United States v. Giordano et al.
416 U.S. 505 (1974)
Premium Feature
Subscribe to Lexplug to listen to the Case Podcast.
Rule of Law:
Under Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, only the Attorney General or an Assistant Attorney General specially designated by the Attorney General may authorize an application for a wiretap. Evidence obtained from a wiretap authorized by any other official is 'unlawfully intercepted' and must be suppressed, along with any evidence derived therefrom.
Facts:
- Federal authorities began investigating Nicholas Giordano for suspected narcotics dealings.
- On October 5, 1970, Giordano sold narcotics to an undercover agent.
- Giordano also instructed a government informant to call a specific telephone number when interested in transacting narcotics business.
- Federal prosecutors sought a court order to intercept communications on Giordano's telephone.
- Because the Attorney General was on a trip away from Washington, D.C., his Executive Assistant reviewed the request for authorization to apply for the initial wiretap order.
- The Executive Assistant, believing the Attorney General would approve it, authorized the application himself and caused the Attorney General's initials to be placed on an internal memorandum.
- The application submitted to the court inaccurately stated that Assistant Attorney General Will Wilson had authorized it, but Wilson had not personally reviewed the request or signed the authorization letter.
- The Attorney General later personally approved the application for an extension of the wiretap order.
Procedural Posture:
- An Assistant U.S. Attorney submitted an application for a wiretap order to the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, which was granted on October 16, 1970.
- The District Court later granted an application to extend the wiretap order on November 6, 1970.
- Following their arrests, Giordano and other defendants filed pretrial motions in the District Court to suppress the evidence obtained from the wiretaps.
- The District Court granted the motions to suppress on the grounds that the applications had misidentified the authorizing official.
- The United States, as appellant, appealed the suppression order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
- The Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's suppression order, but on the different ground that the initial wiretap application was not authorized by a proper official under 18 U.S.C. § 2516(1).
- The United States, as petitioner, sought and was granted a writ of certiorari by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Premium Content
Subscribe to Lexplug to view the complete brief
You're viewing a preview with Rule of Law, Facts, and Procedural Posture
Issue:
Does a wiretap application authorized by the Attorney General's Executive Assistant, instead of by the Attorney General or a specially designated Assistant Attorney General as required by 18 U.S.C. § 2516(1), render the resulting wiretap unlawful and require the suppression of evidence obtained from it?
Opinions:
Majority - Justice White
Yes. A wiretap application authorized by anyone other than the Attorney General or a specially designated Assistant Attorney General violates 18 U.S.C. § 2516(1), rendering the interception unlawful and requiring the suppression of all resulting evidence. The court found that the plain language of § 2516(1) specifically limits the authority to authorize wiretap applications to these two high-level officials. Although a general statute, 28 U.S.C. § 510, permits the Attorney General to delegate functions, the specificity of § 2516(1) overrides it. The legislative history confirms Congress's intent to centralize the decision-making power for such an intrusive surveillance technique in a politically accountable official to prevent abuses. Failure to comply with this provision, which the Court deemed a 'central role in the statutory scheme,' makes the interception 'unlawfully intercepted' under § 2518(10)(a)(i), mandating suppression. Furthermore, evidence obtained from the subsequent extension order must also be suppressed as 'derivative evidence' because the application for that extension was premised on and included information obtained from the initial, illegal wiretap.
Concurring-in-part-and-dissenting-in-part - Justice Powell
Yes. While the authorization by the Executive Assistant was invalid and requires suppression of evidence from the initial wiretap, the evidence from the subsequent extension order should not be automatically suppressed. The dissent agreed that the initial wiretap authorization was statutorily deficient and the evidence derived from it must be suppressed. However, it argued that the Court should have applied the 'independent source' doctrine to the wiretap extension order. The application for the extension contained substantial untainted evidence gathered prior to the illegal wiretap, which may have been sufficient on its own to establish probable cause. The dissent would have remanded the case for the lower court to determine if, after excising the tainted information, the remaining lawful information in the application was sufficient to justify the extension order.
Analysis:
This decision established that the procedural requirements of Title III are not mere technicalities but are central safeguards for privacy that must be strictly followed. By mandating suppression for a failure in the authorization chain, the Court emphasized that Congress intended to place the responsibility for invoking this intrusive investigative tool exclusively in the hands of high-level, politically accountable officials. This interpretation significantly limits the government's ability to delegate wiretap authority and reinforces the role of statutory suppression remedies, making clear they apply to core procedural violations, not just constitutional ones. The case serves as a strong deterrent against procedural shortcuts in wiretap applications and has shaped how the Department of Justice internally manages and approves electronic surveillance requests.
