USA v. STAFFELDT
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today released an opinion in USA v. STAFFELDT, No. 05-10243, a criminal appeal. The panel consisted of Stephen Reinhardt, John T. Noonan, and Michael Daly Hawkins, Circuit Judges.
REINHARDT, Circuit Judge:
The United States appeals an order of the district court granting a motion to suppress evidence obtained by means of a wiretap of two cellular phones belonging to Jeremy Staffeldt, one of the defendants. The district court found that the wiretap application was “facially insufficient,” one of the three grounds for suppressing evidence under the statute governing the authorization of wiretaps, Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (”Act”). The application, which sought an order to wiretap Staffeldt’s phones, included as an exhibit a memorandum of authorization from the Department of Justice (”DOJ” or “Justice Department”) that purportedly showed that the request to submit the application to wiretap Staffeldt had been approved by a properly authorized DOJ official, as required by the Act. Unfortunately, however, the memorandum of authorization did no such thing. Instead, it pertained to an entirely unrelated wiretap. It authorized the submission of an application for a wiretap of a different person, with a different phone number, address, cell phone issuer, and mobile subscriber identity number, than those belonging to Staffeldt or any of the defendants in this case. In fact, it referred to an entirely different criminal investigation in a different state in a different part of the country. Most important, the memorandum of authorization did not, directly or indirectly, refer to Staffeldt or his codefendants in any regard. Despite this flagrant and obvious error on the face of the wiretap application — we have held the attachment to be a part of the application — the government argues that the eviIn United States v. Callum, 410 F.3d 571 (9th Cir. 2005), we explained that when a DOJ memorandum of authorization for a wiretap request is presented to a judge reviewing a wiretap application, that memorandum is part of the application. Id. at 576. . . .