized, he is in the position of one attempting to close the bam door after the horses have escaped.

. My brothers suggest that “if an affidavit contains an averment by an employee that fraudulent practices- were regularly pursued during his or her employment, and the term of such employment is set forth, the warrant could authorize the seizure of all records of Medicare and Medicaid services billed and purportedly performed during that period." (Emphasis added.) I think my brothers are a bit narrow in their view of the relevant time frame. The fact that a former employee indicates that certain fraudulent practices are being regularly followed during the period of his or her employ might, I think, depending on the circumstances, supply probable cause to believe that the fraud continued for a reasonable time in the future. I think the same sort of analysis could also be applied in regards to the seizure of records dating prior to the time of the employee’s tenure.