Dye v. New Jersey

Background

A man (Bentley Andrew Dye) was convicted under New Jersey law for bookmaking after police used a court-authorized wiretap on a pay telephone where he worked. The warrant application said the phone number appeared on toll records linked to another betting investigation, undercover stakeouts heard betting calls, the man was seen taking notes from sports pages, and a reliable informer’s failed test call suggested the employee avoided strangers. A court approved a 30-day tap limited to certain hours; police recorded about 105 hours, making a 2½-hour master tape of allegedly relevant calls and sealing the rest.

Reasoning

The legal question was whether the wiretap complied with the state wiretapping law and the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches. The Supreme Court declined to review the case, so it did not resolve those questions on the merits. In a written dissent Justice Douglas argued the warrant resembled a forbidden general warrant, criticized the short investigative showing of probable cause, faulted the long thirty-day authorization and the capture of many unrelated conversations, and noted that nonrelated recordings were sealed rather than destroyed.

Real world impact

Because the Court denied review, the New Jersey conviction and the trial court’s use of the wiretap remain in place for now. That outcome leaves the admissibility of the wiretap evidence intact in this case, but does not settle the larger privacy and surveillance questions Justice Douglas raised. The dissent signals that some Justices see broader constitutional problems with long, broad wiretaps, but any change in the law would require a future Court decision.

Dissents or concurrances

Justice Douglas would have granted review and suggested the wiretap here was an unconstitutional general warrant under Berger because it was lengthy, swept in many innocent conversations, and rested on a thin investigatory showing.