United States v. Jeremy Eugene Staffeldt Orlando Leon Pastrano Lincoln Clarence Metzgar John Anthony Gonzales

The United States appeals an order of the district court granting a motion to suppress evidence obtained by means of a wiretap of two cellular phones belonging to Jeremy Staffeldt, one of the defendants. The district court found that the wiretap application was “facially insufficient,” one of the three grounds for suppressing evidence under the statute governing the authorization of wiretaps, Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (“Act”). The application, which sought an order to wiretap Staf-feldt’s phones, included as an exhibit a memorandum of authorization from the Department of Justice (“DOJ” or “Justice Department”) that purportedly showed that the request to submit the application to wiretap Staffeldt had been approved by a properly authorized DOJ official, as required by the Act. Unfortunately, however, the memorandum of authorization did no such thing. Instead, it pertained to an entirely unrelated wiretap. It authorized the submission of an application for a wiretap of a different person, with a different phone number, address, cell phone issuer, and mobile subscriber identity number, than those belonging to Staffeldt or any of the…