N.D.Cal.: Defs can’t show taint from alleged illegal bugs and all that was acquired afterward in this wide-ranging investigation

There were stationary bugs that recorded conversations, and the government has declined to use them at trial after much litigation. Still, there is “a heap of incriminating evidence” derived from all kinds of sources, and the court won’t suppress all that was legally obtained under its supervisory power. Defendants sought to suppress everything from that date on, but they can’t show a cause in fact that anything else derived from them. United States v. Giraudo, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 111757 (N.D. Cal. July 18, 2017):

Despite the foregoing headwinds, Defendants set out under full sail. They ask the Court to exclude all evidence gathered after the day the government began using stationary recording devices. See Post-Hr’g Br. at 26. But before, during, and after doing so, the government deployed a formidable array of lawful investigative tools, including confidential informants, undercover agents, wearable microphones, and physical surveillance. It even rummaged through the trash. So gutsy as their initial tack may be, it gets Defendants nowhere. Even assuming that they have met their “initial burden of establishing a factual nexus between” the stationary audio recordings and each and every other piece of evidence discovered after December 22, 2009, United States v. Kandik, 633 F.2d 1334, 1335 (9th Cir. 1980), nothing suggests that those recordings were an across-the-board but-for cause of those discoveries, let alone something akin to their proximate cause, Smith, 155 F.3d at 1060.