Defendant’s providing his iPhone passcode during his proffer session did not immunize the contents of the phone from the government’s use at trial. Kastigar hearing (a misnomer) denied. United States v. Otunyo, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 30000 (D.D.C. Feb. 18, 2021):
C. Defendant Has Not Made the Threshold Showing that the Government Breached the Terms of the Proffer Letter Necessary to Earn a Hearing
Having established that defendant has not made the requisite threshold showing to warrant a hearing on whether his participation at the November 2018 debriefing session was involuntary, defendant’s challenge to the government’s use of his iPhone password, which he provided at the debriefing session, is now considered. Defendant argues that the government should not be permitted to use the evidence it obtained from his iPhone, after he provided the government with his password at the November 2018 debriefing session, against him, Def.’s Mot. ¶¶ 3, 6, 11, and requests a Kastigar hearing at which the government must “prove that the evidence it presented to the grand jury and that it intends to introduce at trial is not tainted by any of” his statements at the debriefing session, id. at 4-5. For three independent reasons, this argument fails.
First, as explained, Kastigar does not apply to defendant because he provided information voluntarily pursuant to a proffer agreement, and so “‘Kastigar’ is a misnomer for the hearing [he has] demanded,” Hemphill, 514 F.3d at 1355. According to the express terms of the proffer letter that defendant and his counsel both agreed to, “there will be no Kastigar hearing at which the government would have to prove that the evidence it would introduce at trial is not tainted by any statements made by or other information provided by” defendant. Proffer Letter at 2. …
Second, even if the proffer letter did not foreclose defendant’s request for a Kastigar hearing, the government’s alleged use of his iPhone password to access his WhatsApp chats and bolster the charges in the Superseding Indictment would not have violated the terms of the proffer letter. …
The government complied with those terms. The Superseding Indictment does not “attribute any statement” defendant made during the debriefing session to defendant, and does not “direct[ly] use” information defendant provided “within the meaning of [the proffer] agreement.” Hemphill, 514 F.3d at 1356. …
Third, even if the proffer letter did not foreclose defendant’s request for a Kastigar hearing, and putting aside the point that, at most, defendant’s motion alleges that the government derivatively used information he provided at the debriefing session against him, which was permitted by the proffer letter, a Kastigar hearing would be unnecessary and dismissal of the Superseding Indictment would be unwarranted because the government did not use, directly or derivatively, any information provided by defendant at the debriefing session against him. …
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced." —Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today." — Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property." —Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment." —United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth." —Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable." —Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected." —Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” —United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.” —United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need." —Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Let it Bleed (album, 1969)
"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp]
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.” – John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime." —Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
