## Facts

- Dade County officers stopped a car leaving a Miami residence, arrested occupants Charles Kabbaby and Glenn Roblin, and seized cocaine, firearms, and a cassette recorder-player with two tapes from the car.
- Kabbaby told officers there was “nothing” on the tapes.
- At the stationhouse, officers played the tapes without Kabbaby’s permission and without a warrant, initially out of curiosity.
- One tape contained a recorded telephone call between Kabbaby and a person identified as “Freddy,” who provided a phone number; officers used the number to locate Frederick Joseph Turk.
- Turk was subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury investigating narcotics offenses.
- After invoking the Fifth Amendment, Turk testified under a federal immunity grant and denied ever trafficking in marijuana or other narcotics.
- Turk was indicted in a superseding indictment on two counts of perjury based on his grand jury testimony and was convicted in federal district court.

## Issues

1. Whether officers’ warrantless playback and later use of a cassette recording of a phone conversation constituted an unlawful “interception” requiring suppression under Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968.
2. Whether playing and using the tape violated Turk’s Fourth Amendment rights such that the tape and derivative leads had to be suppressed.
3. Whether any antecedent illegality in obtaining or using the tape barred a perjury prosecution based on Turk’s later immunized grand jury testimony.

## Decision

- The Fifth Circuit affirmed the perjury conviction.
- Playback of a privately made, preexisting tape obtained during a lawful seizure was not an “interception” triggering Title III’s exclusionary rule as applied to Turk.
- The officers’ listening to the tape did not violate Turk’s Fourth Amendment rights because Turk lacked a legitimate expectation of privacy in a recording possessed by the other party to the call.
- Even if there had been illegality in obtaining investigative leads, it did not immunize Turk from prosecution for perjury committed in grand jury testimony.

## Legal Principles

- Title III’s prohibition and suppression remedy focus on unlawful “interception” of communications; government playback of a recording already made by a private party, without government involvement in the original recording, is not treated as an interception for suppression purposes in this context.
- A speaker assumes the risk that the person spoken to will record or later disclose the conversation; the speaker generally has no reasonable expectation of privacy in a recording controlled by the other participant.
- Perjury before a grand jury is an independent offense; a witness is not entitled to lie in response to questions derived from investigative information, and immunity does not shield false testimony from prosecution.

## Conclusion

The court sustained Turk’s perjury conviction, holding that officers’ warrantless playback of a privately created tape neither required suppression under Title III nor violated Turk’s Fourth Amendment rights, and that any claimed taint from investigative leads did not bar prosecution for Turk’s false grand jury testimony.


United States v. Turk, 526 F.2d 654 (5th Cir. 1976)