MA- Law enforcement can only use wiretaps when the investigative targets are engaged in organized crime.
In unusually blunt language, two Supreme Judicial Court justices urged legislators yesterday to change state wiretap laws so police can use the evidence-gathering technique in murderous street crimes.
The two justices joined with their other SJC colleagues, who ruled 7 to 0 that secretly recorded evidence cannot be used against a man who allegedly was caught on tape admitting to a drive-by killing in Brockton in 2007.
The full bench said that state law, enacted in 1968, allows law enforcement to use wiretaps only when the investigative targets are engaged in organized crime. The SJC said the language of the law spells out the type of lawbreakers police can target: those in “a continuing conspiracy among highly organized and disciplined groups to engage in supplying illegal goods and services.’’
In a strongly worded concurring opinion, Justices Ralph D. Gants and Judith Cowin suggested that lawmakers must delete five words from state law.
“The legislative inclusion of five words, ‘in connection with organized crime,’ means that electronic surveillance is unavailable to investigate and prosecute the hundreds of shootings and killings committed by street gangs in Massachusetts, which are among the most difficult crimes to solve and prosecute using more traditional means of investigation,’’ Gants wrote.
Justice Robert Cordy wrote that street gang members have the same rights as any other citizen of Massachusetts. Unless police offer the evidence required by law, police cannot use wiretap evidence in criminal trials, he said.
“While street gangs that coordinate to commit violent acts may otherwise qualify as organized criminal entities, a member of a group or gang, like any other citizen of the Commonwealth, may not be surreptitiously wiretapped unless law enforcement meets its burden of demonstrating an objectively reasonable suspicion that the group has committed a designated offense in pursuit of organized efforts to supply illicit goods or services,’’ Cordy wrote.
Link:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/04/09/sjc_justices_urge_legislature_to_change_wiretap_law/