United States v. Montgomery

290 F. Supp. 3d 396
CourtDistrict Court, W.D. Pennsylvania
DecidedJanuary 31, 2018
Docket2:14–cr–205
StatusPublished

This text of 290 F. Supp. 3d 396 (United States v. Montgomery) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Montgomery, 290 F. Supp. 3d 396 (W.D. Pa. 2018).

Opinion

The Governor shall appoint and fix the compensation of such number of deputy heads of administrative departments, except those of the Department of Auditor General and Treasury Department, as the Executive Board shall approve, who shall, in the absence of the head of such department, have the right to exercise all the powers and perform all the duties by law vested in and imposed upon the head of such department, except the power to appoint bureau or division chiefs, or other assistants or employees, and who may, at any time, exercise such of the powers and perform such of the duties of the head of his department as may be prescribed by the head of his department: Provided, however, That any such deputy shall not have the right to exercise any power or perform any duty which the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania requires the head of his department personally to exercise or perform.
Whenever there shall be a vacancy in the office of the head of any department, such deputy as the Governor shall designate in writing shall exercise the powers and perform the duties of the head of the department until the vacancy is filled.

Id. § 73 (emphasis added). Similarly, 71 P.S. § 762, enacted in 1917 and aptly titled *406"Duty of person next in authority to act during vacancy or absence of incumbent" (a provision predating but closely related to the Administrative Code), states:

Whenever, by reason of the absence, incapacity, or inability of the head or chief of any of the departments of the State Government to perform the duties of his office, or whenever a vacancy in the office of the head or chief of any of the departments of the State Government occurs, the duties of the head or chief of such department shall be performed by the deputy, chief clerk, or other person next in authority, until such disability is removed or the vacancy filled.

Id. § 762. In 1980, the Commonwealth Attorneys Act made the AG's Office an independent agency and bestowed the power to appoint a First Deputy AG upon the AG, rather than the Governor. See 71 P.S. § 732-201. The Commonwealth Attorneys Act states:

(a) General provisions.-The Office of Attorney General shall be an independent department and shall be headed by the Attorney General. The Attorney General shall exercise such powers and perform such duties as are hereinafter set forth. As an independent administrative department the Office of Attorney General shall be subject to the same limitations contained in [the Administrative Code,] and all other acts as are applicable to the independent Department of Auditor General or State Treasury.
...
(c) Bureaus, divisions and personnel.-The Attorney General shall appoint and fix the compensation of a first deputy attorney general, a director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection and such other deputies, officers and employees who may, at any time, exercise such powers and perform such duties as may be prescribed by the Attorney General.

Id. In other words, the Commonwealth Attorneys Act removed the AG's Office from the Governor's control, but otherwise reaffirmed the application of the Administrative Code to the AG's Office, including as to the powers and duties of the First Deputy AG.

Defendants advance a number of arguments to explain why only the Wiretap Act's requirement of a written designation, and not any of the other state law provisions for dealing with the absence of the AG, should apply here. First, Defendants argue AG Kane was not absent when Deputy King signed the April 14 wiretap application. Although she was plainly physically out of the Commonwealth and on the way to or in another country (Haiti), they assert she was available by phone and was only briefly "out of pocket"-for the span of a few hours at the most. (Def. Montgomery's Suppl. Mem., ECF No. 363, at 2-3.) Although the statutes do not define "absent," Defendants argue, it could not be intended to mean so brief a time as to allow the First Deputy to take charge when the AG was temporarily away from her desk. (Id. at 3.)

As a preliminary matter, the Court concludes that AG Kane was absent for the purposes of the relevant state laws. The distinction between "absent" and "vacant" in Section 213 of the Administrative Code and 71 P.S. § 762 indicates that the Pennsylvania legislature intended an absence to be temporary. The length of time AG Kane was actually "out of pocket" is irrelevant; she was far away from the Commonwealth, traveling to a foreign country that was still recovering from a natural disaster and had spotty cell phone service, and both Smith and COO Tyler were unable to immediately reach her despite numerous calls and voicemail messages. At the time the designation *407letter and the wiretap application were signed, no one in the AG's Office had any idea how long AG Kane would be unreachable, the wiretap application process was fast moving, and the overall work of the AG's Office needed to proceed.7 This is precisely the sort of situation these state laws seek to address by permitting (or in the case of Section 762, requiring) official business to continue, even when the AG is unavailable.

Next, Defendants argue that even if AG Kane was absent and unreachable when the wiretap application was signed, she became "reachable" before the wiretap application was presented to Judge Bowes, and AG Kane should have acted to prevent its approval. (Id. at 2.) If the Administrative Code applies to the facts in this case, this argument has no merit. A First Deputy's actions, taken during the AG's absence, do not become void upon the AG's return-this, quite plainly, would defeat the purpose of Section 213 of the Administrative Code and the other provisions of state law allowing state departments to operate in the absence of the department head. If Deputy King was authorized to execute the wiretap application in AG Kane's absence under the Administrative Code, the Commonwealth Attorneys Act, and/or 71 P.S. § 762, the application was valid when signed, and AG Kane was under no obligation to prevent it from being presented to Judge Bowes. In fact, as this Court will discuss later, the fact that she made no efforts to "undo" Deputy King's execution of the application gives additional credence to the Government's assertions that (1) AG Kane fully supported and approved of the wiretap application and believed Deputy King was authorized to sign it in her absence, even without a written designation letter, and (2) in any event, by not issuing any directive to undo Deputy King's or Smith's actions, knowing full well what they had done, AG Kane ratified or adopted those actions.

This brings us to the crux of Defendants' argument, which is that the Wiretap Act, a specific state statute enacted to address state wiretap applications, controls over more general statutes addressing the workings of state departments (including the AG's Office) when the top official is absent. (Defs.' Joint Suppl. Mem., ECF No. 370, at 8-9.) Defendants assert that the relevant provisions of state law cited above are irreconcilable, since only the Wiretap Act requires a written designation while the others seem to apply automatically when the AG is absent.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
290 F. Supp. 3d 396, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-montgomery-pawd-2018.