State v. Tucker

662 P.2d 345, 62 Or. App. 512, 1983 Ore. App. LEXIS 2568
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedApril 13, 1983
Docket20-567a; 81-5453a; CA A22122
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 662 P.2d 345 (State v. Tucker) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Tucker, 662 P.2d 345, 62 Or. App. 512, 1983 Ore. App. LEXIS 2568 (Or. Ct. App. 1983).

Opinion

*514 BUTTLER, J.

The state appeals from a pretrial order granting defendant’s motion to suppress all evidence obtained by the state through the interception of all telephone calls to and from defendant’s telephone during a period of about six weeks. The trial court found that the state had made no effort to minimize the interception of communications not otherwise subject to interception, ORS 133.724(4) and (5); 1 its order suppressed the tape recordings of all 958 telephone calls intercepted. We affirm.

*516 Early in the morning of December 14, 1980, defendant’s husband, Christopher Lee Tucker, was found dead at his home in Aloha by his two brothers, who had gone there to check on him at the request of their parents. He had been stabbed five times. Investigating officers interviewed defendant on December 14 and obtained the following information: (1) she had been estranged from her husband for a week and had moved into a friend’s apartment; (2) she expressed concern over Christopher’s well-being, and (3) Christopher had been threatened by two men in the defendant’s presence a few days earlier.

After further investigation, suspicion focused on defendant and Craig Pottle; the police suspected that the two of them had planned the murder in order to collect and split insurance proceeds payable on Christopher’s death. To delineate further the roles defendant and Pottle played in the murder, the district attorney, pursuant to ORS 133.724(1), applied to the circuit court for an ex parte order authorizing the interception of telephone calls to and from the telephone at the apartment of the friend with whom defendant was then living. The order was signed by the judge on December 17, and provided, in part, that the communications to be intercepted were limited to the telephonic communications of defendant “which are made or received on the above-described telephone, which pertain to the murder of Christopher Tucker and the intended distribution of $75,000 insurance proceeds she intends to collect.” The order did not contain the statutorily required provision that the interception “be conducted in such a way as to minimize the interception of communications not otherwise subject to interception, * * *.” ORS 133.724(5).

The initial order expired after 15 days, but two later orders extended it through January 30, 1981. Although the order was limited to communications of the defendant, *517 the district attorney instructed the law enforcement officers to intercept all telephone conversations to and from that telephone, and all of them were monitored, logged and tape-recorded by the sheriffs deputies assigned to the operation. Those officers testified that they were instructed to monitor and record all conversations with the exception of conversations between defendant and legal counsel. They also testified to being able to identify defendant’s voice within a few days after they commenced the monitoring. Of the 958 telephone conversations monitored, defendant participated in 461, and 260 of those were irrelevant to the matters covered by the order. The wiretap ended on January 16, 1981, when defendant and Pottle were arrested and taken into custody.

The trial court, in ordering suppression of all of the taped conversations, found that the state had substantially complied with all statutory requirements except one: minimization. The order authorizing the wiretap did not require minimization as mandated by ORS 133.724(5), but did limit what communications were authorized to be intercepted. The statutory minimization requirement is different from, and in addition to, the requirements that the order identify the person whose communications are to be intercepted and particularly describe the types of communication to be intercepted and the crime to which it relates. Minimization is a further limitation on the continued monitoring of communications of a person whose calls the order authorizes to be intercepted and requires that the interception cease if and when it is determined that the subject matter of a particular communication is irrelevant to the investigation. It may be that if there is minimization in fact, the absence of the required language in the order would not be fatal. Here, however, the trial court found, and the state does not deny, that the officers, at the direction of the district attorney, went well beyond the limitations that were contained in the order, intercepting and recording all telephone calls, including 192 calls to which defendant was not a party. The court also found that there had been no periodic judicial review or supervision of the interceptions. In fact, the judge authorizing the wiretap specifically declined that responsibility by deleting that portion of the proposed authorizing order. The trial court declined *518 to order only a partial suppression, because it found that there was no good faith, or any, effort to minimize or that there had, in fact, been any minimization.

The state contends that the trial court erred in suppressing all of the intercepted communications, because under the totality of circumstances the minimization requirements of the statute were met. It urges the use of an objective standard of reasonableness that would demonstrate compliance with the statute here. Second, the state argues that, even if the minimization requirement was not met, total suppression was not the proper remedy; rather, if suppression is appropriate, it should be limited strictly to what the trial court determines to be unauthorized or non-minimized interceptions.

Scott v. United States, 436 US 128, 98 S Ct 1717, 56 L Ed 2d 168 (1978), addressed the minimization issue under the federal statute on which the Oregon statute is based. The Court treated wiretapping as a search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment and held that there must be an objective assessment by the Court of the officers’ actions in light of facts and circumstances then known to the officers in determining the validity of a search. Specifically as to wiretaps, the Court stated that the federal statute focuses on actions, not motives.

Applying the Scott standards to this case, several differences come to light. In Scott, the order authorizing the wiretap expressly required minimization, using the mandatory statutory language. In this case, that language is missing. In Scott, the trial judge authorizing the wiretap reviewed the situation on a regular basis throughout the period during which the wiretap was authorized. Here, the authorizing judge struck the language in the order calling for such judicial monitoring and review, and there was no judicial review of the operation. Further, there were only two suspects, Tucker and Pottle, whose identities were known to the police. Scott

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Related

State v. Capell
966 P.2d 232 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 1998)
State v. Tucker
768 P.2d 397 (Oregon Supreme Court, 1989)
State v. Tucker
740 P.2d 182 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 1987)
State v. Lissy
737 P.2d 617 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 1987)
State v. Pottle
677 P.2d 1 (Oregon Supreme Court, 1984)
State v. Pottle
662 P.2d 351 (Court of Appeals of Oregon, 1983)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
662 P.2d 345, 62 Or. App. 512, 1983 Ore. App. LEXIS 2568, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-tucker-orctapp-1983.