Granello v. United States, 750

• Decision Date: 24 April 1967
• Docket Number: No. 750,750
• Citation: 87 S.Ct. 1367,386 U.S. 1019,18 L.Ed.2d 458
• Parties: Salvatore GRANELLO et al., petitioners, v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

386 U.S. 1019

87 S.Ct. 1367

18 L.Ed.2d 458

Salvatore GRANELLO et al., petitioners,

v UNITED STATES

No. 750.

Supreme Court of the United States

April 24, 1967

Rehearing Denied June 5, 1967.

See 387 U.S. 949, 87 S.Ct. 2072.

Irving Anolik, Irwin Klein and Irwin Germaise, for petitioners.

Solicitor General Marshall, Assistant Attorney General Rogovin, Joseph M. Howard and John P. Burke, for the United States.

Petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Denied.

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS dissents:

There are two issues in this case, relating to entirely separate events. The first concerns the seizure of a lawyer's documents in Pennsylvania by the police from the premises where the lawyer stored them. If we assume that the premises were unlawfully raided by the police, a client's paper seized and used against the client in a criminal prosecution, does the client have standing to move to suppress the evidence? Whether petitioners were clients and Birrell their attorney are questions not fully resolved. But I think they are entitled to a hearing on the issue and on the legality of the search. I cannot, as of now, believe that if a lawyer-client relation is shown and if the search were held to be illegal, the client is without standing to move for suppression of the evidence. The dimensions of the problem are so great in the setting of the Fourth Amendment and our enveloping regime of police surveillance, that we should put the case down for argument. Another issue, mentioned by my Brother FORTAS, relates to electronic surveillance conducted in Florida. On that, we should at least remand the case for findings on electronic surveillance as suggested by my Brother FORTAS in whose opinion I concur—without prejudice of course to the search and seizure question.

Mr. Justice BRENNAN took no part in the consideration or decision of this petition.

Mr. Justice FORTAS dissents with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE joins:

It is my opinion that certiorari should be granted and the case remanded for a hearing in the District Court with respect to the electronic surveillance which the Solicitor General has revealed to us. According to the Solicitor General, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on or about May 11, 1962, surreptitiously and by trespass installed an electronic listening device in a 'commercial establishment in Florida owned by an acquaintance of Levine and in which Levine may have had a proprietary interest.' The device was in operation for nearly one year. During that time a number of conversations in which Levine participated were overhead. Some of those conversations were between Levine and attorneys representing him in prosecutions for interstate transport of counterfeit securities and for stock and mail fraud, matters then pending in a federal court in Florida.

The Solicitor General represents that this violation of petitioner Levine's constitutional rights had no connection with the present case, which involves a prosecution in New York for failure to file income tax returns for 1956 and 1957. He says that it originated in connection with an FBI investigation relating to the charges for which petitioner Levine was tried and...