United States v. Baker

301 F. Supp. 973, 25 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 306, 1969 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9985
CourtDistrict Court, District of Columbia
DecidedMay 22, 1969
DocketCr. No. 39-66
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 301 F. Supp. 973 (United States v. Baker) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, District of Columbia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Baker, 301 F. Supp. 973, 25 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 306, 1969 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9985 (D.D.C. 1969).

Opinion

FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

GASCH, District Judge.

This case was remanded for further hearings on the defendant’s motion to suppress fruits of concededly illegal eavesdropping devices. The remand deals with two separate aspects of the motion to suppress.

First, the Court of Appeals held that the defendant was entitled to inspect the records of all conversations intercepted through the device in the suite of Fred Black in the Sheraton Carlton Hotel in Washington, D. C. At the pretrial hearing, the defendant had received those logs reflecting his own conversations and those of unknown conversants. The Court of Appeals also permitted the defendant to examine those logs from the devices placed in the offices of Benjamin Sigelbaum in Miami, Florida, and Edward Levinson in Las Vegas, Nevada, which reported conversations with unknown conversants. All such logs have been provided to the defendant.

Second, the Court of Appeals remanded for further consideration the question of whether the monitoring of the telephone call from Baker to Levinson reported in the Las Vegas log on November 1, 1962, tainted the cross-examination of the defendant as to his whereabouts on the weekend of November 2, 1962. If any taint were found, this Court was directed to determine whether it was prejudicial.

This Court held an evidentiary hearing during .the week of December 16, 1968. Pursuant to defendant’s motion, further testimony was adduced on April 16, 1969. Based on the opinion remanding the case, the record and the hearings held pursuant to the remand, the Court enters the following findings of fact and conclusions of law:

[974]*974FINDINGS OF FACT

1. During the relevant period, the Grand Jury investigation concerning the Baker case was in the charge of three Department of Justice attorneys: William 0. Bittman, Donald Page Moore, and Austin Mittler. The trial was conducted by Messrs. Bittman and Mittler. Two Internal Revenue Special Agents were assigned to the Baker case in the Fall of 1963: Joseph Rosetti and Donald Iverson; they remained on the case through the trial. The Federal Bureau of Investigation opened its case on October 3, 1963. The case agent in the Washington Field Office from that time until January, 1966, was Paul Kenneth Brown. Agent Brown made investigations as requested by the Department of Justice. These requests were normally in writing.

2. Mr. Bittman was not informed that the defendant’s conversations had been picked up by eavesdropping devices until September or October of 1965. The information was supplied as the result of a written inquiry motivated in part by defendant’s revelation of the Levinson eavesdropping device before the Senate Rules Committee.

3. The FBI informed Mr. Bittman of the Black, Levinson, and Sigelbaum devices and showed him the basic logs on these devices at FBI Headquarters. He did not make copies or notes. He did .not review his Department of Justice files when he returned to his office, and he has no recollection of ever having seen any of the illegally obtained conversations in his prosecution files.

4. Prior to this remand hearing, the defendant had an opportunity to examine all the records of conversations from the Edward Levinson and Benjamin Sigelbaum surveillances in which one of the participants was unidentified.

5. The defendant, in pleadings filed prior to this hearing, selected from these materials four conversations monitored during the course of the Sigelbaum surveillance (on April 18, 1963, February 14 and 19, 1964, and May 20, 1965) and two conversations monitored during the course of the Levinson surveillance (on November 9, 1962, and December 10, 1962) as conversations in which he, the defendant, was the unidentified participant.

6. At the remand hearing the defendant testified that:

(a) He was not the unidentified person in the April 18, 1963, Sigelbaum log, and he was not the unidentified party in the November 9, 1962, Levinson log.
(b) He was the unidentified person in the May 20,1965, Sigelbaum log.
(c) He might have been the unidentified person in the remaining conversations which he had selected prior to the hearing.

7. With respect to the conversations reflected in 6(b) and 6(c) above, the defendant failed to show at the evidentiary hearing that any of the information contained in those conversations led, directly or indirectly, to any evidence used by the Government at the trial of this case.

8. Prior to this hearing, the defendant had an opportunity to examine all the records of conversations overheard by the FBI during the electronic surveillance of the Sheraton Carlton Hotel suite of Fred Black, Jr.

9. The defendant in pleadings filed prior to the hearing selected from these records eight items which he alleged had some relevance to the trial of the instant case. At the hearing itself, defense counsel was able to indicate only that the names of Edward Bostick and Mel-par, Inc., and their relationship to each other, appeared in these records and the same Edward Bostick' was a witness called by the Government at the trial of this case.

10. The defendant has made no showing that the items which mention Bostick and Melpar led, directly or indirectly, to the evidence used by the Government at trial.

11. The Baker «case files at FBI Headquarters contain no information whatever pertaining to either Bostick or [975]*975Melpar which emanated from the Black surveillance.

12. The Baker case files of the Washington Field Office of the FBI contain one item relating to Bostick and one item mentioning Melpar, Inc., which did emanate from the Black surveillance. However, neither relates to any of the evidence used by the Government at trial. They were neither made the basis of any investigation or investigative leads in the Baker case, nor disseminated outside the Washington Field Office of the FBI.

13. Both Edward Bostick and Mel-par, Inc., first became known to Paul Kenneth Brown, the FBI Baker ease agent, on October 3, 1963, during his interview of Ralph Hill — -the first interview conducted by the FBI in this case. His interview of Hill was conducted at the specific request of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice a week prior to the receipt of items from the Black surveillance which mentioned Bostick and Melpar, Inc.

14. Edward Bostick’s trial testimony —which included testimony about Melpar —was based upon testimony which he had given in 1964 before the Senate Rules Committee in the course of their hearings into the Baker matter. The content of Bostick’s trial testimony conforms in all material respects to his Senate Rules Committee testimony.

II.

A. Cross-Examination of Robert G. Baker re November 2, 1962

15. The Government’s chief prosecutor, William 0. Bittman, first saw the original log containing the November 1, 1962, overhearing sometime in September, 1965, at the FBI office in Washington, D. C. The FBI had picked up defendant’s voice in connection with organized crime investigations.

16. Assistant Government prosecutor Austin S. Mittler first saw the original log containing the November 1, 1962, overhearing by the FBI sometime during 1966 after a motion to suppress had been filed by the defendant.

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301 F. Supp. 973, 25 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 306, 1969 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9985, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-baker-dcd-1969.