Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (Title III) prohibits intentionally intercepting wire or oral communications or disclosing contents of unlawfully intercepted communications. 18 U.S.C. § 2511(1)(a), (c). In turn, Title III's exclusionary rule, 18 U.S.C. § 2515, provides that "no part of the contents" of an intercepted communication "and no evidence derived therefrom may be received in evidence in any trial, hearing, or proceeding" before any state or federal court or governmental body "if the disclosure of that information" would violate Title III. The courts of appeals plus a state high court have openly split over whether § 2515's exclusionary rule applies against the government when the government wasn't involved in the unlawful interception. The First, Third, Fourth, Eighth, and Ninth Circuits and the Massachusetts high court apply § 2515 as written, with no exception if the government wasn't involved in the interception. United States v. Vest, 813 F.2d 477, 479-80 (1st Cir. 1987); In re Grand Jury, 111 F.3d 1066, 1077-79 (3d Cir. 1997); United States v. Crabtree, 565 F.3d 887, 889-90 (4th Cir. 2009); United States v. Phillips, 540 F.2d 319, 327 n.5 (8th Cir. 1976); Chandler v. United States Army, 125 F.3d 1296, 1302 (9th Cir. 1997); Commonwealth v. Damiano, 828 N.E.2d 510, 517 (Mass. 2005). The Sixth Circuit alone reads a clean-hands exception into § 2515, allowing the government to introduce unlawfully intercepted communications if the government played no part in interception. United States v. Murdock, 63 F.3d 1391, 1402-04 (6th Cir. 1995). The question presented is:

Whether § 2515's exclusionary rule contains an unwritten clean-hands exception.

Whether Section 2515's exclusionary rule contains an unwritten clean-hands exception