Potter Stewart

“ That statute provides:
' (N) o person not being authorized by the sender shall intercept any communication and divulge * * * the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such intercepted communication to any person * * *.'
In the summer of 1963 petitioner Lee ordered the installation of a private telephone in the house where he lived near Orlando, Florida. The local telephone company informed him that no private lines were available, and he was given a telephone on a four-party line instead. ”

“ The conclusion that the act forbids such testimony seems to us unshaken by the government's arguments.
'Congress may have thought it less important that some offenders should go unwhipped of justice than that officers should resort to methods deemed practices and procedures violative of inconsistent with ethical standards and destructive of personal liberty. ”

“ United States, 364 U.S. 206, 80 S.Ct. 1437, 4 L.Ed.2d 1669, that the Court repudiated the 'silver platter doctrine,' under which evidence obtained by state officers in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments could be received as evidence in federal courts.↑ See also the second Nardone case, Nardone v. United States, 308 U.S. 338, 60 S.Ct. 266, 84 L.Ed. 307.↑ ' (I) t cannot be lawful to authorize what is an illegal act. ”