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Olmstead V. United States: the Constitutional Challenges of Prohibition Enforcement

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Olmstead V. United States: the Constitutional Challenges of Prohibition Enforcement Olmstead v. United States: The Constitutional Challenges of Prohibition Enforcement by Richard F. Hamm University at Albany, SUNY Edited by the Federal Judicial Center for inclusion in the project Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History Federal Judicial Center Federal Judicial History Offi ce 2010 This Federal Judicial Center publication was undertaken in furtherance of the Center’s statutory mis- sion to “conduct, coordinate, and encourage programs relating to the history of the judicial branch of the United States government.” The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Federal Judicial Center. Olmstead v. United States: The Constitutional Challenges of Prohibition Enforcement Contents Olmstead v. United States: A Short Narrative, 1 Introduction, 1 National Prohibition and its enforcement, 2 Prohibition in Seattle: The Olmstead ring, 3 Federal enforcement of Prohibition in Washington State, 3 Wiretapping the bootlegger, 4 From indictment to trial, 5 The trial, 6 The appeals, 7 Prohibition in the Supreme Court, 8 The aftermath, 10 The Federal Courts and Their Jurisdiction, 13 United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, 13 United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 13 Supreme Court of the United States, 14 The Judicial Process: A Chronology, 15 Legal Questions Before the Federal Courts, 19 Did the use of evidence gained from wiretaps and confi scated papers violate the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures? 19 Did the use of evidence gained from wiretaps and confi scated papers violate the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination? 19 What was the authority of the Washington state law prohibiting wiretaps and did it apply to federal prosecutions? 20 Was the evidence presented to the grand jury suffi cient to justify an indictment on conspiracy charges? 20 Was the indictment invalid because of improper infl uence and pressure on the grand jury? 21 What was the impact of the Olmstead case on the law? 22 What did the federal courts decide in related cases? 22 Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886), 22 Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914), 23 Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132 (1925), 24 Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), 24 Legal Arguments in Court, 27 The defense attorneys, 27 The government attorneys, 27 iii Olmstead v. United States: The Constitutional Challenges of Prohibition Enforcement Biographies, 29 Roy Olmstead, 29 Thomas P. Revelle, 30 Jerry L. Finch, 31 George Francis Vanderveer, 32 Jeremiah Neterer, 33 William Ball Gilbert, 34 Frank H. Rudkin, 35 Louis Dembitz Brandeis, 35 William Howard Taft, 36 Media Coverage and Public Debates, 39 “Police Protection for Bootleggers” 40 “A Judicial Farce” 40 “The Occasion Has Passed” 41 Historical Documents Related to the Olmstead Case, 43 The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 43 The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 43 The Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 44 The Twenty-First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 45 The National Prohibition Act (the Volstead Act), 45 Judge Jeremiah Neterer’s decision on defendants’ plea in abatement, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, 47 Majority opinion on the appeal of the Olmstead defendants, U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 49 Minority opinion on the appeal of the Olmstead defendants, U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 50 Appellants’ brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, Olmstead v. United States, 52 Brief of Frank Jeffrey for the appellants, submitted to the Supreme Court in Olmstead v. United States, 53 George Vanderveer’s brief for appellants, submitted to the Supreme Court in Olmstead v. United States, 54 Government’s brief submitted to the Supreme Court in Olmstead v. United States, 55 Amicus curiae brief of telephone companies submitted to the Supreme Court in Olmstead v. United States, 57 Opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, Olmstead v. United States, 59 Dissenting opinion of Justice Louis D. Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States, 62 Dissenting opinion of Justice Pierce Butler in Olmstead v. United States, 66 Dissenting opinion of Justice Oliver W. Holmes in Olmstead v. United States, 67 “An Unusual Prohibition Victory” 68 Editorial by H.L. Mencken, 70 Report of the President’s Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, 71 Bibliography, 73 iv Olmstead v. United States: The Constitutional Challenges of Prohibition Enforcement Olmstead v. United States: A Short Narrative Introduction In the 1920s, the national Prohibition of alcoholic beverages led to a vast increase in the federal government’s crime-fi ghting role and in the workload of the federal courts. The Eighteenth Amendment, ratifi ed on January 16, 1919, prohibited the manufacture, transportation, and sale of “intoxicating liquors,” and the amendment granted Congress and the states “concurrent power to enforce this article.” The ar- chitects of national Prohibition anticipated that the states would assume the burden of enforcement, but, in practice, much of the responsibility fell on federal offi cials. Prohibition enforcement required an unprecedented scale of federal policing, which soon produced an overwhelming number of criminal prosecutions in the federal courts. For the thirteen years of national Prohibition (1920–1933), cases arising from the violation of the federal Prohibition laws averaged close to two-thirds of all U.S district court cases. The number of criminal cases handled annually by the federal district courts grew from 54,487 in 1921 to 92,174 in 1932. These criminal trials also prompted appeals in every judicial circuit. By 1925, appeals of criminal convictions in the Ninth Circuit, prompted mostly by Prohibition, constituted nearly 40% of the appeals court’s work. The increased workload in the federal courts was one of the many unexpected demands placed on the federal government by Prohibition, which redefi ned the government’s role in the daily lives of citizens. Inadequate federal forces confronted popular disregard or opposition to the ban on liquor, and the nearly impossible task of enforcing major changes in personal behavior threatened to erode popular respect for federal authority and the judicial process. Federal enforcement also relied on new kinds of evidence gathering, such as wiretapping of phones, that prompted ad- ditional concerns about the role of the federal government and the costs of national Prohibition. The expansion of federal criminal prosecutions and the methods used by government agents presented the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, with new and diffi cult constitutional questions regarding entrapment, double jeopardy, property forfeiture, trial by jury, federalism, and, especially, search and seizure. The case of Roy Olmstead refl ected many of the challenges confronting the federal judicial system during national Prohibition. Olmstead ran a large bootlegging opera- tion, importing liquor from Canada and selling it throughout Seattle, Washington. His illegal business was protected by the local police and employed a workforce at least three times the size of the federal unit responsible for enforcing Prohibition in the area. In an effort to establish evidence of Olmstead’s criminal activity, federal offi cers tapped his phone. The testimony of what the federal offi cers overheard was central to 1 Olmstead v. United States: The Constitutional Challenges of Prohibition Enforcement the prosecution of Olmstead and the members of his gang, who were charged with conspiracy to violate the National Prohibition Act. The Olmstead case raised two important constitutional questions: Did the use of evidence gathered by the wiretap violate the defendants’ rights under the Fourth Amendment? And did the reliance on the wiretapped conversations to prove conspiracy violate the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination? The case also raised questions about the use of evidence gathered in violation of Washington state law that prohibited wiretaps. Throughout the Olmstead proceedings, the federal courts confronted the impact of new technology and its effect on traditional legal defi nitions of privacy and personal liberty. The telephone and the accompanying revolution in communications required the courts to consider the application of the Bill of Rights to conditions unimagined by the framers, and the courts’ decisions about the Fourth and Fifth Amendments directly infl uenced popular opinion about the continuing experiment in national Prohibition. National Prohibition and its enforcement Congress approved the National Prohibition Act, better known as the Volstead Act, on October 18, 1919. Congress assigned the Act’s federal enforcement responsibilities to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, despite the protests of the bureau’s commissioner and the Secretary of the Treasury, who cited the lack of staff and institutional support for adequate enforcement. The Bureau of Internal Revenue created a small police force of Prohibition agents to help the states and other federal offi cers enforce Prohibition, and by 1921 federal directors of Prohibition enforcement were appointed in each of the forty-eight states. The federal enforcement agents were exempt from civil service regulations, salaries were low, and the resulting force was small, inexperienced, and frequently corrupt. The President’s commission on enforcement in 1931 reported that “a substantial number of Prohibition agents and employees actually were indicted and convicted of various crimes.” The federal agents, however, did arrest many liquor law violators, and the unmanageable number of resulting cases forced U.S. attorneys to rethink how they prosecuted crimes. At the beginning of national Prohibition there was virtually no coordination between prosecutors and investigators of crimes. U.S. attorneys, who served in each U.S. judicial district, were presidential appointees under the authority of the Justice Department. U.S. attorneys took the cases that other federal offi cials, such as Prohi- bition agents, developed for them, and exercised wide latitude in deciding whether to prosecute fully or not.
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