United States v. Barker

In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg released to the public the Pentagon Papers, a classified report about the Vietnam War. In response, President Nixon formed a special-investigations unit in the White House to investigate the leak. The unit sought a psychological profile of Ellsberg, but Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding, declined to speak with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) due to doctor-patient confidentiality. The unit decided to break into Dr. Fielding’s office to obtain Ellsberg’s medical records but did not want White House personnel to carry out the search. Accordingly, unit member E. Howard Hunt, a White House official and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent, enlisted Bernard Barker and Eugenio Martinéz (defendants) to carry out the break-in. Hunt had been Barker’s supervisor in connection with the Bay of Pigs invasion, and Martinéz was still on CIA retainer when he was contacted. Hunt informed Barker that he was working for an organization at the White House level with greater jurisdiction than the FBI and the CIA. Hunt told Barker he would be gathering national-security information on a traitor who was passing information to the Soviet embassy and was a possible Soviet agent himself. Barker and Martinéz had been covert CIA agents in Cuba. Used to working on a need-to-know basis, Barker and Martinéz had no reason to question Hunt’s credentials or the information they received from him. Before the break-in, Hunt met Barker and Martinéz and provided them with instructions and disguises obtained from the CIA. Barker and Martinéz completed the break-in, but Ellsberg’s file was not found. A jury convicted Barker and Martinéz under 18 U.S.C. § 241 of conspiracy to violate Dr. Fielding’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from an unreasonable search. Barker and Martinéz appealed, arguing they lacked the mens rea to be convicted under § 241 because their reasonable reliance on Hunt’s authority was a mistake of fact mixed with a mistake of law.