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Perry v. State12/10/1999
at 73, 591 A.2d at 485 (quoting Sanders v. State, 57 Md. App. 156, 167, 469 A.2d 476, 482, cert. denied, 299 Md. 656, 474 A.2d 1345 (1984)). There has been absolutely no illegal police conduct in this case.
The Hawaii Supreme Court provides a practical approach to interpreting wiretap statutes. In Bridges, 83 Haw. 187, 925 P.2d 357, the Honolulu Police Department worked in concert with the La Habra, California, Police Department in conducting a sting operation on a criminal drug ring that was based in California, but conducting drug transactions in Hawaii. The police investigation resulted in numerous taped recordings of the defendants discussing the drug transactions to undercover police. The recordings were taken in California in compliance with California law. However, the law concerning wiretapping is stricter in Hawaii, and if the recordings had been made in Hawaii, they would not have been in compliance with Hawaii's more stringent requirements.
Bridges argued that because the recordings were not obtained in compliance with Hawaii's wiretapping statute, the taped evidence should be suppressed. The Hawaiian Supreme Court disagreed in a well-reasoned opinion, and noted that the purposes underlying the exclusionary rule were to (1) promote judicial integrity; (2) protect individual privacy; and (3) deter illegal police conduct, none of which would be served by excluding the wiretap evidence in that case. See id. at 195, 925 P.2d at 365. I propose a similar rationale.
Judicial Integrity
"The `judicial integrity' purpose of the exclusionary rule is essentially that the courts should not place their imprimatur on evidence that was illegally obtained by allowing it to be admitted into evidence in a criminal prosecution." Id. at 196, 925 P.2d at 366. The question before us, therefore, is whether the evidence was obtained illegally. As I indicated, supra, "the law that controls the legality of an interception is the law of the place wherein the interception takes place." Gerena, 667 F. Supp. at 913 (quoting Bennett, 538 F. Supp. at 1047). Generally, whether the given conduct is legal is governed by the laws of the jurisdiction in which that conduct was performed. In the case sub judice, the telephone conversations were taped in California, a state which allows wiretap interception with one-party consent in respect to the admissibility of evidence in criminal prosecutions. Thus, the evidence in this case was obtained in compliance with California law. Under the general rule of lex loci actus, the admission of this taped evidence obtained in California would not possibly cause a loss of judicial integrity in a Maryland courtroom. To contend otherwise is, I respectfully suggest, not rational.
This analysis ties into the determination of what is the appropriate scope of Maryland's wiretap statute. With all due respect, I believe it is nonsensical for this Court to grant this statute such extraterritorial application. Nowhere in the wording of this statute does it say that a wiretapped conversation, legally obtained in another state, will be inadmissible in a Maryland court. Given the general wording of the statute addressed only to violations of the Maryland statute, this court should hold that it was the General Assembly's intent to prohibit only wiretap evidence that was obtained illegally. If the evidence was obtained in another state, in compliance with that state's wiretapping laws, there has been no violation of any state's law, including Maryland's. Under those circumstances, where there has been no illegal conduct and the Maryland statute has not been violated, the evidence should be admissible in a Maryland court. That the evidence would have been illeg
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