United States v. Payner

Petitioner
United States
Respondent
Jack Payner
Petitioner's Claim
That although gathered using an illegal search, the evidence against Jack Payner for falsifying a federal income tax return should not be suppressed and the conviction should not be set aside.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Wade H. McCree, U.S. Solicitor General
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Bennet Kleinman
Justices for the Court
Warren E. Burger, Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (writing for the Court), William H. Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens, Potter Stewart, Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
23 June 1980
Decision
Overturned two lower courts' rulings that a federal court could use its supervisory power to exclude evidence seized illegally from a third party.
Significance
The ruling settled the question of whether the supervisory power of the federal court could be substituted for established Fourth Amendment doctrines. Since only the victim of an illegal search, not a third party can claim that hisFourth Amendments rights were violated, the federal courts cannot suppress evidence against the third party, by using its supervisory power. This decision served to limit the uses to which the federal courts could put their supervisory power.
In 1965, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) began investigating the financialactivities of American citizens in the Bahamas. This investigation, called "Operation Trade Winds," was headquartered in Florida. In 1972, the IRS becamesuspicious of the Castle Bank when investigators discovered that a suspecteddrug trafficker had an account there. Special Agent Richard Jaffe asked Norman Casper, a private investigator and informant, to learn more about the Castle Bank. Casper was already an acquaintance of Castle Bank vice president Michael Wolstencroft. Casper introduced Wolstencroft to Sybol Kennedy, a privateinvestigator. Casper devised the so-called "briefcase caper" when he learnedthat Wolstencroft would be spending a few days in Miami in January of 1973.On 11 January, Casper told Special Agent Jaffe that he planned to enter an apartment and take Wolstencroft's briefcase. Jaffe told him he would have to clear the plan with his supervisor, Troy Register, Jr., chief of the IRS Intelligence Division in Jacksonville, Florida. Register cleared the plan and Jaffetold Casper to proceed. Casper asked Jaffe for the name of a locksmith who could be "trusted." Wolstencroft arrived on 15 January and went straight to Kennedy's apartment. When the couple left to go out to dinner, Casper entered the apartment using a key that Kennedy had given him. He stole the briefcase and met with the locksmith in a parking lot nearby. The locksmith made a key to fit the lock. Casper took the briefcase and the key to the home of an IRS agent. There Jaffe, Casper, and an IRS photography expert photographed over 400 documents. A lookout called Casper when the couple had finished dinner. Casper returned the briefcase to the apartment one and one-half hours after he had taken it.
During the following two weeks, Jaffe asked Casper to get more information onCastle Bank. Casper sent Kennedy to the Bahamas, where she stole a rolodex file from Wolstencroft's office. The IRS paid Casper $8,000 for his services,and Casper paid Kennedy $1,000 for hers.
The documents in the briefcase indicated a relationship between Castle Bank in the Bahamas and the Bank of Perrine in Florida. Subpoenas issued to the Bank of Perrine revealed the loan guarantee agreement which was the main evidence against Payner at his trial. In this agreement, Payner pledged the money inhis Castle Bank account as security for $100,000 loan. Payner was indicted in September of 1976 on a charge of falsifying his 1972 income tax return by denying that he had a foreign bank account.
Payner waived his right to a jury trial and asked that the loan guarantee agreement be suppressed (found inadmissible as evidence). The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio found Payner guilty. However, the court also found that the government got its evidence by using a flagrantly illegalsearch. The court thus suppressed all the evidence except the 1972 tax return. Since the tax return alone did not show that he had falsified the return, the district court set aside Payner's conviction. The district court found that the government "knowingly and willfully participated in the unlawful seizure of Michael Wolstencroft's briefcase . . . " The court also noted that the government tells its agents that the Fourth Amendment standing limitation permits them to intentionally conduct an unconstitutional search and seizure of one person to get evidence about another. The standing rule states that "a court may not exclude evidence under the Fourth Amendment unless it finds that an unlawful search or seizure violated the defendant's own constitutional rights."
The district court also found that the documents taken from the briefcase ledto the discovery of the loan guarantee agreement. Although the search did not violate Payner's Fourth Amendment rights, the district court felt that theDue Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment required it to exclude the evidence. Another factor in excluding the evidence was the inherent supervisory powerof the federal courts to police the administration of justice in the federalsystem. This supervisory power serves to deter illegality and protect judicial integrity. This concept of supervisory power also persuaded the District Court to exclude evidence tainted by the government's "knowing and purposefulbad faith hostility to any person's fundamental constitutional rights." The district court concluded that society's interest in deterring law enforcementmisconduct by excluding tainted evidence outweighed society's interest in furnishing the court with all of the relevant facts. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit agreed with the district court's use of its supervisory power.
Illegal Actions
Regarding the use of supervisory power in this case, the Supreme Court, as stated by Justice Powell, felt that it "upsets the careful balance of interestsembodied in the Fourth Amendment decisions of this Court . . . Such an extension of the supervisory power would enable federal courts to exercise a standardless discretion in their application of the exclusionary rule to enforce the Fourth Amendment." Although stating that no court should condone the "briefcase caper," Powell noted that this type of illegal conduct does not commandthe exclusion of evidence in every case where it was gathered illegally. Theillegal actions of law enforcement "must be weighed against the considerableharm that would flow from indiscriminate application of an exclusionary rule." Using the exclusionary rule to enforce proper behavior on the part of lawenforcement would impede the functions of the courts. The Court held that thesupervisory power does not authorize a federal court to suppress evidence onthe ground that it was seized unlawfully from a third party.
Federal Courts
In his dissent Justice Marshall noted that the Court's decision turned the standing rule "into a sword to be used by the Government to permit it deliberately to invade one person's Fourth Amendment rights in order to obtain evidence against another person." If the federal court permits evidence gathered inthis illegal way to be admissible at a trial, it gives its stamp of approvalto lawlessness and taints its own integrity. It becomes "the accomplice of the Government lawbreaker . . . for without judicial use of the evidence the `caper' would have been for naught. Such a pollution of the federal courts should not be permitted."
Marshall noted that the government deliberately used illegal means to gain evidence against people like Payner. No claim can be made that the illegal actions are only slightly connected to Payner's case. "The Government misconductis at the very heart of this case . . . .The District Court refused to be made an accomplice to illegal conduct by the IRS by permitting the agency to usethe proceeds of its crimes for the very purpose for which they were committed--to convict persons such as Payner." The Court should prevent the government from using evidence deliberately acquired illegally using bad-faith hostility to constitutional rights. Marshall would have suppressed the fruits of thegovernment's illegal action under the Court's supervisory powers.
Impact
The refusal to exclude evidence gained through flagrantly illegal means illustrated the majority of the Court's dislike of the exclusionary rule. The early 1980s was a time when the Supreme Court began chipping away at the exclusionary rule, developing many exceptions to its application. Many of the justices wanted the rule abolished. Some members of Congress have proposed abolishing the exclusionary rule in federal court, but this has not yet occurred.
Related Cases

• Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).
  
• Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128 (1978).
  
• United States v. Caceres, 440 U.S. 741 (1979).