BOSTON (CN) — In a case pitting contemporary surveillance technology against constitutional rights, the First Circuit offered little help Tuesday to criminal defendants who complained Massachusetts State Police had a policy of secretly recording conversations without a warrant and not turning over the evidence at trial.
“You should win,” U.S. Circuit Judge Kermit Lipez told the agency’s lawyer, Jeffrey Collins of Morgan Brown in Boston, at oral argument.
The case involved a Motorola product called “Mobile Body Bug” that lets police secretly record conversations with suspects, which Massachusetts State Police officers used in more than 180 cases without turning the information over to prosecutors or defendants. Four of the defendants brought a class action against the police, claiming the recordings violated their rights to due process and a fair trial as well as a state wiretap law…