James Perrin v. United States

Congress designed the federal wiretap law, enacted as Title III of a 1968 crime bill, to restrain law enforcement’s interception of private communications to listen for evidence of crime. Among the law’s central safeguards is the limitation of authority to apply for a wiretap order to a select group of high-ranking officials in the Department of Justice or, in state cases, to a jurisdiction’s “principal prosecuting attorney.” The circuits and state high courts have split as to whether Title III permits a state or county’s top prosecutor to delegate this power. The question presented is: Whether the “principal prosecuting attorney of any State, or the principal prosecuting attorney of any political subdivision thereof,” 18 U.S.C. § 2516(2), may delegate responsibility for determining that a wiretap will abide constitutional and statutory limitations and is warranted in the interest of sound law enforcement.