Statutory Interpretation

Listen to this article

United States Supreme Court

Case Name: Dahda v. United States

Case No.: 17-43

Focus: Statutory Interpretation

A federal statute allows judges to issue wiretap orders authorizing the interception of communications to help prevent, detect, or prosecute serious federal crimes. See Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 18 U. S. C. §2510 et seq. The statute requires the judge to find “probable cause” supporting issuance of the order, and it sets forth other detailed requirements governing both the application for a wiretap and the judicial order that authorizes it. See §2518. The statute provides for the suppression of “the contents of any wire or oral communication” that a wiretap “intercept[s]” along with any “evidence derived therefrom” if “(i) the communication was unlawfully intercepted; “(ii) the order of . . . approval under which it was intercepted is insufficient on its face; or “(iii) the interception was not made in conformity with the order of authorization or approval.” §2518(10)(a).

This litigation concerns the second of these provisions— the provision that governs the “insufficien[cy]” of an order “on its face.” §2518(10)(a)(ii). Los and Roosevelt Dahda—defendants in the trial below and petitioners here—sought to suppress evidence derived from nine wiretap Orders used to obtain evidence of their participation in an unlawful drug distribution conspiracy. They argue that each Order is “insufficient on its face” because each contains a sentence authorizing interception “outside the territorial jurisdiction” of the authorizing judge, App. 97 (emphasis added), even though the statute normally allows a judge to authorize wiretaps only within his or her “territorial jurisdiction,” §2518(3). In deciding whether each Order was “insufficient on its face,” we assume that the Dahdas are right about the “territorial” requirement. That is to say, we assume the relevant sentence exceeded the judge’s statutory authority. But none of the communications unlawfully intercepted outside the judge’s territorial jurisdiction were introduced at trial, so the inclusion of the extra sentence had no significant adverse effect upon the Dahdas. Because the remainder of each Order was itself legally sufficient, we conclude that the Orders were not “insufficient” on their “face.”

Affirmed

Dissenting:

Concurring:

Full Text

Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.