Supreme Court Denies Cert in Boxing Case: The nation's high court declined to review a case from the 3rd Circuit involving the conviction of the International Boxing Federation's chairman on charges of tax evasion, money laundering and racketeering. The issue before the Court would have been whether recording a suspect's conversation with a government informant without first seeking a warrant violates the 4th Amendment.



The 3rd Circuit ruled it did not. The Court concluded that the Fourth Amendment does not protect and quoted the Supreme Court in US v.Hoffa that "a wrongdoer's misplaced belief that a person to whom he voluntarily confides his wrongdoing will not reveal it." The 3rd Circuit went on to state that although "Hoffa involved testimony about conversations and not electronic recordings of conversations, the Supreme Court in later cases drew no distinction between the two situations." The court also noted that although a person has a heightened expectation of privacy in a motel suite, which is where the recordings took place, this does not continue once the individual invites another person inside, including persons unknown to be government informants.



Sidenote: This case reminds me of perhaps the most interesting thing I learned in Criminal Law. All law students have read Mapp v. Ohio, the landmark Supreme Court decision that established the exclusionary rule for evidence obtained in violation of the 4th Amendment. The case opens:

On May 23, 1957, three Cleveland police officers arrived at appellant's residence in that city pursuant to information that "a person [was] hiding out in the home, who was wanted for questioning in connection with a recent bombing, and that there was a large amount of policy paraphernalia being hidden in the home."

What many do not know, though, is that the person being sought by the police was this man.



Update: A reader informs me that this is not true, that in fact the police were in fact searching for a person accused of bombing this man's house and not actually the man himself. My apologies for the mistake -- I heard my version of the story in a Criminal Law class taught by this man.

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