USA v. LUONG
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today released an opinion in USA v. LUONG, No. 01-10468, a criminal appeal. The panel consisted of William C. Canby, Jr., David R. Thompson, and Michael Daly Hawkins, Circuit Judges.
CANBY, Circuit Judge:
John That Luong, Huy Chi Luong, Hong Ai Le, and Mady Chan appeal their convictions and sentences for various crimes relating to their involvement in a criminal enterprise that engaged in robberies of computer companies and in heroin trafficking. In this opinion we address only one issue of statutory interpretation raised by the appellants. The statute in question authorizes a judge, upon proper showing, to authorize “interception of . . . electronic communications within the territorial jurisdiction of the court in which the judge is sitting.” 18 U.S.C. ยง 2518(3). The issue is whether this statute authorized the district court in the Northern District of California to authorize interception of communications to and from a mobile phone used by John Luong when that phone and its area code were located outside of the court’s territorial jurisdiction but the government’s listening post was located within it. We join several of our sister circuits in holding that the district court had jurisdiction because the intercepted communications were first heard by the government within the court’s district. . . .