⚖ Can Massachusetts Police Use Evidence Obtained by Eavesdropping?

Eavesdropping is the act of secretly listening to the conversations of others in order to gain information without their consent.

An example of eavesdropping is found in a 1989 Supreme Judicial Court case in which the police chief in Lenox, Massachusetts gained lawful enter into an apartment building in order to eavesdrop on conversations going on within the defendant’s apartment.

The SJC held that use of evidence gained in this way (i.e., through eavesdropping) violated the defendant’s rights under the state constitution and, therefore, was inadmissible at trial.

we conclude that the search and seizure of the defendant’s conversation violated art. 14 of the Declaration of Rights of the Constitution of the Commonwealth. Society should honor the privacy interests that apartment dwellers and condominium owners have in being free from warrantless eavesdropping by police who have infiltrated crawl spaces and other areas to which neither the public nor any other occupant of the multiple dwelling has access. Because these conversations took place in the defendant’s home, the fact that Chief Berkel was lawfully where he was and that the defendant had no legal interest in the crawl space cannot be dispositive of the question. Intrusions into the privacy of one’s home raise classic search and seizure problems.

Commonwealth v. Panetti, 406 Mass. 230, 234 (1989).