United States v. Doolittle

507 F.2d 1368
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit·Decided April 7, 1975·No. 72-3263·Published·Cited by 2 cases

Opinion

507 F.2d 1368

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
Billy Cecil DOOLITTLE, William Augustus Sanders, Jr., Ernest
Massod Union, Julian Wells Whited, Frank Joseph Masterana,
Cliff Anderson, Darnice T.Malloway, and William E. Baxter,
Defendants-Appellants.

No. 72-3263.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Feb. 14, 1975, Rehearing En Banc Granted April 7, 1975.

Floyd M. Buford, Macon, Ga., for Union and Whited.

Oscar B. Goodman Las Vegas, Nev., for Doolittle, Sanders and Masterana.

Louis Weiner, Jr., Las Vegas, Nev., Manley F. Brown, Macon, Ga., for Anderson.

Wesley R. Asinof, Atlanta, Ga., for Malloway and Baxter.

William J. Schloth, U.S. Atty., Charles T. Erion, Asst. U.S. Atty., Macon, Ga., for plaintiff-appellee.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia.

Before THORNBERRY, AINSWORTH and RONEY, Circuit Judges.

RONEY, Circuit Judge:

All defendants were convicted in a non-jury trial for conspiracy to violate 18 U.S.C.A. 1084 and 1952, which prohibit the use of interstate wire and telephone facilities to carry on illegal gambling operations. All defendants were similarly convicted of substantive violations of 1952, and defendants Masterana and Doolittle were also convicted of substantive violations of 1084. The convictions were obtained primarily by the use of conversations intercepted by a wiretap authorized by the district court under Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C.A. 2510-2520, and the fruits of searches for which the wiretap provided probable cause. Recognizing that without this evidence the Government's case would be substantially weakened, if not destroyed, defendants mounted a multifaceted assault on the wiretap in a motion to suppress the evidence in the district court. The district court denied the motion, and the convictions followed. The attack has been renewed in this Court, but like the district court, we find no infirmity warranting suppression of the evidence and affirm all convictions.

Defendants first attack the wiretap provisions of the Omnibus Crime Control Act as unconstitutional for violations of the First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments. We have recently upheld this portion of the statute against a similar constitutional attack. United States v. Sklaroff, 506 F.2d 837 (5th Cir. 1975).

Next the defendants assert that various procedural irregularities in the authorization of the wiretap request within the Justice Department require that the evidence be suppressed. See 18 U.S.C.A. 2515. The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that irregularities of the kind asserted here do not render the communications 'unlawfully intercepted' or the interception request 'insufficient on its face.' United States v. Chavez, 416 U.S. 562, 94 S.Ct. 1849, 40 L.Ed.2d 380 (1974); see 18 U.S.C.A. 2518(10)(a)(i), 2518(10)(a)(ii). At the time this case was argued, the Supreme Court had not decided Chavez and appellants relied on the Ninth Circuit decision in that case. United States v. Chavez, 478 F.2d 512 (9th Cir. 1973). The Supreme Court modified that portion of the Ninth Circuit decision upon which the appellants relied. We find nothing in this case to warrant a different result than that determined by the Supreme Court in Chavez. Considering the other information contained in the Interception Order Authorization, such as the location of the phones to be tapped, address of the Sportsman's Club, and its owner, we find the one incorrect digit in one of the four telephone numbers listed therein to be an immaterial variation from the actual, correct number for which the tap was requested of the district court. Cf. United States v. Chavez, supra.

The procedure of filing the affidavits of the Attorney General and his subordinates, as a method of proving the administrative history of the specific authorization in this case, is identical to that used in Chavez. There is no constitutional infirmity in the district court's refusal to require more of the Attorney General on this narrow issue of fact.

Appellants contend that the use of a 'pen register,' as in this case, is not specifically authorized by Title III and must, therefore, be considered rejected by Congress as an appropriate investigative tool. The Act does not prohibit the use of pen registers and we do not view its use in this case, based upon probable cause and with a separate authorization from the district court, as being constitutionally offensive. See United States v. Giordano, 416 U.S. 505, 553-554, 94 S.Ct. 1820, 40 L.Ed.2d 341 (1974) (Powell, joined by the Chief Justice, and Blackmun and Rehnquist, JJ., concurring in part and dissenting in part); United States v. Finn, 502 F.2d 938 (7th Cir. 1974); United States v. Brick, 502 F.2d 219, 223 (8th Cir. 1974); cf. United States v. Falcone, 364 F.Supp. 877 (D.N.J.1973), aff'd,500 F.2d 1401 (3rd Cir. 1974).

Certain defendants assert that the Government lacked probable cause to believe that their conversations would be intercepted by the wiretap. They contend that this lack of probable cause should render the tap unlawful as to them. A similar argument has been rejected by the Supreme Court in United States v. Kahn, 415 U.S. 143, 94 S.Ct. 977, 39 L.Ed.2d 225 (1974). At oral argument, the appellants relied upon the Seventh Circuit decision in United States v. Kahn, 471 F.2d 191 (7th Cir. 1972). The reversal by the Supreme Court of the Seventh Circuit decision is dispositive of the issue as framed here. The statute does not require that there be probable cause as to all persons whose conversations are intercepted. See 18 U.S.C.A. 2518(1)(b)(iv). Since the wiretap in this case was validly issued, the wiretap conversations of those individuals not known to be involved in criminal activity at the time of the court authorization may be used against them.

The wiretap authorization referred to 'Billy Cecil Doolittle and others as yet unknown.' Anderson and Baxter contend that the Government had reasonable cause to believe that their conversations would be intercepted. Relying on certain language in the Supreme Court's opinion in Kahn, they argue that, not being 'unknown,' they should have been named in the authorization. They contend that since they were not named, the wiretap order was illegal as to their conversations. The same argument could be made for Sanders. We reject this argument. The defendants neither allege nor demonstrate any prejudice to them in not being named in the authorization.

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United States v. Doolittle, 507 F.2d 1368 (5th Cir. 1975).

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