State v. Quinn

422 N.W.2d 763, 1988 Minn. App. LEXIS 452, 1988 WL 43339
CourtCourt of Appeals of Minnesota
DecidedMay 10, 1988
DocketNo. C7-88-14
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 422 N.W.2d 763 (State v. Quinn) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Minnesota primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Quinn, 422 N.W.2d 763, 1988 Minn. App. LEXIS 452, 1988 WL 43339 (Mich. Ct. App. 1988).

Opinions

OPINION

PARKER, Judge.

This is a pretrial appeal by the state from an order suppressing evidence developed from a wiretap authorized by a wiretap warrant, Minn.Stat. § 626A.06 (1986). We affirm.

FACTS

Respondents Mara Quinn, Jerry Saliter-man and Freida Opitz are defendants in criminal prosecutions for receiving stolen property, conspiracy to receive stolen property, and theft by swindle. Quinn is the owner of a house located at 1012 Thomas Avenue South in Minneapolis that police suspected was the center of a shoplifting and fencing operation.

The Hennepin County Attorney applied for a warrant authorizing a wiretap on the Quinn phone on February 10, 1986. This application was based on the affidavit of Minneapolis Police Sgt. Gordon Haertel relating the history of the investigation into the alleged operation. The affidavit details information developed through informants, visual surveillance, a “pen register” placed on the telephone line, an undercover operation, and other investigative methods. The affidavit concluded that these investigative methods would not succeed in exposing the whole operation because informants were growing fearful, undercover “buys” would require excessive amounts of money and endanger officers, and visual surveillance and the “pen register” had yielded as much information as they were capable of yielding.

The police suspected that Saliterman and Quinn shoplifted items from local retail stores, particularly Dayton’s, and often with the help of store employees. They suspected that Saliterman and two co-conspirators, Edward Quinn and Fred Valentine, had committed a burglary at Cedrics in Edina on October 6,1985. They suspected the principals were selling the stolen merchandise out of the Thomas Avenue residence, but a prior search at that address had turned up no stolen merchandise. Therefore, they suspected there was a separate storage location.

The wiretap warrant was issued on February 10,1986, based on the probable cause shown in the application and Haertel affidavit. The warrant states there is probable cause to believe a wiretap would disclose communications regarding the offenses of theft, receiving stolen goods, burglary, and conspiracy to commit those offenses. The warrant authorizes interception of communications regarding those offenses, and more particularly,

conversations about the physical location of property after it has been stolen; conversations about the sale or transfer of stolen property to purchasers or to others for future delivery to purchasers; [765]*765conversations about the identity of purchasers of stolen property or persons storing or delivering stolen property; conversations about the identity and role of store employees who have in the past or may in the future assist in facilitating burglarization of their employer’s store or theft of their employer’s merchandise

The warrant specified certain “minimization” requirements and provided:

This warrant * * * must, in any event, terminate in ten days, or upon the charging with an offense specified above of any person specified above, whichever comes first.

Monitoring of conversations under the warrant began on February 10, 1986, at 6:00 p.m. and ended at 11:42 a.m. on February 20. Norman Mastrian, an individual specified in the warrant who had been arrested on February 18, and a companion, Terry Martin, were charged with receiving stolen property and other offenses at 12:05 p.m. on February 20.

The trial court heard the suppression motion based on a record made in federal district court on similar motions in the federal prosecutions. Sergeant Haertel testified at the suppression hearing that two important objectives of the wiretap were to identify all participants in the operation and to locate where the stolen merchandise was stored, particularly the furs stolen from Cedrics.

Haertel testified police monitored 565 phone calls, of which 231, or 41 percent were, at least in part, criminal in nature. The officers engaged in monitoring were instructed on how to “minimize,” or limit, interception of non-criminal conversations. Officers were given a copy of the Privacy of Communication Act, ch. 626A, as well as a copy of the search warrant, which was posted in the intercept room.

When Mastrian and Martin were arrested on February 18, they had 15 fur coats in their possession, leaving many of the Ce-drics coats still to be located. After the arrests, police monitored a number of conversations concerning transfers of the stolen merchandise. On February 18 they executed search warrants at three locations associated with Mastrian. The following day they executed search warrants at 1012 Thomas Avenue and four other residences, finding stolen merchandise at all locations. At one address they seized items respondent Quinn had just transferred from the Thomas Avenue house. At another residence they seized a large amount of clothing and saw jewelry, burglary tools and other items for which they sought a second warrant. Three additional searches were made on February 20, but the record does not show whether they were done before or after the wiretap monitoring ended.

Respondents moved to suppress evidence obtained from the wiretap, challenging the warrant in four respects: (1) probable cause; (2) minimization provisions; (3) lack of particularity; and (4) lack of the termination provision. The district court granted the motion because the termination provision did not provide that the interception was to cease once the objective of the authorization was attained.

ISSUE

Did the trial court clearly err in determining that the wiretap warrant was deficient, requiring the suppression of evidence derived from it?

DISCUSSION

The Privacy of Communications Act provides that a wiretap warrant shall state that it “must terminate upon attainment of the authorized objective, or in any event in ten days.” Minn.Stat. § 626A.06, subd. 4(h) (1986). The Act also provides:

Duration of warrant. No warrant entered under this section may authorize or approve the interception of any wire or oral communication for any period longer than is necessary to achieve the objective of the authorization, nor in any event longer than ten days.
The effective period of any warrant for intercepting communications shall terminate immediately when any person [766]*766named in the warrant has been charged with an offense specified in the warrant.

Minn.Stat. § 626A.06, subd. 5 (1986).

The trial court found that the warrant’s termination clause was deficient because although it provided for termination when a suspect was charged, this was not equivalent to the “attainment of the authorized objective.” The court noted:

By using the concept of charging a defendant, as opposed to a concept directed towards achieving the desired objective, the warrant allows for the interception of communications long after a reasonably ascertained “success” was or may have been achieved.

The state argues the court clearly erred in suppressing the evidence. See State v. Webber, 262 N.W.2d 157, 159 (Minn.1977) (recognizing state’s right to appeal from pretrial order).

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Related

State v. Quinn
436 N.W.2d 758 (Supreme Court of Minnesota, 1989)

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Bluebook (online)
422 N.W.2d 763, 1988 Minn. App. LEXIS 452, 1988 WL 43339, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-quinn-minnctapp-1988.