Scott v. United States

During a criminal drug investigation, government officials applied for authorization to wiretap the phone of Geneva Jenkins. The officials believed that several individuals (defendants) were engaged in a criminal conspiracy using Jenkins’s phone. A court granted the application and required the officials to regularly check in, which they did. Forty percent of the phone calls intercepted were related to the drug investigation. The remaining calls were generally short or wrong-number calls. A handful of calls, however, were between Jenkins and her mother. Eventually, the individuals were indicted. The individuals later claimed that the officials had violated Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (Title III). Specifically, the individuals argued that the officials violated Title III’s requirement that wiretapping be conducted in such a way as to minimize interception of communications that were not the subject of the interception. One of the officials testified that they made no efforts to limit interceptions. The individuals argued that Title III required a good-faith attempt to minimize unrelated communications being intercepted. The government argued that Title III did not have such a requirement and that the question was an objective one, looking only at the circumstances of the interceptions for reasonableness and not for officials’ motivations.