PA: Letter from def in jail ended up at DA’s office already opened; private search

Defendant’s motion to suppress was delivered to the DA’s office by an unknown person in an envelope along with another already opened envelope inside that contained a letter from defendant in the jail to his girl friend encouraging witnesses to give false testimony. The letter is not suppressed because it was opened by a private search. Commonwealth v. Faurelus, 2016 PA Super 196, 2016 Pa. Super. LEXIS 493 (Aug. 31, 2016):

Charged with the aforementioned offenses, Appellant filed several pretrial motions, including a motion to suppress a letter delivered to the prosecutor’s office on November 21, 2008. On that date, an unidentified man gave a sealed letter addressed to the Luzerne County District Attorney to the office’s receptionist, who in turn handed it to Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Tokash. ADA Tokash opened the sealed envelope and discovered a second, previously opened envelope addressed to Appellant’s girlfriend, Nicole Wenrich, from Appellant, who listed the county jail as the return address. This envelope contained a letter in which Appellant directed Wenrich to convince certain witnesses to provide false testimony.

After a hearing, the suppression court denied Appellant’s motion, rejecting his argument that the Commonwealth violated a constitutionally protected privacy interest in the letter by reading the letter without first obtaining a warrant. Since the envelope Appellant sent to his girlfriend was already opened when delivered to the prosecutor’s office, the suppression court reasoned that any alleged search of the letter was performed by a private party who was not acting as an agent of the Commonwealth or with the knowledge of a Commonwealth official. See Commonwealth v. Harris, 572 Pa. 489, 513, 817 A.2d 1033, 1047 (2002) (stating “[t]he proscriptions of the Fourth Amendment and Article I, § 8, do not apply to searches and seizures conducted by private individuals”) (citations omitted). Even assuming Appellant had a constitutional right to privacy in the letter, the suppression court found the Commonwealth’s viewing of the letter did not exceed the scope of the private search. See id. at 515, 817 A.2d at 1048 (indicating that “additional invasions of privacy by [] government agent[s] following a private search must be tested by the degree to which they exceeded the scope of the private search”) (citation omitted).