Thread: Use of wiretap evidence thrown out in immigrant-smuggling ca

http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/A ... 2H1G0.html

Use of wiretap evidence thrown out in immigrant-smuggling case

06/23/2005

By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN / Associated Press

Wiretap evidence collected at a bus company's corporate offices can't be used to prosecute the firm's officers and employees on immigrant-smuggling charges, a federal appeals court judge ruled Wednesday.

The bus company, Golden State Transportation Co., has filed for bankruptcy and entered a guilty plea. But Golden State's officers and employees have not entered pleas.

A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that federal prosecutors did not demonstrate the necessity for the electronic eavesdropping in their wiretap application. The decision upholds an earlier ruling by U.S. District Judge Raner Collins that said the government did not demonstrate other investigative techniques could have been used.

The government planted devices at Golden State's corporate offices in Los Angeles, seizing telephone conversations the government sought to introduce as evidence.

In December 2001, a federal grand jury indicted 32 people, including officers and employees of the bus company and six migrant smugglers. Prosecutors allege Golden State transported from 50 to 300 undocumented immigrants daily from Tucson, Phoenix, Los Angeles and El Paso, Texas, to locations in California, Texas, Colorado, Washington State, New Mexico and Nevada.

Collins disallowed use of the wiretap in a November 2003 ruling, preventing the government from using the intercepted conversations. The judge also found that Antonio Gonzalez and his father, Francisco Gonzalez, then-majority owners in the bus company, had standing to object to the wiretap.

While Collins said that no conversations taped by anyone in the Los Angeles offices could be used against the two men, he denied the defendants' request to suppress wiretaps at the company's Tucson and Phoenix terminals.

The government then appealed Collins' ruling in the case, which has not gone to trial.

In Wednesday's ruling, the 9th Circuit panel found that the defendants had "a reasonable expectation of privacy; it was a small family-run business, housing no more than 25 employees at its peak.

"In such an office, individuals who own and manage the business operation have a reasonable expectation of privacy over the onsite business conversations between their agents," the court said.

"Based solely on the statements in the affidavit, it was error for the issuing judge to conclude that the government had met its burden of establishing necessities for the Blake Avenue wire tap."

It also found that normal but unused investigative procedures were reasonably likely to succeed, such as undercover agents or confidential informants.

Prosecutors can seek a rehearing before the entire appellate court or petition the U.S. Supreme Court for review. If it chooses neither, the government will have to decide whether sufficient evidence not tainted by illegally intercepted wiretaps exists to continue the prosecution. If so, additional hearings might be held challenging whether the evidence came from those taps.

Calls to U.S. Attorney's offices in Phoenix and Tucson were not returned Wednesday night.

Please don't tell me this is that SAME 9TH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS THAT LOVES ILLEGAL ALIENS?

My God...