Custom «Case Analysis US vs CDT» Essay Paper Sample

Procedure

The case started at United States District Court. The defendant lost the judgment motion and appealed in 9th court.

Issue- the issues in this case were:

Did the government fail to comply with the conditions of the warrant designed to segregate information? (The cooper order).

Did the government callously disregard the affected players%u02C7 constitutional right? (The Mahan order)

Did the government unreasonably failed to conduct an investigation using both search warrants and subpoenas? (The IllstonQuashal)

Facts

The federal government had an investigation into the Bay Area Lab Cooperative (Balco). Balco is a company that gave steroids's drugs to professional baseball players in 2002. Also, there was a company called Compregensive Drug Testing Inc (CDT), which is an independent firm whose business is to preform drug tests to professional players and it will remain anonymous and confidential all the time. Federal authorities knew there were ten players who had tested positive at the drug test in CDT while they are investigating Balco. The government got a warrant from Central District of California authorizing the search in CDT's facilities which is in Long Beach. The warrant only permitted those ten players to be searched, but the government seized and promptly analyzed the testing records for more than a hundred of players in MLB. The government also had a warrant from District of Nevada to get drug test urine samples. In addition, the government got additional warrants to search CDT facilities in Long Beach and Quest's lab in Las Vegas for testing records. Finally, the government demanded production of the same records from CDT and Quest. CDT and the players sued the government at the District of Nevada, Central District of California and Northern District of California in pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal procedure 41g and 17c. This is called cooper order, Mahan order and the illstonQuashal.

Court Decision-The appeal in No. 05-55354 (the Cooper Order) is dismissed as untimely. The judgments in Nos. 05-15006 (the Mahan Order) and 05-10067 (the IllstonQuashal) are affirmed.

Rationale of the Court

The first appeal which is the cooper order must be dismissed because the government's appeal was untimely to the cooper order, although the court will not end their discussion of cooper order. The reason for the court’s decision to discuss the cooper order is related to the Mahan order and the IllstonQuashal. The cooper order argued that the government misused the warrant. The warrant did not authorize seizing of items. Moreover, the court mentioned that the government allowed other people to view the materials whereas the warrant stipulated that the government should be the first to view the documents. Finally, the court decided that the government had failed to timely appeal the claim and bounded by its factual determinations and legal rulings. The court dismissed the case.

As per the Mahan order, the plaintiff’s judge mentioned that the government had disregarded professional players’ constitutional rights. Also, he said that the government had unreasonably refusing the procedures issue set forth in the US vs Tamura. The government look at CDT's data, recorded and viewed over a hundred players which were not named in the warrants. Nevertheless, the government used some specific search tools on CDT computers in order to search some violated files like child porn files. These had not been mentioned in the warrants because the warrant authorized search on the ten people who tested positive on the test.

The plaintiff also mentioned that the government violated the rule of criminal procedure rule 41. The rule 41 means "obtaining the return of property improperly seized by the government." The government failed to return those seized materials to plaintiffs and argued that rule 41 is not applicable due to it's not used as a suppression motion, but the court rejected it because CDT is not a criminal defendants firm and the correction of the data was their business and also for protecting MLBs' players and other league players privacy. The court affirmed Mahan case and moved on to the IllstonQuashal.

The plaintiffs argued that the government violated the federal rule of criminal procedure 17c, “if this noncompliance would be "unreasonable or oppressive". The government’s act was unlawful and a misconduct as the seizure of evidence is unreasonable with a subpoena. The court thus must affirm this order.

My Opinion-I agree with those decisions. The government tried to obtain all of the data from that company instead of those ten players information. This is unreasonable because the warrants and subpoena only permitted the government to search ten of those MLB players who tested positive on the drug test. The government tried to be tricky and decided to take advantage of those warrants and subpoenas to act against the law. In my opinion, the court made a right decision. If the government won this law suit, the government will take advantage of any investigation with warrants and search everything which is not related to the case. This is because the government will always be sure that such an action will not be opposed. I do not want to see the government take advantage on those warrants and subpoenas and violate the law without facing any opposition. Since the government is expected to be the role model in terms of observing the law, then it should follow the law to the latter.