United States v. Mack S. Tane

329 F.2d 848, 1964 U.S. App. LEXIS 5966
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Second Circuit
DecidedMarch 24, 1964
Docket91, Docket 28312
StatusPublished
Cited by133 cases

This text of 329 F.2d 848 (United States v. Mack S. Tane) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Mack S. Tane, 329 F.2d 848, 1964 U.S. App. LEXIS 5966 (2d Cir. 1964).

Opinions

J. JOSEPH SMITH, Circuit Judge.

The government appeals from a pretrial order, entered by Judge Jacob Mish-ler in the Eastern District of New York, dismissing an indictment against Mack Tane. The order sustained the defendant’s objection to certain proffered testimony and dismissed the indictment on the ground that it had resulted from illegal wiretapping.

Mack Tane was indicted on February 7, 1961 on a charge of violating 29 U.S.C. § 186(b) and (d) (1958) 1 by accepting $1000 from an employer, Pase Motors, Inc., on or about February 10,1956, while Tane was a business agent of Local 239 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Tane moved by an order to show cause, dated February 7, 1962, for suppression of any testimony obtained because of unlawful wiretapping and for dismissal of the indictment if unlawfully obtained evidence was presented to the grand jury. At a hearing on the motion, it appeared that state officials had tapped a telephone conversation on December 6, 1955 between Leo Guzik, a lawyer for Pase Motors, and Sam Goldstein, president of Local 239. This conversation first indicated to the government that officials of Local 239 might be receiving unlawful payments from Pase Motors, Inc. Government investigators questioned Wesley Pase, an officer of Pase Motors, Inc. At first Pase denied making any payments to union representatives, but when confronted with information that the conversation between his attorney and Sam Goldstein had been tapped, Pase admitted making the payments to secure labor peace. Pase subsequently testified before a New York County Grand Jury in May of 1956, before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Government Operations in January of 1961, and before the Grand Jury that indicted Tane in February of 1961. Tane’s motion was aimed at suppressing Pase’s testimony.

On September 10, 1962 Judge Mishler denied Tane’s motion on three grounds: (1) that neither Tane nor Pase were parties to the intercepted telephone conversation, and under Goldstein v. United States, 316 U.S. 114, 62 S.Ct. 1000, 86 L.Ed. 1312 (1942), testimony procured by [850]*850an illegal wiretap is admissible against one not a party to the conversation; (2) that Pase was motivated to testify by a variety of reasons and did not acquire knowledge of facts to which he testified through illegal monitoring; and (3) that evidence is not subject to suppression under Rule 41(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure unless it is obtained by an unreasonable search and seizure, and a wiretap in the absence of a physical intrusion is not an unreasonable search and seizure.

Through an error by the clerk of the court, the defendant was given a March 8, 1956 memorandum of James J. Ma-honey, a New York County investigator. The memorandum, which the court had refused to allow the defendant to examine since it was not in evidence, indicates that on December 6, 1955, Leo Guzik ■called Sam Goldstein and Max Tane, but the digest of the call which follows does not indicate that Tane took part in the reported conversation.2 After a rehearing on the motion, the court found that the memorandum did not substantiate the claim that Tane was a party to the conversation, and in a decision dated October 17, 1962, adhered to its original decision of September 10, 1962.

Prior to the selection of a jury, the defendant renewed his application to suppress the testimony of Wesley Pase. The court viewed this application as an objection to the anticipated testimony and a renewal of the motion to dismiss the indictment. On rehearing, additional testimony was adduced that showed that the identity of Wesley Pase was first derived from the unlawful wiretap of December 6, 1955, and that disclosure of the conversation between Guzik and Gold-stein to the Assistant District Attorney led to the testimony of Wesley Pase. Moreover, a summary report prepared by detectives Herzfeld and Lynch, who actually listened in on the December 6 wiretap, was introduced. This report revealed that Tane was in on the inter[851]*851cepted December 6 telephone call in which Guzik and Goldstein discussed a payment from Pase Motors and that Tane discussed the Pase labor situation with Guzik on the same call.3 Finding the source of the government’s evidence thus tainted, Judge Mishler, in an opinion filed April 10, 1963, sustained the defendant’s objection to Wesley Pase testifying and dismissed the indictment because it was the product of an unlawful wiretap.

Appealability

The threshold question is whether this court has jurisdiction to hear this appeal. We deny Tane’s motion to dismiss for lack of appellate jurisdiction and hold the order appealable. 18 U.S.C. § 3731 (1958) permits appeal to the Court of Appeals by the government in criminal cases where the district court has rendered “a decision or judgment setting aside, or dismissing any indictment or information, or any count thereof except where a direct appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States is provided by this section.”4

It is clear that, standing alone, a pretrial order suppressing evidence is not appealable. Di Bella v. United States, 369 U.S. 121, 82 S.Ct. 654, 7 L.Ed.2d 614 (1962); Carroll v. United States, 354 U.S. 394, 77 S.Ct. 1332, 1 L.Ed.2d 1442 (1957). Here the suppression order did not stand alone; it was coupled with the dismissal of the indictment, which was found to be the product of illegal wiretapping. The pre-trial dismissal of an indictment, after the granting of a pretrial motion to suppress the evidence on which the indictment is based is appeal-able under 18 U.S.C. § 3731. United States v. Wheeler, 256 F.2d 745 (3 Cir. 1958), cert. denied 358 U.S. 873, 79 S.Ct. 111, 3 L.Ed.2d 103 (1958) ; United States, v. Ashby, 245 F.2d 684 (5 Cir. 1957). Where, as here, the basis of the dismissal of the indictment is inextricably in[852]*852tertwined with the basis of the suppression order, both orders must be reviewed together.

Defendant’s Standing to Object

On this appeal the government contends that Tane was not a party to the intercepted conversation, and therefore, has no standing to object to the use, if any, to which the tapped phone conversation was put. Section 605 of the Federal Communications Act provides in pertinent part:

“ * * * no person not being authorized by the sender shall intercept any communication and divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such intercepted communication to any person * *

In the two Nardone cases,5

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Bluebook (online)
329 F.2d 848, 1964 U.S. App. LEXIS 5966, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-mack-s-tane-ca2-1964.