> But on the other hand, ABA Model Rule 3.4 (Fairness to Opposing Party and Counsel) states another widely recognized principle, that a lawyer may not “unlawfully obstruct another party’s access to evidence or unlawfully alter, destroy or conceal a document or other material having potential evidentiary value.” (The ABA Model Rules are the basis for most professional conduct rules that regulate lawyers at the state level.) The commentary to Model Rule 3.4 describes how courts have tried to split the difference between these two obligations.
> Shipp was an assistant bar counsel in 1983 when a lawyer called him with a dilemma. A client had just brought in a gun. The lawyer couldn’t turn the gun over to the police without revealing where it came from, but the lawyer couldn’t just keep the gun or dispose of it, either. What, the lawyer asked Shipp, should he do?
> Shipp called a contact in the U.S. attorney’s office, who suggested that Shipp take the gun from the other lawyer and deliver it to the police himself. So Shipp arranged to meet the lawyer, took possession of the gun, brought it back to his office, and called the police and told them to come and get it, which they did.
And they should; if it turns out, that it is actually protected information, then it couldn't serve as proof anyway.
Otherwise any and all evidenve would be "safe" the moment you give it to your attourney, which would make it rather easy to get away with anything.
Communication should/is privileged, but obviously not any package should be considered as "communication", and even at the worst scenario, having the police to interfere the package whenever they want still doesn't stop you to practice your privilege of communication since there are lots of other forms of communication.
I don't think this is a cut and dried case where it's obvious the authorities were in the wrong, but the above doesn't really pass muster with me. Where is the line deciding which "communications" are and aren't eligible for attorney-client privilege? For instance, if the package contained printed documents, would that be protected?
But that itself isn't enough. The privilege only protects the communication related to selling or providing legal advice, it doesn't blindly apply to every communication with a lawyer (though that is the presumption the police must overcome). Documents created in the commission of a crime (from planning to execution to coverup) are evidence and therefore would not be protected and moreover your attorney would be legally obligated to turn them over to the police.
There are only 100+ years of case law on this...
Who said that? In the end, it is still the judge who decides to dismiss (or not) a piece of evidence if it was aquired illegally.
The police must be able to investigate and creating a complete blind-spot to their investigation would make their work impossible.
> I don't think this is a cut and dried case where it's obvious the authorities were in the wrong
I think it's a cut and dried case where it's obvious that the authorities were in the right.
Why would handing evidence to your attourney make it legally disappear? If anything, it turns the attourney into an accomplice.
The person I replied to said it.
> The police must be able to investigate and creating a complete blind-spot to their investigation would make their work impossible.
While true to a point, this sort of argument is deployed as FUD to justify all sorts of overreaches by authorities and it has no place in a serious discussion of this topic unless it comes with an immediate acknowledgement that protection of civil liberties should be an equal or even overriding concern.
Anyway, I think you're projecting. Look at what I wrote, then look at the context.
Also, his comment is not FUD. It reflects the original state of things. The attorney client privilege is an exception to the norm, that created the civil right you claim you wish to discuss.
Since you've accused me of bad faith, I'll invite you now to go fuck yourself.
You're a fool if you think context doesn't matter. I asked the questions I did to invite that person to consider and clarify his position, which I didn't entirely disagree with. Context is how a conversation accumulates non-trivial meaning, and a lack of respect for it generates the sort of valueless crap I'm replying to right now.
This conversation, by the way—the one between you and me—is now over.
If the package contained existing documents that would be subject to discovery anyways, htat you're happening to ship to your lawyer: not privileged.
I'm not a lawyer, but the reasoning is problematic to me because it draws equivalence between discovery via the attorney after receipt of the documents and interception of the documents before they reach the attorney, arguing that since the former is standard procedure and the latter is equivalent then the latter is acceptable. However, we may reasonably anticipate that sealed messages and packages sent from clients to their attorneys will often contain legitimate privileged communications, so what we have here is basically the government saying don't worry, we're going to read any and all privileged communications you do send, but trust us—we'll forget all of it.
The court's reasoning seems to handwave this concern with allusions to "filter teams". Given that they're essentially acting on behalf of the prosecution, I don't find that particularly satisfying, especially since the use of "parallel construction" by local and federal law enforcement, often acting together, is not unheard-of.
I'm sure there's precedent for all of it. Often when we're talking about relatively unaccountable federal agencies, this kind of precedent seems to arise from the government asking for forgiveness rather than permission, so to speak—so this is not an argument that what is isn't what is, but rather that, given the spirit of attorney-client privilege doctrine, I find this reasoning deeply unsatisfying.
I agree that relying on defendants and their attorneys to be truthful in discovery is, perhaps, equally problematic from a law enforcement perspective. That's where we should start throwing other things onto the balance, like concern for erosion of civil liberties.
If they X-rayed the package and saw it was just a knife or gun or whatever in there, I could see an argument for seizing it as evidence. But if it's just information storage devices—say, a printed document, impossible to distinguish as privileged or not without reading it, is the government justified in seizing it and deciding for themselves? Why then does the government not enjoy the right to read every single communication between client and attorney, and to bug the rooms where they meet, given that the government must be allowed to efficiently slurp up all non-privileged information that passes between them and can be trusted to ignore what is privileged?
I agree it risks being problematic, but allowing a blanket unsearched conduit for physical evidential items from defendants is problematic, too.
I'm not ready to say I think this should or shouldn't be allowed and under what circumstances, because I'm not a lawyer or legal scholar. It just bugs me when people post these reductive black-and-white takes without even seeming to consider how complicated these issues really are. If it was so simple, that document would be a lot shorter, I think.
That same "foregone conclusion" doctrine should apply here too. IMO (but IANAL) the court's argument here could be easily applied to interception/seizure of any communications between client and attorney, which is absurd.
edit: I guess by "the court's argument" I mean the mostly-implicit notion that "filter teams" are a sufficient mechanism to obviate any concerns over the government intercepting privileged communications. Most of what I read seemed to be an implicitly (again with the implicitude!) ex post facto justification of seizing the package based on the fact that it did contain non-privileged materials, and said materials would have been subject to discovery anyway.
I'm assuming he didn't ask his lawyer whether that would be covered by attorney client privilege. I can't imagine any sane lawyer saying "yes, please bring the murder weapon to my office".